The Inscription on a Silver Cross

The priests in our Church usually wear a silver cross over their pidriasnyk. This silver cross commonly bears an inscription on the reverse in Old Slavonic, a verse from today’s Epistle reading. The text goes like this: “Be an example to the believers in your speech, your conduct, your love, faith and purity.” This exhortation fits into the wider context of Paul’s admonitions to the young Timothy to fulfill his role as the new bishop of Ephesus, recently appointed by Paul. The instructions in the entire First Epistle to Timothy are directed to the clergy, specifically this particular clergyman, the Holy Apostle Timothy, but, it is clear from this passage that what is exhorted to the clergy is equally incumbent on all the members of Church. Timothy would not be a model if the expectation was not that all the members of the Church should excel with the same qualities. Further, should not the members of the Church be, in turn, examples to those outside the Church, in the hope that they would see the good conduct of the members of Christ and desire to become like them. In a similar way, the lives of the saints serve as inspiration, providing us with good examples in the very aspects that Paul identifies as being areas of concern.

First, we should note that the arrangement of the items in the list that Paul provides. There are five areas that he calls attention to, and so “love” finds itself at the center. This kind of arrangement of words is not something that we modern people often do, but in the ancient world it was an artistic expression that helped to get the author’s point across. Paul is showing us that love (that is, the virtue of charity) is central to the Christian life, because God is love. But we should notice the arrangement of the other words as well, because this is an example of the literary arrangement that is called chiasmus. The elements here are being paired together with love at their heart, so that the other words give commentary on one another.

According to this arrangement, conduct goes with faith. Paul is exhorting Timothy to make his faith the source of all his actions, the principle of his behavior. It is hardly surprising that Paul is making this point in this context, because he makes the same point so often elsewhere. For example, he says, “whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, praising God the Father through Him.” In just the same way, our faith has to be the source of our conduct as well. The decisions we make must be born of faith. Even when others around us may have occasion to panic and fret with anxiety, faith should give us a space in which we can make our determinations with great calm. Further, we should make it clear that the source of that calm is indeed our faith by speaking about faith and visibly living according to it.

Then, according to this chiastic arrangement, speech goes with purity. This is perhaps a surprise to us, because we are used to using the term “purity” to mean sexual temperance (similar to the concept of chastity). Indeed, this is a perfectly acceptable way of understanding the term, but here it is broader, more inclusive. Here, the term means “purity of heart,” as we find it in the Book of Proverbs, “He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend.” This very same correspondence of lips and heart is what the Lord Jesus Himself is referring to when He says, “from the treasury of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Purity of heart means that we are centered on God in thought and desire, just as we find in the Book of Psalms, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this one thing I seek—to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” What does it mean for us to be centered on God in thought and desire? Well, I think we all know. If we are concerned about promoting ourselves, facilitating our own comfort, pleasure, status, etc., our hearts are far from pure. On the contrary, our hearts are thoroughly inked with the muck of this world. Further, according to the Lord’s dictum, “from the treasury of the heart, the mouth speaks,” the muck of the world, which is in our hearts, we will be apparent to everyone through our speech. But, in the same way, the purity of our hearts will show in our speech as well, when it becomes clear through our conversation that our thoughts and desires are on God.