Tradition
At the end of 1 Timothy, Timothy is exhorted to “guard what has been entrusted to you,” or perhaps, “guard what has been deposited with you.” This exhortation calls to mind the image of one person depositing a large sum of money or some other valuable item with another for safekeeping. The scriptural writers and the Christian writers who followed them saw the Christian truths and way of life as a great treasure, one that had been entrusted to their care and that was to be handed over intact to the next generation. . . . The modern mind tends to view “tradition” very differently—as something left–over, unexamined, something which probably needs to be updated or discarded. It is “just tradition.” By contrast the first Christians viewed tradition as the careful handing on of their great treasure—the life in Christ and the teachings which made that life possible. They could not be truly faithful to Christ unless they could hand on what had been handed on to them. They could not really be faithful to Christ unless they could maintain and uphold that with which they had been charged (see 1 Tm 1:18; 6:14; 2 Tm 2:2, 4:1–5). (Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ, 281)
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