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Scripture Reading: 1 Tim. 2:4; 3:15; 2 Tim. 2:15, 25
The books of 1 and 2 Timothy were written to deal with the church’s decline and to inoculate the believers against this decline. This is true especially of 2 Timothy, which was written at a time when the churches established through Paul’s ministry in the Gentile world were in a trend of degradation. That situation was a prefigure of the situation of decline in today’s Christianity. Because of the influence of this decline, we need to train our young people with everything that Paul taught Timothy. This kind of teaching will be a strong inoculation against the decline and degradation of the church. The fact that Paul wrote concerning “the last days” (3:1) indicates that his writing applied not only to his time but applies also to the times in which we live. We all need to be inoculated against the decline by knowing the truth revealed in these two books.
The matter of truth is emphasized strongly in 1 and 2 Timothy. Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). The church’s decline was due to the lack of the adequate knowledge of the truth. In 1 Timothy the decline crept in subtly through different teachings (1:3), and in 2 Timothy it developed openly and even worsened through heresies (2:16-18). To deal with such a decline, the truth must be maintained. First Timothy emphasizes that God desires all His saved ones to have the full knowledge of the truth and that the church is the pillar and base of the truth (3:15). Second Timothy stresses that the word of the truth should be unfolded rightly and straightly without distortion (2:15) and that the ones who have deviated should return to the truth (v. 25).
Unfortunately, the word truth has been wrongly understood. Many readers of the Bible regard truth as a matter of doctrine. In the New Testament, especially in 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, truth refers not to doctrine but to the real things revealed in the New Testament concerning Christ and the church according to God’s New Testament economy. If we would have the proper understanding of the word truth in the New Testament, we need to realize that it denotes all the realities of the divine economy as the content of the divine revelation, conveyed and disclosed by the holy Word (see footnote 6 on 1 John 1:6, Recovery Version).
Before you begin to teach the young people in the Summer School of Truth, you yourself need to receive Paul’s inoculation and be filled, soaked, and saturated with the truth. If you study 1 and 2 Timothy carefully, you will see that the structure of these two books is actually the structure of the truth and that the structure of the truth is the element of Paul’s inoculation.
What is the element of this inoculation? What is the structure of the truth? Through a careful reading of 1 and 2 Timothy, we can realize that the structure of the truth is the Triune God with His all-inclusive redemption. God’s redemption implies, or includes, salvation. Redemption has been accomplished by God. When God’s accomplished redemption is applied to us, it becomes salvation. Thus, salvation is our experience of God’s redemption. The structure of the divine truth is nothing less than the Triune God plus His redemption, which becomes our salvation.
In order to teach the young people in a living way, you need to learn all the aspects of the truth in the Scriptures concerning the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This means that you need to become saturated with the truth, the reality, of the Divine Trinity. Furthermore, you need to dive into the truth regarding the divine redemption—how it was planned by the Father, how it was accomplished by the Son, and how it is applied by the Spirit. Then you need to have a clear view of how the redemption accomplished by the Triune God becomes our full salvation.
The general subject of the first series of lessons in the Summer School of Truth is God’s full salvation. The full salvation of God is actually equal to the truth, because the Triune God with His all-inclusive redemption is the structure of the truth. Through Paul’s writings, this truth has become an inoculation against the decline of Christianity. On the one hand, we may speak of the structure of the truth; on the other hand, we may speak of the element of the inoculation. This inoculation is like a dose of medicine containing various elements. The elements in the “dose” ministered by Paul as an inoculation are the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—and His all-inclusive redemption.
In helping the young people to experience God’s full salvation, you have to unveil to them their fallen condition, which involves sin, Satan, and the world, the satanic system. These negative things are related to the actual condition of the saved ones. If we would experience and enjoy God’s full salvation, we should consider our condition and its involvement with sin, Satan, the world, and many other negative things.
As you prepare yourself to teach, you should not merely put your trust in the lesson book or in the compendium. You need to immerse yourself in the truth concerning God’s full salvation. This means that you need to be saturated with a thorough knowledge, realization, and experience of the Triune God with His all-inclusive redemption in relation to all the aspects of man’s fallen condition. To prepare yourself to teach, it is not adequate simply to read the lesson book. As a teacher in the Summer School of Truth, you need to be soaked and saturated with the truth. I hope that you will be impressed with your need to dive into the divine truth, which is the reality of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and of His all-inclusive redemption understood in relation to the condition of fallen man.
When you hear this, you may be troubled and feel that you are not qualified to teach the young people. I would urge you not to feel this way. Your experience may be limited, but the amount of experience that you have qualifies you.
In your teaching do not speak peculiar things to arouse people’s curiosity. Also, do not make a display of your knowledge about other subjects, such as history or science. It is shameful to make a display. You must be focused on God’s economy and be restricted by God’s economy. All the class time, which is actually quite limited, should be used for presenting the truth of God’s economy.
Once again I wish to point out that you need to be fully soaked and saturated with the divine truth. The summer school should be a school not only to the students but also to all the teachers. I hope that you yourself will be the first one to learn the truth. You cannot teach others without first being taught yourself. Likewise, you cannot minister a certain thing to others without first experiencing and enjoying that matter yourself. You can minister to others only what you yourself have enjoyed. Otherwise, your teaching will be merely doctrinal and thus will be in vain.
Let us now go on to consider the practical matter of teaching in an experiential way rather than in a doctrinal way. Suppose you are teaching Lesson 17, which is on transformation. The lesson book says, “Transformation is the result of sanctification and is related to man’s soul.” To ask the students merely to understand and remember the facts is to teach in a doctrinal way. If you would teach in an experiential way, you should fellowship with the young people regarding why transformation is the result of sanctification. By doing this you will turn your teaching from doctrine to experience. This experiential fellowship will deeply impress them.
As you speak in this way about why transformation is the result of sanctification, one of the students might offer an explanation. He might say that sanctification separates us, changes us, and causes us to become holy with God’s holy nature and that the result is a metabolic change, which is transformation. If someone speaks in this way, you should immediately ask him certain questions: “How about you? Have you been changed with God’s holy nature? Has your being been made holy by the divine nature?” This way of teaching is experiential.
However, if you have not been soaked in the truth concerning sanctification and if you have not had any experience of sanctification, you have no choice other than to teach people doctrinally. You will be able to do nothing more than simply repeat what you have read in the lesson book. Having been “educated” with doctrine in letters, you will then teach the doctrine that transformation is the result of sanctification and is related to man’s soul. But neither you nor the students will know the truth, the reality, of sanctification and transformation. Since you do not have any experience, you cannot minister life to the young people in your class. Rather, you will pass on mere knowledge, as if you were teaching in a theological school. If you teach in this way, you will ruin the summer school and even damage your students.
In order to teach in an experiential way, you must convert every point in the lesson from doctrine into experience. Suppose a particular lesson has five points. In your preparation you should try to convert every point of doctrine into experience. This requires practice. After making such a conversion during your time of preparation, you should then speak to the young people about each point in the way of experience. The more you speak in this way, the more they will be unveiled. They will see a vision that will expose them, and spontaneously they will be ushered into the experience of the very matter you have been presenting.
However, if you teach in the way of merely imparting doctrines from the printed materials, you will do nothing more than impart some knowledge to the minds of your students. As a result, they will gain nothing in an experiential way. Moreover, the knowledge they gain may damage them. Later, on another occasion, when they hear a word about transformation, they might say, “I know this already. I heard all about it in the Summer School of Truth. I know that transformation is the result of sanctification and is related to man’s soul. I also know that transformation means that a certain substance changes in nature and in form.” We must not damage the young people by giving them mere knowledge. In order to profit them with the truth, we must always teach them in an experiential way. This is a very basic matter.
We should also speak in an experiential way in the church life. In the meetings, in fellowship, in shepherding the saints, and in visiting others for gospel preaching, we need to learn to speak not in a doctrinal way but in an experiential way. By speaking in this way, we will “hit two birds with one stone”—the “bird” of experience and the “bird” of doctrine. Then the one to whom you are speaking will get the doctrine along with the experience. I hope that you all will endeavor to practice this from now on.
In the ministry in the Lord’s recovery, we present our teachings not in the way of doctrine but in the way of life. For this reason our study of the Bible is called a life-study. However, although we do not stress doctrine, our way of teaching conveys a great deal of doctrine. Every message of our life-study of the Scriptures conveys a certain amount of doctrine, yet the impression made upon the reader is not the impression of doctrine but the impression of the experience and enjoyment of God, Christ, and the Spirit. Eventually, one does learn some doctrine, but it is experiential doctrine, doctrine that is learned through experience.
I believe that teaching in the Summer School of Truth will be a good opportunity for you to learn something. If you try to convert every point in the lessons into experience, you yourself will be helped. You may realize that you do not know how to convert doctrine into experience, because you are lacking in experience. This will expose you, and then you will know where you are. You will see that you may know many things as doctrines, but you do not know them in experience. Then as you are preparing a lesson, you may begin to check yourself regarding your experience. Point by point you may ask yourself, “Do I have the experience of this matter? Is my experience of this point adequate? Am I able to teach others about this point in an experiential way?” You may conclude that your experience is not even adequate for a testimony, much less for teaching a class of young people. This may cause you to pray, “Lord, have mercy upon me. I need some experience of this matter.” This is the way to prepare yourself to teach every lesson.
I would encourage you to prepare not only by yourself but also with others who will be teaching the young people. Come together with several others, and check every point of every lesson according to experience. In addition, practice converting the doctrinal points into experience. This will be a good preparation for teaching in an experiential way. If you do this, the summer school will be a great benefit not only to the young people but to the entire church. Let us take this way to teach the young people in the Summer School of Truth.
