Paul Told a Young Man How to Raise a Hard Thing With an Older One

There is a conversation somebody has been carrying for two years, and the reason it has not happened is not courage.

He is not a coward. He has said harder things to people at work. What stops him is that he has no idea how, and every version he has rehearsed goes wrong inside the first four seconds, and he can see exactly where.

If he says it plainly it will land as an accusation, because in that culture a young man saying a plain thing to an old man is heard as a challenge no matter how the sentence is built.

If he softens it enough to be safe it will not be said at all. It will be a series of hints across three visits that get read as moodiness.

So he does nothing, and calls that respect, and it is partly respect and partly not, and he knows which parts.

There is a man in the New Testament who was in exactly this position, and somebody wrote him one sentence about it.

Timothy was young and it was a problem

Set the situation, because it is closer to home than people realize.

Timothy has been left in Ephesus with real responsibility over a congregation that includes men much older than him. Paul has to tell him, in the same letter, not to let anyone despise his youth (1 Timothy 4:12), which means somebody was.

He is a young man with something to say and no natural standing to say it with. That is the exact position of the person this article is for.

And the instruction Paul gives him is not about content. It is about posture, and it is one sentence.

Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren. (1 Timothy 5:1, King James Version)

You are being given an instruction rather than left to guess at this. 1 Timothy 5:1 addresses exactly this problem in one sentence, and it is by the Spirit, 2 Timothy 1:7, given as power and love and a sound mind, that a young man has anything to bring into a room like that.

Rebuke and entreat are two different actions

Look at the two verbs, because everything is in the difference between them.

Rebuke here is a strong word. It carries the sense of striking with words, of coming down on somebody from above. It is what a person does when they have authority over another and are using it.

Intreat is the word for appeal, for pleading, for coming alongside and asking. It is the posture of somebody who wants something from you and has no power to compel it.

Both of them can carry exactly the same content. That is the part people miss. Paul does not tell Timothy to say less or to soften the substance. He tells him to change where he is standing while he says it.

And the clause after it is the key: as a father. Not as if he were a father. As a father, which is to say: with the relationship as the frame around the sentence rather than as the casualty of it.

You are able to say the whole thing from a different position, and the content does not have to shrink. 1 Timothy 5:1 changes the verb and not the message, and it is the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:23, who produces the meekness that entreating requires rather than a person acting it.

Proverbs gives the mechanics

If entreating sounds vague, Proverbs makes it concrete and it is almost embarrassingly practical.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)

Grievous words stir up anger. Note it does not say untrue words. A completely accurate sentence delivered as a grievous one produces anger, and then the anger is what gets responded to, and the accurate content is never dealt with by anybody.

Which means the delivery is not decoration on the truth. It decides whether the truth ever gets heard at all, and a man who insists on saying it hard because it is true has chosen being right over being received, and everybody at that table can tell.

I have done that. I did it at twenty-three, in a kitchen, with a sentence I still believe was accurate, and the accuracy of it has been completely irrelevant for eleven years.

You are able to deliver something true in a form that can actually be received. Proverbs 15:1 makes the delivery the deciding factor rather than the content, and it is the Spirit who produces gentleness, Galatians 5:22, which is why this is supplied and not a technique.

Truth and love are one instruction, not two

Paul writes a phrase everybody quotes and almost nobody reads carefully.

But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. (Ephesians 4:15)

It is one action, not two competing values being balanced. There is no version where a person spends some truth and buys some love with it.

And the purpose clause is the part that reorders everything: may grow up into him. The aim of the hard sentence is growth, and specifically the growth of the whole body, which includes the man being spoken to.

So the test of whether a conversation should happen is not whether the thing is true. Plenty of true things should never be said. The test is whether saying it is aimed at somebody growing, and a person usually knows the honest answer to that question within about four seconds of asking it.

You are aiming at somebody growing rather than at being finally correct. Ephesians 4:15 makes growth the purpose of the speaking, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 3:16, that anybody is strengthened in the inner man for the growing.

Galatians adds the warning that keeps it honest

There is one more instruction, and it is the one that keeps this from becoming a technique for winning.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. (Galatians 6:1)

Considering thyself. While you are speaking, watch yourself. Not afterward. During.

That single clause has stopped more conversations of mine than any other verse in the Bible, and it has improved the ones that survived it. Because the question it forces is not whether the other man is wrong. It is what is happening in me while I say this, and whether the thing I am about to enjoy is the truth landing or the man taking it.

And restore is the goal it names. Not correct. Not settle. Restore, which is a word about putting something back into working order.

You are called to restoration rather than to a verdict, and the instruction includes watching yourself while you speak. Galatians 6:1 says restore in the spirit of meekness and considering thyself, and it is the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:23, whose fruit that meekness is named as.