Paul is writing to his star pupil, Timothy. This instruction was a great primer in healthy church life, because that’s exactly what the young pastor would have needed to nurture. Paul keys on his Jewish scholarship by showing that the Law still has a use, to point us away from the things we shouldn’t do. This isn’t the end of the story, of course. We also need to lean on Jesus for the path upon which we should walk.

(For this cycle through Psalms, I am reading from Robert Alter’s “Hebrew Bible” translation, which is particularly poetic.)