To my Brothers in Christ, in consideration of my Sisters in Christ:
There's a verse that is often quoted in my church regarding the proper relationship between young men and women. It's 1 Timothy 5:2, which exhorts the reader (a young man, Timothy) to treat "younger women as sisters, with absolute purity."
Now, very often when this verse is quoted, the emphasis is placed on the word purity, and often in my own mind, I place the emphasis there, on the word purity rather than on the word sisters. What I understand from that emphasis is that it is more important to behave myself with purity toward my Sisters in Christ than it is to behave myself toward them as a brother would and should. In fact, since the definition of purity in our language today is simply an absence of impurity, then by this definition of absence it seems perfectly okay to not treat my Sisters in Christ as sisters at all. After all, if I have no relations with them whatsoever, I cannot be accused of being impure toward them and therefore I have, in my mind fulfilled the command of 1 Timothy 5:2.
At least, so I might think. But in fact, the Bible has a very different perspective on that sort of behavior. The New Testament everywhere abounds with commands for Christians (regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, or social standing) to love each other with the same extreme love that Christ shows to the Church. 1 Timothy 5:2, further, says not only that we men are to treat younger women with absolute purity, but also that we are to treat them as sisters--and this last implies that there must be some sort of relationship between Brothers and Sisters in Christ. They are not to have the purity-by-default that comes from just never speaking to each other. They are to be treated as sisters, too.
Or are they? Here is where the placement of the comma in 1 Timothy 5:2 becomes important. A comma denotes a separation of phrases and removing it changes the meaning of a sentence (most famously the sentence: "A panda is a large black and white mammal that eats, shoots, and leaves."). So, 1 Timothy 5:2 can be read two ways. First, it can be read as treat "younger women as sisters with absolute purity" meaning that, in addition to treating the younger women as sisters, we are to--above and beyond that--treat them with absolute purity. This implies that there is something lacking in the purity of ones relationship with one's sister. It means that it would be impure for a Brother and Sister in Christ to act like an actual brother and sister. In order to guard against some unspecified impurity that exists in ones natural family, a man must treat the women around him as sisters with absolute purity on top of that.
But that's not what the verse says, because that part of 1 Timothy 5:2 contains a comma, separating the clauses as sisters and with absolute purity. This means that it can be read as two clauses repeating the same idea, rather than one (with absolute purity) adding onto the other (as sisters). That means that it could just as well read treat "younger women with absolute purity, as sisters" or, as the New Living Translation has it: "treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters." This second reading disavows the implications of the first one. Rather than saying there is some sinister impurity in the brother-sister relationship which must be guarded against, it creates an equivalency: treating younger women as sisters is the same as treating them with absolute purity. This is an important distinction to make, and it effects the way we behave toward our Sisters in Christ: it means we are to love them literally as if they were our own flesh-and-blood sisters (because in Christ, that's what they are). The bond between brothers and sisters in our own families can (and, ideally, should) be deep and strong, a source of support and comfort. Brothers and sisters do all sorts of things together and their relationships may be very intimate, but at the same time never contains a hint of impurity. I may, for example, hug my little sister, spend a lot of time with her, and tell her my secrets, but I would never lust for her or incite her to lust for me. That's just not natural! It simply doesn't come into my mind, not because my sister looks like a sack of potatoes (she doesn't) but because I love her too much to even consider such an impure thing. The same thing, I think, should ideally be true of our relationships with our Sisters in Christ. Obviously, we should have no impurity toward them, which includes no lusting for them. But we should not achieve this purity by strictly restraining our love toward our Sisters in Christ by an arbitrary list of legalistic standards that say what we can and can't do to them, with them, or for them (I see no justification in the Bible for ever cutting back in loving anyone, and these methods are not actually effective anyway). We don't act that way to our natural sisters! Rather, we should let our Christ-given love for our Sisters in Christ play out, precluding the possibility of impurity toward them, just as our natural love for our sisters precludes the possibility of lusting for them.
To give an example of how this might play out, I was at a group prayer meeting a couple weeks back, sitting on a couch with our group gathered around. On the other end of the couch was another Christian guy and between us sat a Sister in Christ we both knew. At one point during the praying, this Sister became reminded of a past loss she had suffered and began to cry hard. There were no other girls on the couch, just me and this other Brother in Christ. What were we to do? Both of us tried to use 1 Timothy 5:2 as a guideline. My Brother in Christ interpreted the verse as read with the comma, with the emphasis being on sisters because treating a woman as as sister means treating her with absolute purity. He concluded that the right course of action would be whatever he would do to this young woman if she were is flesh-and-blood sister. Unfortunately, he came from a family of all boys and so he didn't know what that actually meant, and he sat paralyzed (in his defense, he later brought up the question of what to do, and learned from others who did have brothers and sisters). As for me, I interpreted the verse as if it had no comma. I was aware that the ideal was to treat this young woman as my sister. Since I have two sisters, I was further aware that an actual brother would try to comfort her in some way, possibly by putting an arm around her shoulder and asking what's wrong. However, I was putting the emphasis on purity and believing that a brother-sister relationship was somehow deficient. If I comforted her as I would my own sister, then, would that be one of the brother-sister impurities that 1 Timothy 5:2 (as I misread it) alluded to? I did not know, and so I--knowing the correct course of action but fearing it was somehow absurdly improper--was also paralyzed (fortunately for this young woman, she had some Sisters in Christ in the room who stepped in and comforted her instead, when both of us men failed to do so). It is a small thing, but it illustrates the principle. If we try to absurdly stack sisterhood and purity, we will wind up failing in our Christian duty to love one another because we will hold back in fear and let our love grow cold. If we realize that sisterhood and purity are one and the same, we will love in a better, purer way than we ever have before.
There's a verse that is often quoted in my church regarding the proper relationship between young men and women. It's 1 Timothy 5:2, which exhorts the reader (a young man, Timothy) to treat "younger women as sisters, with absolute purity."
Now, very often when this verse is quoted, the emphasis is placed on the word purity, and often in my own mind, I place the emphasis there, on the word purity rather than on the word sisters. What I understand from that emphasis is that it is more important to behave myself with purity toward my Sisters in Christ than it is to behave myself toward them as a brother would and should. In fact, since the definition of purity in our language today is simply an absence of impurity, then by this definition of absence it seems perfectly okay to not treat my Sisters in Christ as sisters at all. After all, if I have no relations with them whatsoever, I cannot be accused of being impure toward them and therefore I have, in my mind fulfilled the command of 1 Timothy 5:2.
At least, so I might think. But in fact, the Bible has a very different perspective on that sort of behavior. The New Testament everywhere abounds with commands for Christians (regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, or social standing) to love each other with the same extreme love that Christ shows to the Church. 1 Timothy 5:2, further, says not only that we men are to treat younger women with absolute purity, but also that we are to treat them as sisters--and this last implies that there must be some sort of relationship between Brothers and Sisters in Christ. They are not to have the purity-by-default that comes from just never speaking to each other. They are to be treated as sisters, too.
Or are they? Here is where the placement of the comma in 1 Timothy 5:2 becomes important. A comma denotes a separation of phrases and removing it changes the meaning of a sentence (most famously the sentence: "A panda is a large black and white mammal that eats, shoots, and leaves."). So, 1 Timothy 5:2 can be read two ways. First, it can be read as treat "younger women as sisters with absolute purity" meaning that, in addition to treating the younger women as sisters, we are to--above and beyond that--treat them with absolute purity. This implies that there is something lacking in the purity of ones relationship with one's sister. It means that it would be impure for a Brother and Sister in Christ to act like an actual brother and sister. In order to guard against some unspecified impurity that exists in ones natural family, a man must treat the women around him as sisters with absolute purity on top of that.
But that's not what the verse says, because that part of 1 Timothy 5:2 contains a comma, separating the clauses as sisters and with absolute purity. This means that it can be read as two clauses repeating the same idea, rather than one (with absolute purity) adding onto the other (as sisters). That means that it could just as well read treat "younger women with absolute purity, as sisters" or, as the New Living Translation has it: "treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters." This second reading disavows the implications of the first one. Rather than saying there is some sinister impurity in the brother-sister relationship which must be guarded against, it creates an equivalency: treating younger women as sisters is the same as treating them with absolute purity. This is an important distinction to make, and it effects the way we behave toward our Sisters in Christ: it means we are to love them literally as if they were our own flesh-and-blood sisters (because in Christ, that's what they are). The bond between brothers and sisters in our own families can (and, ideally, should) be deep and strong, a source of support and comfort. Brothers and sisters do all sorts of things together and their relationships may be very intimate, but at the same time never contains a hint of impurity. I may, for example, hug my little sister, spend a lot of time with her, and tell her my secrets, but I would never lust for her or incite her to lust for me. That's just not natural! It simply doesn't come into my mind, not because my sister looks like a sack of potatoes (she doesn't) but because I love her too much to even consider such an impure thing. The same thing, I think, should ideally be true of our relationships with our Sisters in Christ. Obviously, we should have no impurity toward them, which includes no lusting for them. But we should not achieve this purity by strictly restraining our love toward our Sisters in Christ by an arbitrary list of legalistic standards that say what we can and can't do to them, with them, or for them (I see no justification in the Bible for ever cutting back in loving anyone, and these methods are not actually effective anyway). We don't act that way to our natural sisters! Rather, we should let our Christ-given love for our Sisters in Christ play out, precluding the possibility of impurity toward them, just as our natural love for our sisters precludes the possibility of lusting for them.
To give an example of how this might play out, I was at a group prayer meeting a couple weeks back, sitting on a couch with our group gathered around. On the other end of the couch was another Christian guy and between us sat a Sister in Christ we both knew. At one point during the praying, this Sister became reminded of a past loss she had suffered and began to cry hard. There were no other girls on the couch, just me and this other Brother in Christ. What were we to do? Both of us tried to use 1 Timothy 5:2 as a guideline. My Brother in Christ interpreted the verse as read with the comma, with the emphasis being on sisters because treating a woman as as sister means treating her with absolute purity. He concluded that the right course of action would be whatever he would do to this young woman if she were is flesh-and-blood sister. Unfortunately, he came from a family of all boys and so he didn't know what that actually meant, and he sat paralyzed (in his defense, he later brought up the question of what to do, and learned from others who did have brothers and sisters). As for me, I interpreted the verse as if it had no comma. I was aware that the ideal was to treat this young woman as my sister. Since I have two sisters, I was further aware that an actual brother would try to comfort her in some way, possibly by putting an arm around her shoulder and asking what's wrong. However, I was putting the emphasis on purity and believing that a brother-sister relationship was somehow deficient. If I comforted her as I would my own sister, then, would that be one of the brother-sister impurities that 1 Timothy 5:2 (as I misread it) alluded to? I did not know, and so I--knowing the correct course of action but fearing it was somehow absurdly improper--was also paralyzed (fortunately for this young woman, she had some Sisters in Christ in the room who stepped in and comforted her instead, when both of us men failed to do so). It is a small thing, but it illustrates the principle. If we try to absurdly stack sisterhood and purity, we will wind up failing in our Christian duty to love one another because we will hold back in fear and let our love grow cold. If we realize that sisterhood and purity are one and the same, we will love in a better, purer way than we ever have before.
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