2 Timothy 1

The apostle here again reverts to the subject of riches, but now under a different aspect, with reference, not to those who made wealth their idol and were ready to sacrifice principle and character for its attainment, but to such as having acquired riches still retain their Christianity, and are willing to use what they possess in accordance with the truth of God and their own best interests. Charge them that are rich in this world not to be high-minded nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who ministers to us all things richly for enjoyment. To trust in riches, the apostle would have it understood, is virtually to make uncertainty one’s confidence, since both their continuance with us and our possession of them may at any moment come to a termination. The contrast to such an insecure foundation is God, the eternal, the all-sufficient, who ministers richly to his people’s necessities and just desires, and who, as a source of enjoyment to those who trust in Him, can never fail.

18. Free in distributing, ready to communicate; not merely imparting of their substance to the relief of the needy and the promotion of good objects, but doing it with a frank generosity and a liberal hand. To act thus is nobly to realize the stewardship of wealth, and, according to the word of our Lord, to make to one’s self friends of what, taken merely by itself, is the mammon of unrighteousness.

19. Treasuring up for themselves a good foundation for the future, in order that they may lay hold of what is life indeed. Two points are here forcibly presented. The first is the doctrine of a future recompense, the proper employment of one’s means in charitable and pious uses, and consequently the doing of good deeds generally, being said to constitute a treasure for the world to come; a treasure which is not an uncertainty, like riches when contemplated by themselves and sought for their own sake, but a foundation or well-grounded basis of hope for the great future. The other point here presented is the emphasis laid on life in the higher sense—life that really may be called such; rich Christians are exhorted to deal with their earthly means in the manner prescribed, in order that they may lay hold of this. P. F.—Estimate the value of money in the kindly and honoring thoughts of the benefited; in the blessings of those “ready to perish”; the present recollections of sorrows relieved and sins and sicknesses cured; in memories of self-sacrifices that shall come as good angels to your dark hours; in the honor of Christ, the salvation of souls, and the everlasting love of God. More beautiful than all the miracles of art shall be the vision of faces from which tears have been wiped away, sweeter than all music the voices whose sighing has changed to song, that shall come to you from the years that are gone. Look on your children and families as soon being alone without you in this time-field of trials, dangers, deaths; as soon beyond this Vanity-Fair, standing with you before the awful Judge; as soon with you far away on the courses that never return. Then think what provision best befits this life for yourself or your families. With such thoughts answer to yourselves the questions, How, and what, and when, and to what, shall I give, in fulfillment of my stewardship of my Lord’s money? Post.

1. PAUL, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life 2 which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, 3 from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my 4 forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my 5 prayers night and day; greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may 6 be filled with joy; when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which 7 dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that 8 in thee also. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, 9 which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of 10 fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions 9 of the gospel according to the power of God; who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was 10 given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appear- ing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and im- 11 mortality to light through the gospel: whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apos- 12 tle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For the which cause I also suffer these things: never- theless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is 13 able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. 14 That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth 15 in us. This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me; of 16 whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes. The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesi- 17 phorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: but, when he was in 18 Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well.

THE friendship between Paul and Timothy is one of the most suggestive episodes in the early history of the gospel. It was apparently the one mellowing affection that toned down the impassioned vigor of Paul; that mingled a constant human image with his prayers and brought them trembling on his voice: that, homeless as he was, made him feel amid his wanderings the sadness of absence and of loneliness. The traveled ambassador of Christ, who snatched Christianity from the hands of a local faction and turned it to a universal faith; who turned the tide of history and thought, giving us the organization of Christendom for the legions of Rome, and for Zeno and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther—he, with his indomitable soul, was conquered by a Lycaonian youth; and now in Rome sat, with his chained hands upon his knee, musing, as he says, with joy on the tears and embraces of their last parting. And then he writes to say he can not do without him. All have deserted him but one; at his hearing in the palace, he had to meet his accusers almost alone; and now he waits his sentence, and, ere the imperial sword can fall upon his neck, he must see Timothy again. What is the tone of the letter written at a crisis like that? Does he indite a threnody of disappointment? Does he caution Timothy against sacrificing himself to impetuous hopes, and tell him that zeal is well enough, but that, after all, we must take men as we find them? On the contrary, his words fan every noble fire in the young man’s heart; like the voice of the retired victor, looking on and feeling the blood glow at sight of the race again, they spur the dear athlete to fresher effort, and bid him mark the goal. The spirit of fear—’tis no gift of God’s; only the spirit of love and power! Let the good soldier of Jesus press on in hope, heedless of any shame and hardship that may befall a faithful man; stir up the gift that is in him; be instant in season and out of season; keep a patience never spent by failure; and in the last extremity remember in whom he has believed. Glorious apostle! Would that every leader’s voice could burst, as he falls, in such a trumpet-sound, thrilling the young hearts that pant in the good fight, and must never despair of victory! Martineau.

SINCE he last communicated with Timothy, Paul had been at Miletus and Troas, and probably also at Corinth (see 2 Tim. 4:13, 20). It is probable that his journey was from Crete by Miletus, Ephesus, Troas, perhaps to Corinth, and thence to Nicopolis. There it is not improbable that he was arrested, as implicated in the charges made against the Christians after the fire in 64 A. D., and sent to Rome. Arrived there, he is treated no longer, as before, with courtesy, but as a common criminal (2 Tim. 2:9). All his Asiatic friends avoided him except Onesiphorus, who sought him out, and was not ashamed of his chain. Demas, Crescens, and Titus had left him. Tychicus he had sent to Ephesus. Only Luke was with him. Thus circumstanced, he writes the Second Epistle to Timothy, most likely to Ephesus (2 Tim. 2:17; 4:13), earnestly begging him to come before winter. He writes from prison, in expectation of his execution. He was conscious that his own death could not be long delayed; he was uncertain whether he should live to see his “child in the faith.” Therefore he sends him fatherly instructions and exhortations, and enforces them by the consideration of his own approaching removal. A.

This Epistle, which bears plain marks of being the last letter of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, allows us at least a glimpse of his state of mind shortly before his martyrdom. For nearly thirty years had he now served his heavenly Lord and Master with unexampled fidelity and self-denial. Innumerable perils, conflicts, and persecutions, on land and sea, in city and desert, among Jews, heathens, and false brethren, he had borne with a heroism possible only by help from above, and mightier than any arguments of reason to prove the divinity of the Christian religion. And now, as he nears the goal of his noble career, he leaves behind him a most beautiful memorial of his paternal love for his disciple Timothy; of his unwearied care for the Church and for the purity of saving doctrine; of his exalted tranquillity of soul; and of his unshaken trust in the almighty and faithful God, and in the final triumph of his gospel over all its foes. P. S.—Universal tradition relates that he was beheaded under Nero. If so, it can not well have been before the last year of that emperor’s reign, 67-68 A. D., and probably this Second Epistle to Timothy was written but a few months before his death. A.

1. The promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.** This promise of life, or, as it is expressed in Tit. 1: 2, “hope of eternal life, which God, that can not lie, promised before eternal times,” is presented as the primary ground out of which the specific acts and arrangements of God proceeded in reference to the work of salvation in the world, and among others, Paul’s own calling to the apostleship, which formed an important link of connection between the promise and its actual realization among men.

3-5. It was that he had, and still continued to have, such an image upon his mind of Timothy’s affection to himself and his faith in God, that he could unceasingly bring him into remembrance before God for an interest in the divine favor and blessing, being assured that in so doing he might look for acceptance with heaven. The apostle’s longing, he goes on to state, was much increased by the remembrance of Timothy’s tears—the tears, doubtless, which he shed at parting with his beloved father in Christ, and shed afresh, we can well suppose, as the perils deepened around the apostle. P. F.

4. Here we have a fair, unforced example of coincidence. In the history, Timothy was the “son of a Jewess that believed”; in the Epistle, Paul applauds “the faith which dwelt in his mother Eunice.” In the history, it is said of the mother, “that she was a Jewess, and believed”; of the father, “that he was a Greek.” Now, when it is said of the mother alone “that she believed,” the father being nevertheless mentioned in the same sentence, we are led to suppose of the father that he did not believe, i. e., either that he was dead, or that he remained unconverted. Agreeably hereunto, while praise is bestowed in the Epistle upon one parent, and upon her sincerity in the faith, no notice is taken of the other. The mention of the grandmother is the addition of a circumstance not found in the history; but it is a circumstance which, as well as the names of the parties, might naturally be expected to be known to the apostle, though overlooked by his historian. Paley.

6. The gift itself is undoubtedly the special endowment or gift of grace qualifying him for the evangelistic work to which he was appointed. It was referred to in the former Epistle, and is there connected instrumentally with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, as here with the laying on of Paul’s own hands. Both parties, no doubt, took part in the ordination service; but here it was natural and proper that the apostle should have reminded Timothy of his own act of imposition, as now more than ever Timothy was likely to be called to stand to a certain extent in the apostle’s room, and enter into his labors. It was of great importance, therefore, that he should now feel his increased responsibility, and apply himself to the cultivation of the grace which had been conferred upon him, undeterred by any discouragements or dangers which might stand in the way. P. F.

Faith is invigorated by acting. Neglect of our graces is the ground of their decrease and decay. The noblest faculties are imbased when not improved by exercise. The apostle Paul wishes Timothy to excite and enliven his gifts. The passage alludes to the fire of the Temple, which was always to be kept burning. Be, then, much in duty—draw out the acts of your graces. Many live but are not lively: decays insensibly make way for deadness! T. M.—There is no lack of gifts, and there is no superfluity. All are needed for all, and the Church is only equipped for doing the great work assigned it, when it can command for its use all the gifts of its members; when it can bring them all into active service for its own blessed objects. Thousands in the Church are weary and despondent because they are not stirring up their gifts, or else are using them for selfish ends. The Church is languishing because she can not command for her high uses the gifts of her members. J. D.—Having, then, a gift granted to you, whatever it be, whether of preaching, or of instructing children, or of superintending, or of private counseling, or simply of influence, go forth to exercise it with the single aim of glorifying the Giver and extending his kingdom. See that ye stir it up; for, as a limb never exerted withers, as a flame never roused collapses, as a treasure of gold or silver never thrown into currency rusts, so, assuredly, we lose our gifts if we never exercise them. Be good stewards, then, of the manifold grace of God. Let all your thought and energy be expended on making it bring in the largest revenue to the glory of our divine Master. E. M. G.

7. It is also shown to Timothy that the spirit given to the servants of Christ is not one of “cowardice,” shrinking from the duty of testimony because of the risk or contempt which it may incur. It is the spirit of power from on high; sufficiency which is of God, power to speak or be silent, as duty to the Lord may require; power of endurance and power of resistance; power for fighting the battle and for running the race. It is the spirit of love, seeking not its own; love which tends to cast out fear, and, more than any other influence, nerves to arduous toils and perilous enterprises; love in the truth, which makes the Christian calm and strong. And it is a sound mind, represented in the Greek original by one word which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It denotes sobriety of mind, capable of self-correction and self-control; a well-schooled and well-balanced mind that sees things in their just proportions and relations, and, avoiding narrowness, feverishness, and exaggeration, moves on with vigor in the paths of duty. D. F.—It is a good, sound constitution of mind not to feel every blast, either of seeming reason to be taken with it, or of cross opinion to be offended at it. L.

8. Than shame, or the fear of man’s opinion, no snare ever invented by the adversary of man has secured a larger array of recruits to the army of evil. Disbelief is blind to the gospel; indolence evades it; but shame alone deserts and degrades it. “Be not thou,” says the apostle, “ashamed of the testimony of the Lord.” Chosen as a minister of the gospel, exult in your high commission, and let the world perceive that you value the reproach of Christ above all that world can offer! For my own part, I, Paul, “am not ashamed, for I know in whom I have believed.” W. A. B.

But suffer hardship with me for the gospel, according to the power of God. We have a similar mode of expression in Phil. 1: 27: “Striving together for the faith of the gospel.” When the apostle exhorts Timothy to share with him in this readiness to suffer for the gospel according to the power of God, he points (v. 9) to the great things done by God in the matter of salvation as a ground and motive for something corresponding being done by us. 9. The work itself, with this individual application of it, is ascribed as to its origin simply and exclusively to the sovereign goodness and electing love of God, projecting themselves into the future before it could properly be said there was either a past or a future; the fountain-head of all was His own purpose and grace, and that not waiting to be evoked by the events and circumstances of human life, but given in Christ Jesus before eternal times. How carefully is the doctrine of God’s saving grace here guarded from dependence on anything external or creaturely! It is traced up to the infinite depths of the Father’s loving-kindness, not merely as regards the general idea and principal lineaments of the plan, but also in respect to the glorious gift it secures for the individual believer. The grace was given us by Him—given before eternal times; for, as even De Wette puts it, “what God determines in eternity is as good as done in time.” And given in Christ, who, as sponsor for his own in the everlasting covenant, could then also receive for them what the Father in his good pleasure gave; so that, as regards those who shall ultimately share in the blessings of the covenant, all from the first is well ordered and sure. P. F.

10. With respect to the word rendered “brought to light,” it does not so much mean to discover or make known as a new thing—which is the ordinary import of the English phrase—but to illustrate, clear up, or cast light upon a thing; it thus assumes the previous existence of that which is illustrated, but it asserts the fact of its fuller manifestation. Thus explained, the meaning of the text would amount to this: Previous to the coming of Christ, the idea of immortal life stood before the Hebrew mind like some vast object in the morning twilight; it was dimly descried and imperfectly apprehended. In like manner, Death, seen through that same darkness (for “the light was as darkness”), was something that appeared “very terrible,” and made many “all their lifetime subject to bondage.” The advent of the Messiah, including the whole of his teaching and work—the “appearing” of our Lord Jesus Christ as “the light of the world” and “the sun of righteousness”—was, to these spiritual objects, like the rising on the natural world of that luminary whose power and splendor symbolized His glory in prophetic song! To those who received him, whose reason and heart he alike illuminated, the outward became clear and the inward calm; the shadows departed and fear was subdued; objective truth had light cast upon it that made it manifest, and “the king of terrors,” seen in the sunlight, was discovered to have an aspect that did not terrify! T. B.

We read our evidences for heaven by the light of God’s countenance; his image is made visible in our souls by the illustration of his Spirit; and he exercises prerogative in the dispensation of his comforts. It is his pleasure to bestow extraordinary favors on some, and deny them to others that are as holy. But every penitent believer has just cause of joy in death; for Jesus Christ has reconciled God, destroyed Satan, and conquered death; and the last day of his life is the first of his glory. Bates.—We are far too much the creatures of sense, and the accompaniments of dissolution and departure fill up our hearts and our eyes. Think them all away, believe them all away, love them all away. Stand in the light of Christ’s life, and Christ’s death, and Christ’s rising, till you feel that death is a shadow, not a substance. Yes, a shadow; and, where a shadow falls, there must be sunlight above to cast it. Look up, then, above the shadow death, above the sin and separation from God, of which it is the shadow! Look up to the unsettling light of the Eternal Life on the throne of the universe, and see bathed in it the living dead in Christ! God has taken them to himself, and we ought not to think (if we would think as the Bible speaks) of death as being anything else than the transitory thing which breaks down the brazen walls and lets us into liberty. A. M.—This is the glory of the heaven of Jesus, that it is a human nature heaven. Jesus tells us of an existence beyond death that is not severed at all from anything that is pure and holy and beautiful in the present life; of an eternal manhood, of which this is the infancy; of an eternal harvest, of which this is the seed-time; of a family embracing patriarchs and prophets and apostles, and the noble army of the martyrs, and all the holy and good who have ever lived, with all the good and pure and dear of the friends we have ever known! Then, then the immortality is attractive and to be longed for. For it enables us to follow our departed in thought to the assembly with Abraham, and to feel that, instead of wandering lonely through an illimitable desert of eternal existence, they are with friends who care for them, and with Jesus who loves them. S. R.

11. Appointed a preacher.** Suppose God had commissioned us to go from graveyard to graveyard to awaken the dead. How inspiring and sublime would have been our office! Our God has actually employed us in a sublimer work than even this. There can be no hesitation in affirming that it is not possible for man or angel to conceive another work equal in glory with that with which we stand commissioned. Pulsford.

12. Not ashamed, for I know.** When he thought of Him who had sent him on such a warfare, and had put him in trust with so precious a treasure, he felt there was no room for shame, and scorned the temporizing policy which shame would dictate. The all-powerful Guardian and Protector in whom he confided, and who had borne him through so many troubles in the past, would assuredly uphold him still, and enable him to preserve his calling, with all its sacred prerogatives and gifts, unimpaired to the end. So that, in the great day of account, nothing properly belonging to it should be found wanting—nothing forfeited or lost. P. F.—The soul that strongly believes and loves may confidently hope to see what it believeth and enjoy what it loves, and in that rejoice. It may say, Whatsoever hazards, whether outward or inward, whatsoever afflictions and temptations I endure, yet this one thing puts me out of hazard and in this I will rejoice, the salvation of my soul depends not upon my own strength, but is in my Saviour’s hand. The childish world is hunting shadows, gaping and hoping after they know not what; but the believer can say, I know whom I have trusted, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day. L.

13,14. Grand, profound, comprehensive rule of independence and of life! Dependence only on the Holy Ghost and on the truth as the Holy Ghost reveals it in God’s word and keeps it in the heart by dwelling in us. The Holy Ghost can teach the truth to the Church, can keep the truth in the Church and sanctify the Church by it, only by teaching the truth to individuals, keeping the truth in individuals, and sanctifying individuals by it. And so the Holy Ghost increases and builds up the Church by bringing in continually new living stones into the Temple, new regenerated souls into the Church, through the door of the Church, which is Christ. G. B. C.

16, 17. The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, because he ofttimes refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain—that, namely, which bound him as a felon to the soldier who guarded him. It implies that others were ashamed, and, shrinking from the ignominious treatment which his unflinching zeal had brought on him, turned away. He ofttimes did it, says the apostle—even after the chain had turned to imprisonment in the capital; for it is added, when he had arrived in Rome he sought me out with greater diligence, and found me. The expression is striking, as showing that what led others to turn away from the apostle was the very thing which prompted the friendly search and beneficent ministrations of Onesiphorus. P. F.—The good works of this man were all before Paul at this time—his boldness in Christ’s cause, his steadfastness, his kindness; yet what does he say? The Lord recompense him after his works? The Lord reward and bless him? No; he sees in this devoted Christian of Ephesus a sinner like himself, one going soon to Christ’s judgment-seat, and his only prayer for him is, that he may find mercy there. That day. He does not even tell us what day he means; but there is no misunderstanding him. He means the last great day, the day when God will raise the dead and judge the world. And this mode of referring to this day is common in his writings. The apostle’s thoughts were often dwelling on this day. “That day,” he says, as though he believed that Timothy also, as well as himself, had his eyes constantly fixed on it; that no one could possibly at any time forget it; that every one who should read his writings would have his soul full of it. C. B.