2 Timothy 1

2 Timothy 1:1-18

Notes.Division 1. (2 Timothy 1:1-18.)God always abiding for us.

1. The apostle, in writing this final epistle, realizes with satisfaction his being an apostle of Christ “by the will of God.” The assurance of this is no less the assurance that that for which God has appointed him shall not, and cannot, fail. However results may seem to speak, faith knows that God is Master of all; of the whole scene, and of His foes no less. Through death to life is His principle always for us; although, taking the peculiar form which it does here through the shipwreck of the professing mass, it has a voice of alarm in it beyond what might seem to be in the normal application. Paul’s apostleship is also “according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus,” a promise which is developed still more in the epistle to Titus, as that which was given in Him “before the age-times.” Life for us has been wrought out by Another, and is the bestowal of free grace, which therefore cannot fail. Whatever may be in conflict, here is security.

The Captain of Salvation is already in glory, and the life which He has given is already within us, making itself realized in the faith which draws from Him its sustenance and blessing. The epistle has, of course, still the character of individuality strongly marked upon it, as one to Timothy the beloved child of his labor, to whom he wishes grace, mercy, peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Grace is the foundation and security of all; mercy reminds us of the pity of God for the infirmities of those in a scene like this, constantly needy and dependent; and peace is the issue of the two former -the effect of this ministry of God to the need which only brings out, the greater it is, the more His resources. At the end of the race the apostle can look back over the race that has been run. He has served God from his forefathers with a pure conscience. He can see in his on case, as he reminds Timothy with regard to himself, how this promise of life has worked out in the preservation of a people for God often, while not in the way of nature merely, yet according to the Passover character, which we have often seen to be realized so much in Christianity, the blessed assurance of salvation, as was said to the jailer, to “thee and thy house.” Thus with Timothy also the unfeigned faith that was in him now had dwelt first in his grandmother Lois, and then in his mother Eunice. It is good to realize in this way how it is the nature of faith to propagate itself, (God being with it and in it, for this, of course,) the Creator-God as such still bearing in mind the natural ties which He has instituted, and which, spite of all failure, He makes thus to result for blessing. The apostle never allowed his assurance of God being in all this, working out purposes that could not fail, to make him relax his supplications for the very people in whom he sees God working.

On the contrary, he is only energized the more to remember them with a love which recalls such things as Timothy’s tears; themselves, no doubt, the witness of the bond which united him to the apostle. The failure of those around him was only making him the more realize the heart of the young disciple, poured out perhaps over his departure, and in the consciousness of what was in every place awaiting him.

It was divine life that expressed itself thus in what might seem merely human affection. As we know, in Christ the human and the divine have been inseparably united together, and there cannot be the least discordance between the two. 2. The apostle exhorts Timothy to rekindle the gift of God which was in him by the putting on of his hands. Elsewhere we have seen that this gift was given in connection with prophecies which had gone before with regard to him, and that the laying on of the hands of the elders was the recognition of it; but the apostle here declares that the one instrument of God in its communication was himself -a recognition, may we not think, of the spiritual tie which did unite the apostle to this true child, born of his labors. True gift as it was which was in him, he still needed to rekindle it -a strong word, which makes us realize the need we have even with regard to that which God Himself has given. The contact with things around tends to dull the very sense of it within ourselves, and there needs constantly recourse to God, that the gift may be maintained in the divine energy which alone suits it. Here it is evident that the decline which was already so apparent had had a certain effect, and that there was danger of giving way under the pressure of it.

Timothy is reminded, therefore, that God has not given a spirit of cowardice, but of power, and of love, and of wise discretion. We have what necessarily characterises the work of Him who, dwelling in that which is the very scene of our frailty, -the body, -nevertheless, has, in fact, control of it and of everything around. Weakness may characterize the vessel, but not the power that is in it; while love leads out the soul beyond itself and enables it freely to spend one’s self in self-denial for the blessing of others. The spirit of self-control controls, in fact, all other things. If we are masters of ourselves, we are masters of all else; nor can we ever have to yield to the enemy through weakness, while we have One abiding in us who is Omnipotence itself. How good, indeed, to prove the weakness, which only makes us prove the all-sufficiency of God! Timothy was not, therefore, to be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord nor of Paul himself, His prisoner, but to take his own place as suffering evil along with the gospel according to the power of God. Power is displayed now after this manner, not in fleshly victories, or what might be recognized in the world as success, although we are prone to make this the test of everything; but we can little realize what success is as yet. By and by we shall find, indeed, that all that is of God has been successful. Nothing has been without its effect; but in the meanwhile we must be far from the spirit of a Gamaliel, which would judge by what the world counts success, and leave no room, in fact, for faith at all. In the world, as people say, nothing succeeds like success. They look upon success as something evident, something which no one can deny.

But what, then, was the success of Paul, the poor prisoner, deserted by the very people that were one with him as Christians? and what, indeed, with some of the main truths for which he strove, to lapse and abide in darkness unknown for many generations? The call for patience taxes us, no doubt; nevertheless, if patience have her perfect work, it will be proved that thus we shall be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” God has already done for us so great a work that we may well trust Him for everything.

He “hath saved us and called us with a holy calling;” and that not as the reward of any works of our own, but “according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the age-times,” but which has now been made manifest by the appearing of the Saviour, who has “annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light by the gospel.” Here is once more, as is plain, the promise of life; the apostle carrying us back to the beginning, -not to eternity itself, as is generally supposed, but to the promise given before the dispensations began. Some would hesitate to call the announcement of the Seed of the woman a promise in this way. It was, no doubt, in the form of a doom denounced upon the serpent; but that, indeed, was a promise for man, surely intended for him, and which Adam’s faith laid hold of, when, in view of it, he called his wife’s name “Eve,” or “life” -the one through whom death was coming in, he calls “the mother of all living.” Then it was that God, answering to the faith thus manifest, clothed Adam and his wife with the very fruit of death itself, making death minister, as we know in Christ it has ministered, to the life which He gives. This is no restoration of the first man, as many speak. It is a promise of the Seed of the woman. It does not reinstate the first man as such, but proclaims, indeed, deliverance for man, for the sinner; and everything here (while couched in those parabolic actings in which so constantly we find in the Old Testament the deepest truths of God to be hidden) is in accordance with this.

Life for those under death is the text upon which God was preaching; and not without the ability, surely, to convey something of the blessing to the souls of those who heard it, although the fulness of it is only now come out. The appearing of our Saviour has made it manifest by the annulling of death and the bringing of life and incorruption to light by the gospel. The expression used here, “before the age-times” has been obscured by the supposed equivalent expression, “before the world began;” and so it has been conceived to be a promise in the previous eternity, and thus something between the Father and the Son, the terms of that covenant between these of which theology, not Scripture, speaks so much. It remains for theology to produce the first text which speaks of such a covenant. “The promise of life” was, truly, “before the age-times;” the word used here being the adjective of a word even most commonly translated “age,” and which is equivalent very much to what we call a dispensation. The dispensations, in fact, had not begun when God gave this promise. Innocence was ended, God was in His grace laying hold of the fallen creature, and that for a blessing which would more than meet all the consequences of the fall; but there was no dispensation in the way in which we speak, and even the first age of man’s history, which terminated at the Deluge, had little of the character of a dispensation at all. We may, no doubt, truly call it such; but that which it did was simply to test the reliance of man upon the promise which had been given, the test of the faith of the fallen creature in the remedy which He had announced. There was not, as yet, even the institution of human government, much less was there any law.

Every one was a law to himself, and thus there was, in one sense, the fullest trial of man that could be given. He was absolutely free, that he might show now what he would do with his freedom. Alas, the flood swept over that ancient world, leaving but eight persons to begin a new one. Through all, nevertheless, God had adhered to His purpose. The promise might seem long fulfilling. No doubt it was long. There were needs for this which man himself could little estimate. To estimate them would have been to estimate the corruption that was in him, and to pronounce upon himself in a way which he has never done except as forced to do it. Spite of the delay, God in due time, as we know, vindicated His promise -a lesson for us of patience, who have seen once more the blessed truth, now fully announced, corrupted and made light of by those who have professedly heard and received it. The times before the flood will be repeated, as the Lord assures us, in the times which precede His own appearing; but the purpose of God holds throughout, and “the knowledge of the glory of God,” spite of all, shall “cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” Death has already been annulled, and life and incorruption are brought to light by the gospel. Life there had been, spiritual life, from the beginning. God had been always giving life. There had always been upon earth a testimony in this way to Himself, but now it is brought to light; with resurrection also, which is what is referred to in “incorruption” here as a principle of God’s ways of the most exceeding importance. Death is permitted to have its way as the penalty upon sin and the judgment of man universally, but only to give way to resurrection, in which God declares Himself as God, acting in the living energy which belongs to Himself and in the grace which ensures absolutely the result of this. The apostle’s ministry was of the fulness of blessing such as this, which was now going out far beyond Israel to the nations everywhere, not without its necessary accompaniment of suffering also, but with the joyful knowledge in it of One who is able to keep every trust committed to Him, and to show His faithfulness fully in the day that is coming. The apostle speaks for himself as to the abiding confidence that he has in One so fully proved and so fully known. 3. He bids Timothy now to hold “the form of sound words” which he had heard of him “in faith and love” which were “in Christ Jesus.” This is an important word for us, and a word too little understood by Christians in general. The words which Timothy had heard of Paul we have heard as now for us, contained in those Scriptures to which Peter assures us the epistles of Paul belong, of the character of which he is going to speak more fully in a little while; but Timothy is not merely to hold the sound words which have been heard; he is to hold the form of them; that is, he is to hold them in the very way in which they have been spoken, which Scripture has, it is clear, provided for us. Verbal inspiration is here insisted on, perhaps more emphatically than anywhere else. It is not simply the spirit of the words which we have to listen to, or the general ideas, but to take heed to the very form in which these words are conveyed to us. The form embodies the spirit; and we, as those that are in the body, should know for ourselves how much the form implies.

The form is, in fact, the instrument of the spirit, and is that which manifests it -which alone, for us, as we are now constituted, can manifest it. Scripture has thus a form as well as a spirit. Every truth of God has its own form, its way of presentation which is to be maintained and heeded. No doubt, we may express, and are often called to express, things in the way in which they appear to us. This has an importance of its own also. It speaks of what our souls have received of that which God has been teaching, and Scripture is left in our hands in such a way as to insist upon diligence on our part to lay hold of it and to apprehend it aright. We have no creed made for us, as people ever since have been busy in making it. That which they insist upon shows us, in fact, a real need that we have, and the responsibility which rests upon us. Scripture is not given in such a manner as to manifest itself for what it is, to all. “The man of God” is to be furnished by it thoroughly, but only “the man of God.” For this very reason you cannot accomplish the thing which is desired in an authoritative creed.

The authority given to it is the very thing, in fact, which spoils it. There is no danger in the creed as long as it is the expression of the individual faith of those who make it, but it has no authority. It may suggest; but we can only fall back upon Scripture itself as justifying it in any way, and thus it is always open, and rightly open, to question whether Scripture does justify it. Scripture is thus the authority, and not the creed; yet, as already said, the creed has a necessity of its own, and is wholesome as long as, and just so long as, it is the expression of the faith of those who put it forth -no further. It may be a witness in this way for God, but a human witness, and which therefore can be appealed against, and the appeal made to God Himself -that is, to His Word. But, in fact, the more we apprehend the form that the truth takes in Scripture, the more, of necessity, we shall find that a creed is being formed within us. The truths come together. We realize in them a harmony, a congruity, which there must be of necessity in the truth as a whole. We receive it, in a sense, in fragments; but we are necessarily not content with this. We seek to have things together; and this is necessary, that the proper power of them should be realized. The form embodies the spirit, and the form of every individual truth is that which makes for us the whole picture of the truth, each part enhancing the beauty and blessedness of the whole; but the more we really seek to have every part of Scripture in its relation to every other part, the more the form as a whole develops for us, the more shall we realize the perfection of the form which Scripture itself has, containing for us blessedness of which we have to possess ourselves in faith, and which, after all, is still ever beyond us -not to discourage but to encourage us on to the possession of it.

The creed of a living faith is thus a creed which is continually perfecting, continually enlarging. It cannot be otherwise. Thus we cannot build upon the creed itself, we can only build upon the Scripture, and here the apostle’s exhortation, therefore, finds its full value for us. We are to hold fast the very “form of the sound words” which it speaks to us. The more earnestly we go on, the more ready shall we be to go back, and to ripen our apprehension of the way in which the Spirit of God has spoken to us. Labor is always a necessity to us, faith has always to be in living activity; while the acceptance of an authoritative human creed results, of necessity, in the hindrance to all true progress, and in the lack of exercise as to all the details of that which is supposed to be ascertained, and which, therefore, needs it no more. We must hold, then, “the form of sound words;” but the doctrine, however accurate, is not enough: it must be “in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” The truth must be received in the willing and obedient heart, and responded to by the soul attracted by it, realizing the power of that which it conveys. In connection with this, the apostle urges Timothy to keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us the good thing committed to him. The Spirit who dwelt in Timothy dwells in us also, and by His power we have also to keep whatever good thing has been committed unto us. We need not inquire so much into the character of the gift. We may, perhaps, not be able to appreciate it even, fully. We shall surely lack intelligence as to it in proportion as we are less concerned to be in perfect subjection to that Spirit, who has all power for us; but to each one of us has been committed a gift, if we are members of the body of Christ at all, a gift distinctly our own, which we need the energy of the Holy Spirit to keep for us; and we shall find, no doubt, that this has suited connection here with the holding fast “the form of sound words” itself.

We shall find that as God enables us to be true to the ministry of that which He has given, we shall be in the way to have more committed to us. In proportion as we undervalue the gift we shall, as far as lies in us, lose it. In proportion as we do not care to communicate to others the “sound words” which we have received, we shall find their power over our own souls diminish and their sweetness for us also. 4. We have now, in contrast with the holding fast, the turning away of many, the sad foreboding of the wholesale defection that was coming in. “This thou knowest, that all they who are in Asia have turned away from me.” It is striking that here we have the field of the second and third of Revelation. Asia is, as is well known, in Scripture, not the continent which we speak of under that name, but a limited district of that which we now call Asia Minor, and in which the seven churches were all found. However far this turning away in Asia had gone, yet it is plain that it is a wide defection of which the apostle speaks here; “All they who are in Asia.” Of course, it does not mean that they had turned away from the confession of Christ. Nor can it be accepted that it refers simply to the abandonment of the apostle when again imprisoned -the opposite conduct to that of Onesiphorus. The Pauline doctrines, on the other hand, were very early given up.

Just the brightest and most blessed truths are always that which man has most proved himself unable to keep. They are the things which go first of all; and, as a fact, even the doctrine of justification by faith went in this manner, and was little realized for centuries.

The doctrine of the Church we find nowhere, even in the earliest days, outside of Scripture. The Church is for the fathers just what the apostle speaks of as like “a great house.” It is hierarchical, dogmatic, sacramentarian, in the spirit of the old Judaism, yet not the Judaism of Scripture, but of the Pharisees. This has acquired an outwardly Christian form, or rather, let us say, a Christian dress, but nothing more. Thus, then, was the necessary testing of faith proving the weakness as to the faith itself. The apostle turns from it now to one who had been able to abide the test; breathing out a fervent prayer that the Lord might grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, as one who had oft refreshed him and not been ashamed of his chain, seeking him out very diligently when he was in Rome, when the implied difficulty of finding him might have been his excuse for lack of ministry. He prays that the Lord may grant to him also that he might find mercy of the Lord in that day.

The reward of grace, after all, is mercy, and can be nothing else. Only grace can say to any one of us: “She hath done what she could.” Thus it is mercy crowns even the triumphant victor.

Onesiphorus’ ministry to the apostle had begun in other circumstances. It had not ceased when the circumstances were more adverse.