The New Testament uses the phrase “man of God” in only two places. Both are written by Paul; both are written to Timothy. 70 verses and the superscription of Psalm 90 in the Old Testament contain the phrase “man of God” (cf., for example, Deuteronomy 33:1; 1 Kings 13:1; Jeremiah 35:4).
The man of God does not love riches, flees its grasp, and follows a godly path.
- 1 Timothy 6:10-11 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
The man of God loves the word of God, which furnishes all he needs for good works.
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
2 comments:
nitpicking:
i think it might be 70 verses in the OT, it shows up in the title of Psalm 90 "A Prayer of Moses the man of God." which may be the difference.
(fun fact: it looks like it appears twice in four OT verses 1kings 13:6, 2 Kings 4:25,27 and 1 Chron 25:9, and from what i can tell it shows up the most in 1 Kings 13 with 14x, and second most in 2 Kings 4 with 11x - i knew you wanted to know that!)
the phrase: "The man of God does not love riches, flee its grasp, and follows a godly path", would sound better with "flees" in my opinion. But you know what they say about opinions.
gratia et pax
Thanks, Alex. I may be out of step with others, but I do consider the Psalms superscriptions to be part of the inspired Scripture. Yet, as you point out, technically it is not a "verse," so I need to find a better, more accurate way to say that.
I use the search at Bible Gateway since you can delimit it ("man of God" in quotes, for example). The down side is that it only counts verses -- plus the Psalm superscriptions, and the subscriptions under the epistles (which I don't consider inspired, but added later from a secondary source). If you want to total number of incidents you have to check as you did, to see if it occurs more than once in any verses. There may be another search that does the counts better, but this is the one I am familiar with. Interesting that "man of God" is used more in Kings than elsewhere.
"Flee" is just one of my ubiquitous typos.
Post a Comment