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15 Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress. 16 Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you. ~ 1 Timothy 4:15-16
Today, we come back to the Apostle Paul's notes on how to be the best leader. In v.15 he writes, "Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks." Literally it reads, “Be in your God-given tasks and be totally absorbed in God's call on your life." There can be no success in our involvement in what God is doing in this world without total dedication to His calling on our lives.
The purpose is given in the last part of v.15, "so that everyone will see your progress."
This word, "progress," is given commentary in Colossians 1:29 which reads, “To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” Any spiritual progress that we experience must always be attributed to the Holy Spirit for it is He who enables the believer to do the humanly impossible. And, since it is humanly impossible, God gets the credit for the success.
In v.16 we read, "Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you."
The Apostle draws our attention to these two things, "Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching." Before we teach we must be taught. But, we must remain realistic for perfection is not attainable. Perfection is the standard for God will never challenge us to pursue anything less.
But, that is the beauty to all of this: only the Lord Jesus has ever accomplished perfection and He has all the answers that we all desire. This is where our authenticity is honed. As we attempt to attain perfection, we are clearly reminded that we are incapable. At this point the leader is honest with those whom He leads. It is at this point that the leader must be clear by sharing how He relied upon the Lord and when we are most reliant and dependable, the Lord is at His best. This is the message of all of the Scriptures since the Fall of Man. We can't but He can.
In the last half of v.16 we read, "Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you." The salvation that Paul is writing about here is not justification. No, it is sanctification, it is the process that we entered after we believed in the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin.
Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are saved in order to know Christ and to help others come to know Him. It is in the process of knowing Him that we learn His way of thinking and living. The Scriptures call this sanctification. Our commitment to the truth moves us along the persevering path of sanctification and makes us a blessing to all who would hear His message through us.
Today's text does not teach salvation by works. There is no thought here or any other passage in the Bible of earning anything from God. What this passage teaches is that we who are saved by grace through faith will give evidence of God's work in our lives by persevering in our faith in Him. Paul gives assurance of our eternity in heaven through the power and grace of God to keep us in Christ faithful to the end of time.
Christlikeness is not produced by imitation but by inhabitation. The mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory. He lives in us through the abiding Holy Spirit. No other movement claims the living presence of its founder in his followers. The role the follower of Christ plays in all of this is we give Him the freedom to live His life in, to, and through us. This is the exchanged life, He took all of our sinfulness and He is giving us all of His goodness. This is what enables the yielded believer to be the effective leader that Paul describes in this passage.
Real leaders are convinced and are convincing. They have bought in to His calling on their lives. And, in order to convince others to embrace their calling, the leader invests wholly by giving himself wholly to the Lord.
