August 15, 2014 2nd Timothy Chapter 1

2nd Timothy Chapter 1

Originally posted Tuesday, September 30, 2008 

2nd Timothy, Chapter 1 Salutation, Thanksgiving and Exhortation

The salutatory remarks of the Pastoral Epistles tend to be common terms borrowed from Paul with little variation. Here the author adds as part of the introduction of Paul that he is an apostle by the will of God rather than by being called. The subtle difference is in timing. The will of God generally has a predetermined or preordained decision in mind. Paul is an apostle of Christ because God had already determined his being set apart before he was born. Salvation of the Gentiles is the will of God because God had set the stage for such conversion in the faith of Abraham. Paul's call is for the "sake of the promise of [eternal] life" or "in the interest of" the promise. Paul has been set apart by God in their interest of having God's will carried out.

Grace, mercy and peace can stand individually as God's gifts. They also can be taken as three aspects of one gift. As with justification, righteousness and sanctification, the three are, in a Trinitarian way, all different but all one. One who repents is justified, (forgiven), made righteous (in God's eyes) and sanctified (made holy) in a single act of God.

The author's prayerful gratitude for his fond thoughts of Timothy are offered to the God whom he worships, as did his ancestors, with a clear conscience. Conscience is not an inner voice inhibiting or testing the rightness associated with some decision over which the writer struggles. For him it is an inner, unreasoned principle which governs his actions, by which he acts instinctively as if it were in his DNA. For the writer, his life is worship for he has offered his total being as a fitting sacrifice to God. He recalls (as Paul) Timothy's tears, no doubt meant to refer to the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome. We have no written evidence that Timothy visited Paul in Rome, but given their closeness and Paul's admiration for Timothy's work it would be an acceptable probability. Paul remembers Timothy's "sincere faith" which he inherited from his grandmother and mother (his father was a Gentile nonbeliever).

The author does not tell us why Timothy needs to "rekindle the gift of God" he received through the Holy Spirit at his ordination by Paul and the Elders. The words used - cowardliness versus power, love, self-discipline and being ashamed as well as much of this chapter's exhortation can be better understood if the author is using "Timothy" as a representation of the church. From the letter to Ephesus, 2nd Thessalonians and 1st Timothy we read of a Christianity that has been straying away from the foundational message by which Paul and his surrogates established so many churches in "Asia" (western Asia Minor, particularly the area around Ephesus).

It is these communities of believers that need to rekindle the fire (spiritual power) of God's gift of salvation, to remember the love and self-discipline that once sustained them. They should not act as if they are ashamed of their confession of faith in Christ or that their founding father was once a prisoner in chains. The writer begins a reintroduction of what the believers first learned from Paul. Their salvation did not come by virtue of their works but by the grace of God given through Christ Jesus. This saving grace had been long established "before the ages began" and was revealed through Christ's appearing to abolish spiritual death and to bring eternal life. This is what Paul brought to life in his preaching of the Gospel as "an apostle and a teacher." He was not ashamed of this Gospel for which he invited others to suffer even as he had suffered. He was sure that his trust in Christ was well placed and not in vain, having entrusted his very life in Christ to Christ as a certainty for the last day.

It is this sound teaching to which the church must return. This is the "good treasure" entrusted to the church and which the church is charged to guard with the help of the Spirit in "faith and love."

The writer puts forth examples of how those who have remained faithful to the "good treasure" first delivered by Paul differ from those who did not. Using persons as representative of these two categories, he mentions those who are in Asia who have turned away (defected or betrayed) from Paul's teaching and those who supported him and were not ashamed of him. There is no other mention of the first two but they must have been known to the recipients of this letter for their actions as part or leaders of the defection toward a teaching other than Paul's. Their "turning away" is compared with that of the faithful Onesiphorus of Ephesus who had visited Paul in Rome, had "renewed [Paul's] soul" and was not ashamed of his chains - even making an effort to locate him. It is on behalf of such faithful believers that the writer prays for "mercy from the Lord" on the last day.