“which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth” (1Tim 6:4-5)
Ever see one of those movies or TV show episodes where everything is opposite. Somehow someway, one of the characters ends up in some wacky alternate universe or a freaky dream that turns the whole shebang upside down. It happened on “Star Trek,” on “Dr. Who,” on “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and even on “Seinfeld.” Life suddenly doesn’t make sense. The good guy is now the bad guy. One of the clues to this is the sudden appearance on our hero of a goatee, eyepatch, scar, or all the above.
In a letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul describes bizarro dimension when false teachers intentionally fool the followers of Jesus with fraud and falsehood. It will “produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth” (v4-5). In other words, EXACTLY the opposite of what you would expect to find among God’s people. When folks are deprived, they become depraved. That’s what life looks like in the parallel universe of sin.
That’s not how things were in the Ephesian church just a few years ago. Flash back when Paul first rolled into town and started telling everybody about Jesus. He spread the incredible news that the resurrected Rabbi/Carpenter from Nazareth has thrown open the doors of God’s kingdom to anyone and everyone who trusts in Him. The apostle spent three years in the big port city and planted a church that sent the message of Christ all throughout the Mediterranean Rim (Acts 19:1-41; 20:31).
Not long after, Paul’s enemies cooked up some crazy charges against him and he spent almost five years behind bars in both Judea and Rome waiting for a trial. Once Caesar released him, the apostle returned to the church in Ephesus only to find a heretical hot mess. He came back to see an evil alternate universe.
A team of false teachers sold the worst kind of spiritual snake oil to Ephesian believers. They peddled a wicked brew of “myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations” (1Tim 1:4) as well as “deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (1Tim 4:1). After kicking a couple of the ringleaders to the curb (1Tim 1:19), Paul had urgent business in Macedonia and left Timothy in charge of the church (1Tim 1:3). A majority of this little letter is the apostle’s instructions to the young preacher about getting the church out of the ditch and back on track.
Here in chapter six, we get a closer glimpse at the Ephesian dumpster fire that Paul found when he returned. Envy. Dissension. Slander. Evil suspicions. Constant friction. Stinking thinking. Starved for the truth. I’m VERY sorry to say this is the experience too many people have in the local church. What you would hope would be a place that drips with grace and forgiveness actually turns out to be a snake pit that would make anything Indiana Jones discovers look like a petting zoo. Let’s be clear. That’s NOT Jesus’ vision for His church. I’ll be the first guy to admit there are no perfect churches. That’s never going to be the case as long as they allow jacked up dudes like me through the front door. But the people of God should be a safe place from that sort of crapola.
Just to be clear, the apostle tells Tim that anyone who teaches a doctrine that disagrees with Jesus is an arrogant windbag and a know-it-all who really doesn’t know anything (1Tim 6:3). He has a sick obsession to stir up trouble and arguments. The result is people ticked off at each other, jealousy, hate speech, mistrust, and constantly rubbing each other the wrong way (1Tim 6:4-5). Not exactly the kind of safe place you would hope to find among God’s people. Instead it’s a sick and twisted parallel dimension of discord.
Do we REALLY need an in-depth study of “envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction” (v4-5)? You know these are bad, right? You DO know that, don’t you?!? If those are the qualities you’re looking for in a local church, please look somewhere else. Don’t bring that garbage around here. The bad news is there are plenty of congregations out there that specialize in that sort of fear and loathing.
According to Paul, this is the sort of thing you find “among people who are depraved in mind” (v5). Behind “depraved” is a Greek word (Gr. diaphtheiro) that means to destroy, rot, ruin, wear away, decay, spoil, or waste away. It’s the same term he uses when writing one of his notes to the Corinthians about how “our outer self is wasting away (Gr. diaphtheiro), our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2Cor 4:16). The result of the false teaching in Ephesus is a rotting mind. Remember when Igor grabs the brain of “Abby Normal” in “Young Frankenstein”? When you fail to teach people about Jesus, you get stinking thinking.
If that’s not bad enough, folks are “deprived of the truth” (v5). The verb here is apostrepeo, which means to withhold, defraud, rob, steal, obtain something through deception. When a young up-and-comer wants to join Jesus’ posse, the Lord asked him how he was doing following God’s commands, such as “Do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud (Gr. apostrepeo)” (Mk 10:19). Spiritual hucksters have pulled the old bait-and-switch. They’ve hoodwinked folks from the truth and into this bizarro reality of lies.
Just a quick reminder on the truth. We’re talking Truth with a capital “T.” God created a perfect world. We jacked up the whole deal when we turned our backs on Him and tried to do it our way. We completely failed to follow His law and fell short of His perfect standard. That’s the point in the story where Jesus comes to our rescue. He leaves the comforts of heaven to make the ultimate dumpster dive to save us. Christ lives the perfect life that we fail to live. He dies the death for our sin that we should have died. He rose to new life that we don’t deserve. We place our trust in what He’s done for us rather than our failed attempt to save ourselves. Just in case you think I’m making this up, Jesus Himself told His crew that He was the embodiment of “the Truth” (Jn 14:6).
The result of Christ’s rescue is providing us with a group of people who admit they need a Savior just as much as we do. The local church is actually an alternate universe to the fallen world in which we live. Let’s do what we can to have a zero tolerance policy for anything that trashes that the truth and causes our thinking to be stinking. Stay focused on who Jesus is and what He has done. God’s people are to be a shining city on a hill in a dark world. A model home for heaven. A parallel universe of paradise.
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