The Message of 2 Timothy

Guard The Gospel

John Stott

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781783590704
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

John Stott writes, 'During the gestation of this book I seem to have lived inside the second letter of Paul to Timothy. In imagination I have sat down beside Timothy and have tried myself to hear and heed this final charge from the ageing apostle... 'On each occasion I have been impressed afresh by the timeliness for today of what the apostle writes, especially for young Christian leaders. For our era is one of theological and moral confusion, even of apostasy. And the apostle summons us, as he summoned Timothy, to be strong, brave and steadfast.'

2 Timothy 1:1–18

1. The charge to guard the gospel

Before the apostle reaches the main theme of this chapter, the charge to Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel but rather to guard it safely (8–14), he begins his letter with the customary personal greeting (1–2), followed by a thanksgiving (3–5) and an exhortation (6–8). In this opening paragraph we are introduced in a very vivid way to both Paul and Timothy, the writer and the recipient of the letter. In particular, we are told something of how each of them had come to be what he was. These verses throw light on the providence of God, on how God fashions people into what he wants them to be.

1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus (1:1)

In describing himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus Paul is making a considerable claim for himself. He is in fact ranking himself with the Twelve whom Jesus personally selected out of the wider company of his disciples. To them he gave the special title ‘apostles’ (Luke 6:13), indicating that he intended to send them out on their mission to represent him and to teach in his name. In order to equip them for this role, he arranged for them to be ‘with him’ (Mark 3:14). They would thus have unrivalled opportunities to hear his words and see his works, and so be in a position to bear witness to him and to everything they had seen and heard of him (John 15:27). He also promised them an extraordinary inspiration of the Holy Spirit to remind them of what he had taught them and to lead them into all the truth which he had not been able to teach them (John 14:25–26; 16:12–13).

Paul claims that he was later added to this select group. He saw the risen Lord on the Damascus road, which gave him the qualification every apostle needed: to be a witness to the resurrection (Acts 1:21–26; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8–9). Indeed, his Damascus road experience was more than his conversion; it was his commissioning as an apostle. Christ said to him:

I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes.

(Acts 26:16–18)

For the Lord’s words ‘I am sending you’ were egō apostellō se, ‘I apostle you’, that is, ‘I appoint you the apostle to the Gentiles’ (cf. Rom. 11:13; Gal. 1:15–16; 2:9).

Paul could never forget this commissioning. He defended his apostolic mission and message against all his critics, insisting that his apostleship came from Christ and not from human beings (e.g. Gal. 1:1, 11–12). Even now, at the moment of writing, humiliated by people and awaiting the emperor’s pleasure, this common prisoner is a privileged apostle of Christ Jesus, the King of kings.

Paul goes on to describe his apostleship in two ways, reminding Timothy of both its origin and its object.

Its origin was the will of God. He has used identical words (dia thelēmatos theou) at the beginning of both his letters to Corinth and the two prison letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. Indeed, in nine out of thirteen of his letters, including his first (to the Galatians) and his last (this one to Timothy), he refers either to the ‘will’ or the ‘call’ or the ‘command’ of God by which he has been made an apostle. It was his sustained conviction, from the beginning to the end of his apostolic career, that his appointment as an apostle had come neither from the church, nor from any human individual or group of people. Nor was he self-appointed. On the contrary, his apostleship originated in the eternal will and historical call of almighty God through Jesus Christ.

The object of his apostleship concerns the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. That is to say, he had been commissioned as an apostle first to formulate and then to communicate the gospel. And the gospel is good news for dying sinners that God has promised them life in Jesus Christ. It seems particularly appropriate that, as death stares the apostle in the face, he should here define it as a promise of life. For this is what it is. The gospel offers people life – true life, eternal life – both here and hereafter. It declares that this life is in Christ Jesus, who not only said he was himself the life (John 14:6) but, as Paul will soon explain, actually ‘destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel’ (10).

The gospel does more than ‘offer’ life; it ‘promises’ life to all who are in Christ. It says uncompromisingly: ‘whoever has the Son has life’ (1 John 5:12). Indeed, the whole Bible may fairly be described as a divine promise of life, from the first mention of ‘the tree of life’ in Genesis 3 to the last chapter of Revelation in which God’s redeemed people eat of the tree of life and drink of the water of life freely. Eternal life is a gift ‘which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time’, but has now made known through the preaching of the gospel (cf. verses 9–10; Titus 1:2–3; Rom. 1:1–2).

This, then, is how Paul introduces himself. He is an apostle of Christ Jesus. His apostleship originated in the will of God and has issued in the proclamation of the gospel of God, namely the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.

2. Timothy, Paul’s dear son (1:2–8)

Paul calls Timothy here my dear son and elsewhere ‘my son whom I love’ (1 Cor. 4:17) presumably because he has been the human instrument of Timothy’s conversion. Certainly the reason he could describe the Corinthians as ‘my dear children’ was ‘for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel’ (1 Cor. 4:14–15). We assume, therefore, that when Paul visited Lystra on the first missionary journey, ‘where they continued to preach the gospel’ (Acts 14:6–7), Timothy both heard and embraced the good news, so that, when Paul revisited Lystra a few years later on his second missionary journey, ‘where a disciple named Timothy lived’, Timothy had already made such progress in the Christian life that ‘the believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him’ (Acts 16:1–2).

To his ‘dear son’ Paul now sends his usual greeting of grace . . . and peace, though adding in both letters to Timothy mercy as well. We may be sure that this threefold greeting is no mere stylistic convention, for these are significant theological words. They tell us much about both humanity’s sorry condition in sin and God’s great love for us all the same. For if grace is God’s kindness to the undeserving, mercy is shown to the weak and helpless who cannot help themselves. In the parables of Jesus it was mercy which the good Samaritan showed to the robbers’ victim and which the king extended to his servant who was so deeply in debt that he could not pay (Luke 10:37; Matt. 18:33). And it was mercy which had converted Saul of Tarsus, the old blasphemer and persecutor. ‘I was shown mercy,’ he had written in his earlier letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:13, 16). Peace, on the other hand, is reconciliation, the restoration of harmony to lives spoiled by discord. We may perhaps summarize these three blessings of God’s love as being grace to the worthless, mercy to the helpless and peace to the restless, while God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord together constitute the one spring from which this threefold stream flows.

There follows a very personal paragraph, in which the apostle assures Timothy that he constantly remembers him. I constantly remember you in my prayers, he says (3). Recalling your tears . . . (4). I am reminded of your sincere faith (5). And whenever I remember you, Timothy, I thank God (3).

This last point is significant. It indicates Paul’s recognition that it was God who had made Timothy what he was. Timothy was not an apostle like Paul. They used to make this plain when they wrote letters to the churches together; for example, to the Colossians: ‘Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother’. Timothy was a Christian brother. He was also a Christian minister, a missionary and an apostolic delegate. And God had been at work in his life to make him all these things. Directly or indirectly in this paragraph Paul mentions the four major influences which have contributed to the shaping and making of Timothy.

a. His parental upbringing

Paul refers in this paragraph both to his own and to Timothy’s ancestors (3) and to Timothy’s mother and grandmother (5). This was right, for everyone is to a great extent the product of his or her inheritance. The most formative influence on each of us has been our parentage and our home. Hence good biographies never begin with their subjects, but with their parents, and probably their grandparents as well. True, we cannot inherit our parents’ faith in the way that we inherit facets of their personalities. But a son or daughter can be led to faith through his or her parents’ teaching, example and prayers.

Now Timothy had had a godly home. Luke tells us that he was the son of a mixed marriage, in that his father was Greek and his mother Jewish (Acts 16:1). Presumably his father was an unbeliever, but his mother Eunice was a believing Jewess who became a Christian. And before her his grandmother Lois had evidently been converted, for Paul can write of the sincere faith of all three generations (5). Perhaps grandmother, mother and son all owed their conversion to Paul when he brought the gospel to Lystra. Even before their conversion to Christ, however, these godly Jewish women had instructed Timothy out of the Old Testament, so that ‘from infancy’ he had ‘known the Holy Scriptures’ (3:15). Calvin’s rather delightful comment is that Timothy ‘was reared in his infancy in such a way that he could suck in godliness along with his mother’s milk’.1

Paul could say much the same of himself. He was serving God with a clear conscience, as his forebears had done before him (3). Of course, his faith became richer, fuller and deeper when God had revealed Christ to him. Yet it was still substantially the same faith as that of Old Testament believers like Abraham and David, as he had argued in Romans 4, for it was the same God in whom they had all believed. No wonder he had been able to affirm to Felix the procurator: ‘I worship the God of our ancestors’ (Acts 24:14; cf. 26:6). We need to remember this when we are witnessing to Jewish people today. The conversion of Jews to Christ is not in any sense an act of disloyalty to their ancestors; it is rather the fulfilment of their ancestors’ faith and hope.

Returning to Timothy, the first influence on him was his parental upbringing, and in particular a mother and a grandmother who were sincere believers and who had taught him out of the Scriptures from his childhood. Today also anyone who has been born and bred in a Christian home has received from God a blessing beyond price.

b. His spiritual friendship

After our parents it is our friends who influence us most, especially if they are also in some sense our teachers. And Timothy had in Paul an outstanding teacher-friend.

We have already seen that Paul was Timothy’s spiritual ‘father’. Having led him to Christ, however, he did not abandon or even forget him. No. He constantly ‘remembered’ him, as he says repeatedly in this passage. He had also taken him with him on his journ...