2 Timothy 2

1. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things 2 that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, 3 who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier 4 of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangled himself with the affairs of this life; that 5 he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for 6 masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that labour- 7 eth must be first partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee un- 8 derstanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised 9 from the dead, according to my gospel: wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto 10 bonds; but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s 11 sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. 12 It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: if we 13 suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: if we believe 14 not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. 15 Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive 16 not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to shew thyself 17 approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word 18 of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodli- 19 ness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenæus and Philetus; who 20 concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is passed already; and over- 21 throw the faith of some. Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this 22 seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of 23 Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and 24 of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. 25 If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, 26 and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts: 27 but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a 28 pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender 29 strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to 30 teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure 31 will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover 32 themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

God is faithful, faithful to his warnings as he is to his promises! A few years more (to many far fewer years than they have already past), and the crisis shall at last arrive which shall determine, by terrible proofs, the awful faithfulness of God. Then that inflexible faithfulness, which forms the rock of his salvation to the redeemed one’s heart, shall assume to the God-despiser the terrible form of an inflexible curse. The permanence of God’s character is the very warrant of his doom and the seal of its eternity. It is a profound and impressive remark of Bishop Butler that the most formidable of all God’s attributes to the wicked is his goodness: “Malice may be wearied or satiated, caprice may change, but goodness is a steady, inflexible principle of action.” The very same attributes which (like the pillar in the wilderness) present to the saved a side of light and protection, shall present (themselves unchanged) to the lost a gloomy apparition of clouds and darkness. The justice that acquits the believer in the blood of the sacrifice shall condemn the despiser of that blood. The goodness that shelters the beloved children in the bowers of Paradise shall abandon to his punishment the guilty for the benefit of the universe. The wisdom that is shown in contriving salvation shall be “justified of her children” in condemnation also. The power that framed a heaven for the blessed shall be revealed more awfully still in the structure of the abodes of misery. What is to be gained by a contest with such a being as this? Can we expect to sway his eternal purpose, or bend to our caprices his eternal laws? Will he forget his faithfulness because we forget our faith? Never! We must alter, for God will not. W. A. B.

2. Here, as all through the word of God, the spiritual qualification is set as a consideration antecedent to that of gifts: first of all “faithful.” But not merely faithful, “who shall be able to teach others also.” The steward is to be not only “faithful,” but “wise,” able to distribute to every one in due season. He who is not apt to teach ought never to be commissioned as a teacher. Arthur.

3. Suffer hardship with me, or “take thy share in suffering,” intimating that the disciple in this must not expect to be above his Master. If he would do his work faithfully, he must lay his account to experiences of trouble. P. F.—All things else almost have changed in the external aspect of religion since Christ was on earth; but in and above all change Christ appears, pressing himself upon our notice, demanding that we adhere to him in personal devotion, and putting it to the proof, oftentimes, by tests hard to be endured, whether we will forsake all and follow him. We may think him severe, but he repeats the old message, he cleaves to the old principle. He wants disciples, but he wants such only as have counted the cost, and have determined to forsake everything else but him, such as are ready to love parents and all nearest kinsmen with a love that may be called hatred, so far does it fall below the height of love to him. He tries us perhaps at the very point where we are most tender, most likely to estimate his service a hardship. T. D. W.—They are his servants, and shall they, or would they, think to be greater than their Master, to be exempt from his lot in the world? They are his soldiers, and will they refuse to follow him and to endure with him? Will not a word from him put a vigor in them to go after him, whether upon any march or service, when he calls them friends? L.

4. This moral discipline of the soul is grounded on the same reasons, and justifiable on the same principles, as that strict military discipline to which it is frequently compared in Scripture, and which every wise commander finds it necessary to maintain among his soldiers. It may appear to them sometimes harsh and severe, but it leads to order, ease, security, and victory. P.—Christ’s soldiers must take every man his part under the great Leader, throwing nothing over upon others which is given them to do, and they must take the peril of it as being kindled for it in the glorious common passion of the common cause. Patience, endurance, courage, fidelity, and even a kind of celestial impassivity, must be set in their otherwise inconstant, misgiving, self-indulgent nature. And the only tonic force equal to this must be found in devotion to the Master, carried to the pitch of soldierhood in his cause. H. B.—In our soldiership we have the blessed truth to stimulate us, that the Captain of our salvation goes before us. Come prosperity or come pain, come wealth or bereavement, come health or sickness, come temptation or labor, if CHRIST be with us, all shall be well! And with us he is, and will be, if we are his people, and if his promise is true. We greatly err by making a sort of merit of our misgivings, and groaning over our weakness, as if this were pleasing to God; when, indeed, a high aspiring faith and unwavering confidence in God’s aid for the future is more welcome to him, and unspeakably more productive of obedience in us. J. W. A.

5. For “strive for masteries” read “strive in the games”; and for “lawfully,” “according to the rules.” A.—He is not crowned unless adhering with whatever self-sacrifice to the prescribed rules. The inference is plain: if so in the lower sphere, and with respect to a perishable distinction, how much more in regard to the great struggle between righteousness and sin, light and darkness in ourselves and in the world, which carries with it issues of eternal moment!

6. The object of the apostle in using the illustration was not, seemingly, to mark the distinction between the active and the idle husbandman. He assumes that Timothy would be a worker in the Lord’s vineyard; but he would have him to be like the husbandman who labors hard, who toils at his employment, and so reaps the first and fullest recompense. We must keep hold of the great principle which the statement is brought to establish—that the most willing and hard laborer is the most speedily and richly blessed. This holds good in the spiritual as in the natural sphere. P. F.

7,8. In verse 7, for “consider” read “understand”; and for “and the Lord give thee understanding,” “for the Lord shall give thee clear apprehension.” In verse 8, read “keep in remembrance Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.” A.—The more immediate point is how to endure hardship, to brave persecution, for the truth of Christ; and, surely, holding fast by Christ’s royal lineage, which was essential to his being the Messiah promised to the fathers, and by his resurrection from the dead, which was equally essential to his right to reign over the house of God, could not but form the best preparation, as it was indeed the indispensable condition, of steadfastness.

9. But (though I am in chains) the word of God is not bound: this still ran, and was glorified. It did so partly through the apostle himself testifying of it, even in his bonds, before rulers and kings, so that his gospel as well as his bonds came to be known in Cesar’s household, and in his letters sounding it forth far and wide; but partly also through the instrumentality of others who gave themselves to the same blessed work, and some of whom, he intimates, waxed bold through his bonds to speak more abundantly the word of God. Thus, when an arrest is laid on one, freedom and boldness are given to others to spread abroad the good seed of the kingdom. P. F.

10. He did not say simply, for the sake of some persons, but for the sake of the elect. If God chose them, we ought to suffer all things for them, in order that they also may obtain salvation. When he says, that they also, he means to say, as also we; for God chose us also; and, as for us God suffered, so also we for them. Chrys.

11-13. For if we died with him (namely, when by a living faith we embraced Christ as our Saviour, entering into the fellowship of his sufferings and death), we shall also live with him, sharing at last in his resurrection-power and blessedness of life, as spiritually we do in a measure now. If we endure (patiently undergo trial and hardship, namely, with him, or in his cause and service), we shall also reign with him; as our Lord himself repeatedly testified (Mat. 16: 24-27; 19: 28, 29), and as is stated also in other passages. If we shall deny (him)—put contingently, as a thing that might possibly happen in the future—he also will deny us; a virtual repetition of our Lord’s solemn words: “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” Finally, if we are unbelieving—not merely prove unfaithful in times of trial, shrink from confessing what we inwardly feel to be the truth concerning him, but, rejecting or quitting our hold of the truth, pass over entirely into the region of unbelief—if we should thus estrange ourselves from the common ground of faith, still he abides faithful—remaining perpetually true to his declarations and promises, whether we accredit them or not. And the reason follows: For he can not deny himself. This implies that the word given as the ground of our faith in Scripture is the expression of his own essential nature; it reveals what, as possessed of that nature, he is in his relation to us, what he purposes toward us, or has done in the execution of his purposes. To disown this, therefore, were to deny himself; and that it is impossible he should ever do, seeing he is the unchangeable Jehovah; and so, his word, like himself, “liveth and abideth for ever.” P. F.

12. The gospel is plain and peremptory in this, if we will “reign with Christ, we must suffer with him,” when we are called forth to give a noble testimony to his truth. It is no extraordinary elevation, no point of perfection, but the duty of every Christian to be always ready in the disposition and resolution of his mind, to sacrifice his life when the honor of Christ requires it. But it is no hard condition to suffer transient afflictions for the obtaining a happy immortality, to be conformable to the image of our suffering Redeemer, that we may be crowned with his glory. Bates.

15. To divide rightly refers to a fair and conscientious or straightforward handling of the word itself. This, as opposed to all kinds of tortuous interpretations or by-plays of ingenuity, is preeminently what becomes the teacher who would stand approved in the judgment of God: like a sincere and honest workman, he must go right on in his use of the word, maintaining it in its integrity, and applying it to the great spiritual ends for which it has been given. P. F.—Divine truth is both the instrument with which the Spirit quickens the soul and the light through which the soul sees God and all eternal things; and he who best knows how to divide this truth, to separate it into its several offices, and to point the arrows of its power with greatest wisdom and skill, is the ablest minister of the New Testament, and the best instructed scribe in the kingdom. He will be the means of convincing most men of sin, and of bringing most to the Saviour. J. S. S.—When you preach, be real; say to yourself: “Now I must get into these hearts some truth from God”; strike as those who would make dints upon their shield of hardness, yea, and smite through them to their heart of hearts; speak straight to them, as you would beg your life, or counsel your son, or call your dearest friend from a burning house, in plain, strong, earnest words. Bp. Wilberforce.

17,18. The denial of a resurrection of the body was no new error in the Church, but was the natural result of Sadducean corruption. The famous argument of the apostle seems to imply that in the Church of Corinth it did not go beyond the simple negation, “that there is no resurrection of the dead.” But these pretenders to a higher spiritual philosophy than the gospel held that it was already accomplished; no doubt in the sense soon after taught by the Gnostics, that the only resurrection was the rising of the soul from the death of ignorance to the life and light of knowledge. S.

19. The firm foundation of God stands, not “The foundation of God standeth sure,” which is grammatically untenable. The apostle’s assertion is, that, notwithstanding the existence of such cases as he had just mentioned of defection from the truth and the consequent loss of salvation, there is a firm or strong foundation of God which remains steadfast. Those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and who are prepared and kept by omnipotent grace for the glory to which from the first they were destined—in a word, the members of the true or invisible as contrasted with the simply outward or professing Church: these are what we may here most naturally understand by the foundation of God. They constitute His firm foundation, which stands amid both the assaults of adversaries and the defection of unstable souls, because held fast by his own eternal purpose and efficacious grace. This accords with what follows about the sealing, which has immediate respect to Christ’s true people. Genuine believers are God’s firm foundation, because they have their place and calling under this certification: “The Lord knoweth them that are his.” P. F.—The sure laid foundation of God’s work in them makes them stand. God’s free love and grace brought them to Christ, keeps them in Christ, and lets them not fall into deadly errors. The apostle propounds here the doctrine of election to fortify them who are not departed from the faith. It is because God has taken pleasure in thee, to make thee confirmed to his Son Christ. Let it be an encouragement for further well-doing, yea, a confirmation of thee in the way, and a thing to make thee bless God that thou standest when others fall.

The seal of the elect has two sides, the one is read of God, the other toward us is read of us. The side toward God is that he knows who are his: he knows whom he has loved and foreordained for heaven; and the side of the seal which is toward us is, “Let every one that names the name of Jesus depart from iniquity.” D. D.—It is as if divine calling, endowment, and help were on one side; self-discipline, watching, mortified lusting, and steady resolve on the other. Liberty and discipline, movement from God’s center and movement from our own, sanctified inclination and self-compelling will, are the two great factors thus of Christian life and experience. H. B.

Knoweth his. He knows them from his first purpose about them to the last perfecting of them in glory; he knows them by loving them, approving them, keeping them that they fall not, and when they fall, to raise them up again. All is concluded with him from his first foresight and love; and he still keeps and preserves them, for he is stronger than all, and none shall be able to reave them out of his hand. D. D.—Depart from iniquity. All unwary walking in Christians wrongs their communion with heaven, and casts a damp upon their prayers, so as to clog the wings of it. These two mutually help one another, prayer and holy conversation, the more exactly we walk the more fit are we for prayer; and the more we pray the more are we enabled to walk exactly; and it is a happy life to find the correspondence of these two, calling on the Lord and departing from iniquity. Therefore, that you may pray much live holily, and that you may live holily be much in prayer; surely such are the heirs of glory, and this is their way to it. L.

20. Here the apostle passes from the Church viewed as God’s firm foundation to the Church as a house composed of various and to a certain extent heterogeneous materials. The distinction is simply that of the real and the professing, or the invisible and the visible Church: the one God’s true elect, his jewels, as he elsewhere calls them, or peculiar treasure, preserved by his faithful guardianship, and destined to his eternal glory; the other, those who have but an outward standing in the household.

21. If any one shall by purifying himself have gone out of their number, those, namely, represented by the vessels associated with dishonor—he shall be a vessel for honor, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work. He contents himself with putting before men a plain practical issue; moving no question about election, or about adoption into the family of God; but simply teaching, as Calvin well puts it, “that all who would consecrate themselves to the Lord must purge themselves from the filthiness of the ungodly—the same, indeed, that God everywhere teaches.” P. F.—Art thou then purging thyself from thy old deeds? crying with David, “Purge me with hyssop, cleanse me from my sins”? breaking thy heart for grieving the Holy One of Israel? thou carriest the mark of a vessel of honor. For the Master’s use. If they be not for God’s use, they are for dishonest uses: following of their lawful calling, working, plowing, making merchandise, are all dishonest uses with them, for they do these to make themselves rich and honorable. They are not done as service to God, therefore they are unclean; their eating, drinking, working, not being for God’s use, are turned into sin. But the vessel of honor goes to the plow, and makes merchandise, for God’s use. He goes to the kirk, not to see and be seen, but to meet God in the assembly. D. D.

22. Follow righteousness, faith, love, peace.** The lesson here comes out again, so often already and in so many ways presented in these pastoral Epistles, that a sound moral condition is above all things essential to fitness for effective ministerial service in the divine kingdom. Other things may more or less be helpful, but this is indispensable. The peace spoken of is undoubtedly to be understood of peace in the closer sense—a state of inner harmony and agreeable fellowship; because it is such as is to be maintained with them that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. This connection obviously reflects upon the nature of the peace intended.

24-26. The whole passage might be read, pointed, and slightly paraphrased thus: In meekness correcting those who oppose themselves, if peradventors God may give them repentance [to come] unto the full knowledge of the truth; and that they may return to soberness [and so escape] out of the snare of the devil (by whom they had been taken captive), according to the will of him (God), who for this end seconds the efforts of his servant, by giving the spirit of repentance and true enlightenment. P. F.

25. In meekness instructing.** If, in Christian or social intercourse, we wish to deliver any man from what we think error, we must do so by

putting him in the way of convincing himself. To beat him down by unreasoning opposition, or even by an irresistible argument, may please us, but is not likely to gain him. There is a great chasm between achieving a victory and making a conquest, and the completeness of the first often prevents the last. To respect a man’s freedom, never to press him so hard as to humiliate him, to give him the clew that may help him to guide himself to the right, is according to the divine model, and would aid us in serving at the same time both our fellow-men and the truth. Ker.