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“Vessels for Honor”
Categories: Bulletin Articles, M. W. Bassford
Every Christian should aspire to be useful to the Lord. It’s the only decent response available to those who have been rescued from so great a death by so great a salvation. None of us ever will be able to repay Jesus for what He has done for us, but we at least should do something!
This is a priority God shares. The great promise of salvation by grace through faith in Ephesians 2:8-9 concludes with the observation in v. 10 that we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works. When Jesus is confronted with the lukewarm Laodiceans in Revelation 3, He is revolted by them. The do-nothing disciple has fallen prey to a soul-destroying delusion.
We should yearn to be useful, and God expects us to be useful regardless. However, not all Christians are equally valuable in the kingdom. This is not determined by the gifts God gives us. Instead, Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 2:21 that we make ourselves useful by purifying ourselves from dishonorable things. Christians who do this are the fancy dishes you bring out for important guests; Christians who don’t do this are the chamber pots you hide away in the commode.
Next, Paul describes the dishonorable behavior Timothy must reject, the youthful lusts that carry away so many young people. However, merely keeping ourselves from sin is not enough, nor is merely avoiding the company of the wicked. Rather, we actively pursue righteousness with righteous people.
Interestingly, though, Paul does not consider an immoral life to be the greatest threat to the disciple’s usefulness. He devotes one verse (in our Bibles) to lust and four verses to contentiousness. The latter apparently is a much more significant problem.
This tracks with my own experience. Usually, the chamber-pot disciples I see haven’t been overwhelmed by worldliness. Those folks are long gone. Instead, the dishonorable vessels in the house of God are the Christians who can’t get along with others.
What do you do with people like that? You can’t give them a Bible class to teach because they’ll cause trouble in the church. You can’t send them out to reach the lost because they’ll alienate every outsider they talk to. Instead, into the commode they go, and you hope they won’t give you too much grief from in there!
Basically, if we don’t know how to treat others graciously, there’s not much that God can do with us. Thankfully, Paul tells us how to be gracious. Don’t fight over dumb stuff. Be gentle with everybody. Especially, be gentle with the people who disagree with you. Don’t try to run them over. Try to persuade them instead, and leave the work of conversion to the word of God in their hearts.
This is a spiritual challenge I understand well. I had 2 Timothy 2:24-25 taped to my bathroom mirror for many years, and I still struggle with the problem today. I know how easy it is to lose sight of others in the glare of my own certainty. However, only as we share Jesus’ meekness toward them can we be useful in His work.
