The charge to suffer for the gospel
Chapter 2
The Charge to Suffer for the Gospel
1. Handing on the Truth (verses 1, 2)
The first chapter ended with Paul’s sorrowful reference to the widespread defection among Christians in the Roman province of Asia (1:15). Onesiphorus and his household seem to have been the outstanding exception. Now Paul urges Timothy that he too, in the midst of the general landslide, must stand his ground. It is the first of several similar exhortations in the letter, beginning su oun or su de meaning ‘you therefore’ or ‘but you’, which summon Timothy to resist the prevailing mood. Timothy had been called to responsible leadership in the church not only in spite of his natural diffidence but in the very area where the apostle’s authority was being repudiated. It is as if Paul says to him: ‘Never mind what other people may be thinking or saying or doing. Never mind how weak and shy you yourself may feel. As for you, Timothy, be strong!’
Of course if his exhortation had stopped there, it would have been futile, even absurd. He might as well have told a snail to be quick or a horse to fly as command a man as timid as Timothy to be strong. But Paul’s call to fortitude is Christian not stoical. It is not a summons to Timothy to be strong in himself—to set his jaw and grit his teeth—but to ‘be inwardly strengthened’1 by means of ‘the grace that is in Christ Jesus’. NEB expands the sentence thus: ‘Take strength from the grace of God which is ours in Christ Jesus.’ Timothy is to find his resources for ministry not in his own nature but in Christ’s grace. It is not only for salvation that we are dependent on grace (1:9), but for service also.
Paul proceeds to indicate the kind of ministry for which Timothy will need to strengthen himself by Christ’s grace. So far he has been exhorted to hold the faith and guard the deposit (1:13, 14). He is to do more than preserve the truth, however; he is also to pass it on. If the disloyalty of the Asian church made it imperative that Timothy should guard the truth with loyalty, the approaching death of the apostle made it equally imperative that Timothy should make arrangements for the handing down of the truth intact to the next generation. In this transmission of truth from hand to hand Paul envisages four stages.
First, the faith has been entrusted to Paul by Christ. This is why he has called it ‘my deposit’ (1:12). It is his by deposit, not by invention. As an apostle of Jesus Christ he insists that his gospel is ‘not man’s gospel’, whether his own composition or somebody else’s. Nor is he relying purely on human tradition. On the contrary, he could write: ‘I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:11, 12).
Secondly, what has been entrusted to Paul by Christ Paul in his turn has entrusted to Timothy. So ‘my deposit’ becomes virtually ‘your deposit’, and ‘what has been entrusted to me’ (1:12) is now ‘the truth that has been entrusted to you’ (1:14). This deposit consists of certain ‘sound words’ which Timothy has heard from Paul’s own lips. The exact expression ‘you have heard from me’ (1:13 par’ emou ēkousas) is repeated in 2:2, though now with the addition that Timothy has heard it ‘before many witnesses’. The aorist tense would seem to refer not to a single public occasion on which Timothy heard the apostle’s teaching—such as his baptism or ordination—but rather to the totality of his instruction over the years. And the reference to the many witnesses shows that the apostolic faith was not a secret tradition handed on privately to Timothy (such as the Gnostics were claiming), whose authenticity there was no means of testing, but a public instruction, whose truth was guaranteed by the many witnesses who had heard it and who could therefore check Timothy’s teaching against the apostle’s.
This statement of Paul’s became important in the following century when Gnosticism had grown and spread. For example, in chapter 25 of his Prescriptions against Heretics (c. AD 200) Tertullian of Carthage was particularly writing against Gnostics who claimed both to have had private revelations of their own and to possess secret traditions handed down from the apostles. He would not allow that the apostles had ‘entrusted some things openly to all and some things secretly to a few’. For (he argued) in appealing to Timothy to guard the deposit ‘there is no hinting at a hidden doctrine, but a command not to admit any but the teaching which he had heard from Paul himself and (I think) openly—“before many witnesses” as he says’.2
Thirdly, what Timothy has heard from Paul he is now to ‘entrust to faithful men’, of whom there are evidently some left among the many deserters of Asia. The men Paul has in mind must be primarily ministers of the word, whose chief function is to teach, Christian elders whose responsibility it would be—like the Jewish elders of the synagogue—to preserve the tradition. Such Christian elders are ‘God’s stewards’, as Paul has recently written to Titus (1:7), because both God’s household and God’s truth are committed to their trust. And the fundamental requirement in stewards is trustworthiness (1 Cor. 4:1, 2). They must be ‘faithful men’.
Fourthly, such men must be the sort of men who (as the relative hoitines should be translated) ‘will be able to teach others also’. The ability or competence which Timothy must look for in such men will consist partly in their integrity or faithfulness of character already mentioned and partly in their facility for teaching. They must be didaktikoi, ‘apt teachers’, a word Paul has used of candidates for the ministry in 1 Timothy 3:2 and will use again later in this chapter (2:24).
Here, then, are the four stages in the handing on of the truth, which Paul envisages: from Christ to Paul, from Paul to Timothy, from Timothy to ‘faithful men’, and from ‘faithful men’ to ‘others also’. This is the true ‘apostolic succession’. Certainly it would involve men, a line of ‘faithful men’ at that, but the succession from the apostles is to be more in the message itself than in the men who teach it. It is to be a succession of apostolic tradition rather than of apostolic ministry, authority or order, a transmission of the apostles’ doctrine handed down unchanged from the apostles to subsequent generations, and passed from hand to hand like the Olympic torch. This apostolic tradition, ‘the good deposit’, is now to be found in the New Testament. Speaking ideally, ‘Scripture’ and ‘tradition’ should be interchangeable terms, for what the church hands down from generation to generation should be the biblical faith, no more and no less. And the biblical faith is the apostolic faith.
In the rest of this second chapter of his letter Paul enlarges on the teaching ministry to which Timothy has been called. He illustrates it by using six vivid metaphors. The first three are already favourite images with Paul—the soldier, the athlete and the farmer. He has made use of them several times in former letters to enforce a wide variety of truths. Here they all emphasize that Timothy’s work will be strenuous, involving both labour and suffering.
2. Metaphor I: The Dedicated Soldier (verses 3, 4)
Paul’s prison experiences had given him ample opportunity to watch Roman soldiers and to meditate on the parallels between the soldier and the Christian. In earlier letters he has referred to the warfare with principalities and powers in which the Christian soldier is engaged, the armour which he must put on and the weapons which he must use (Eph. 6:10 ff.; 1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12; 2 Cor. 6:7; 10:3–5; cf. Rom. 6:13, 14). But here the ‘good soldier of Christ Jesus’ is so called because he is a dedicated man, who shows his dedication in his willingness both to suffer and to concentrate.
Soldiers on active service do not expect a safe or easy time. They take hardship, risk and suffering as a matter of course. These things are part and parcel of a soldier’s calling. As Tertullian put it in his Address to Martyrs: ‘No soldier comes to the war surrounded by luxuries, nor goes into action from a comfortable bedroom, but from the makeshift and narrow tent, where every kind of hardness and severity and unpleasantness is to be found.’3 Similarly, the Christian should not expect an easy time. If he is loyal to the gospel, he is sure to experience opposition and ridicule. He must ‘share in suffering’ with his comrades-in-arms.
The soldier must be willing to concentrate as well as to suffer. When on active service he does not ‘get himself entangled in business’ (JBP). On the contrary, he frees himself from civilian affairs, in order to give himself to soldiering and so satisfy his superior officers or ‘be wholly at his commanding officer’s disposal’ (JBP). As E. K. Simpson expresses it, ‘the spectacle of military discipline furnished a grand lesson of wholeheartedness’.4 So in the Second World War people frequently said to each other with a wry smile ‘there’s a war on’—a watchword sufficient to justify any austerity, self-denial or abstention from innocent activities because of the current emergency.
The Christian, who is intended to live in the world and not contract out of it, cannot of course avoid ordinary duties at home, at work and in the community. Indeed as a Christian he should be outstandingly conscientious in doing and not dodging them. Nor should he forget, as Paul reminded Timothy in his first letter, either that ‘everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving’ or that ‘God … richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy’ (1 Tim. 4:4; 6:17). So what is forbidden the good soldier of Jesus Christ is not all ‘secular’ activities, but rather ‘entanglements’ which, though they may be perfectly innocent in themselves, may hinder him from fighting Christ’s battles. This counsel applies specially to the Christian minister or pastor. He is called to devote himself to teaching and tending Christ’s flock, and there are other Scriptures besides this one to say that if possible he should not have the additional burden of having to get his living in some ‘secular’ employment.
It is true that the apostle himself had often earned his keep by his tent-making. Yet he made it plain that in his case the reason was personal and exceptional, namely to ‘make the gospel free of charge’ and so put no possible ‘obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ’ (1 Cor. 9:18, 12). He still asserted the principle for himself and for every minister, by command of the Lord, that ‘those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel’ (1 Cor. 9:14). Indeed, he clearly expected this to be the general rule. And this needs to be remembered in our day when ‘auxiliary’, ‘supplementary’ and ‘part-time’ ministries are increasing, in which the pastor continues his trade or profession and exercises his ministry in his spare time. Such ministries can hardly be said to contravene Scripture. Yet they are difficult to reconcile with the apostle’s injunction to avoid entanglements. In the Church of England service for the ordination of presbyters the Bishop exhorts the candidates in these words: ‘Consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures … and for this selfsame cause how ye ought to forsake and set aside (as much as you may) all worldly cares and studies, … give yourselves wholly to this Office, … apply yourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all your cares and studies this way.’
The application of this verse is wider than to pastors, however. Every Christian is in some degree a soldier of Christ, even if he is as timid as Timothy. For, whatever our temperament, we cannot avoid the Christian conflict. And if we are to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ, we must be dedicated to the battle, committing ourselves to a life of discipline and suffering, and avoiding whatever may ‘entangle’ us and so distract us from it.
3. Metaphor II: The Law-Abiding Athlete (verse 5)
Paul now turns from the image of the Roman soldier to that of the competitor in the Greek games. In no athletic contest of the ancient world (any more than of the modern) was a competitor giving a random display of strength or skill. Every sport had its rules, always for the contest itself and sometimes for the preparatory training as well. Every event had its prize also, and the prizes awarded at the Greek games were evergreen wreaths, not gold medals or silver trophies. But no athlete, however brilliant, was ‘crowned’ unless he had competed ‘according to the rules’. ‘No rules, no wreath’ was the order of the day.
The Christian life is regularly likened in the New Testament to a race, not in the sense that we are competing against each other (though we are to ‘outdo one another in showing honour’, Rom. 12:10), but in other ways, in the strenuous self-discipline of training (1 Cor. 9:24–27), in laying aside every hindrance (Heb. 12:1, 2) and here in keeping the rules.
We are to run the Christian race nomimōs, ‘lawfully’. In spite of the strange teaching of the so-called ‘new morality’, which insists that the category of law has been abolished by Christ, the Christian is under obligation to live ‘lawfully’, to keep the rules, to obey God’s moral laws. True, he is not ‘under law’ as a way of salvation, to commend him to God, but he is as a guide to conduct. So far from abolishing his law God first sent his Son to die for us ‘in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us’, and now sends his Spirit to live in us and to write his law in our hearts! (Rom. 8:3, 4; Je. 31:33). Further, there is no crown otherwise, not of course because our law-abiding could ever justify us, but rather because without it we give evidence that we have never been justified.
The context requires that competing ‘according to the rules’ has a wider application than to our moral conduct, however. Paul is describing Christian service, not just Christian life. He seems to be saying that rewards for service depend on faithfulness. The Christian teacher must teach the truth, building with solid materials on the foundation of Christ, if his work is to endure and not be burned up (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10–15). So Timothy must faithfully pass on the deposit to faithful men. Only if, like Paul, he perseveres to the end, so that he too fights the good fight, finishes the race and keeps the faith, can he expect on the last day to receive that most coveted of all wreaths, ‘the crown of righteousness’ (2 Tim. 4:7, 8).
4. Metaphor III: The Hardworking Farmer (verse 6)
If the athlete must play fair, the farmer must work hard. He ‘toils’ at his job, as the verb indicates. Hard work is indeed indispensable to good farming. This is particularly so in developing countries before mechanization arrives. In such circumstances successful farming depends as much on sweat as on skill. However poor the soil, inclement the weather, or disinclined the farmer, he must keep at his work. Having put his hand to the plough, he must not look back. Bishop Moule writes of ‘the strenuous and prosaic toil’ of the farmer. Unlike the soldier and the athlete the farmer’s life is ‘totally devoid of excitement, remote from all glamour of peril and of applause’.5
Yet the first share of the crops goes to the hardworking farmer. He deserves it. His good yield is due as much to his toil and perseverance as to anything else. That is why a sluggard never makes a good farmer, as the book of Proverbs insists. He always loses his harvest, either because he is asleep when he ought to be reaping, or because he was too lazy to plough the previous autumn, or because he has allowed his fields to become overgrown with nettles and thorns (Pr. 10:5; 20:4; 24:30, 31).
To what kind of harvest is the apostle referring? Two applications are more obviously biblical than others.
First, holiness is a harvest. True, it is ‘the fruit (or ‘harvest’) of the Spirit’, in that the Spirit is himself the chief farmer who produces a good crop of Christian qualities in the believer’s life. But we have our part to play. We are to ‘walk by the Spirit’ and ‘sow to the Spirit’ (Gal. 5:16; 6:8), following his promptings and disciplining ourselves, if we would reap the harvest of holiness. Many Christians are surprised that they are not noticeably growing in holiness. Is it that we are neglecting to cultivate the field of our character? ‘Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap’ (Gal. 6:7). As Bishop Ryle emphasizes again and again in his great book entitled Holiness, there are ‘no gains without pains’. For example:
‘I will never shrink from declaring my belief that there are no “spiritual gains without pains”. I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness who was not diligent about his Bible-reading, his prayers, and the use of his Sundays. Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.’6
As Paul puts it here, it is ‘the hardworking farmer’ who has the first share of the crop. For holiness is a harvest.
Secondly, the winning of converts is a harvest too. ‘The harvest is plentiful,’ Jesus said, referring to the many who are waiting to hear and receive the gospel (Mt. 9:37; cf. Jn. 4:35; Rom. 1:13). Now in this harvest it is of course ‘God who gives the growth’ (1 Cor. 3:6, 7). But again we have no liberty to be idle. Further, both the sowing of the good seed of God’s word and the reaping of the harvest are hard work, especially when the labourers are few. Souls are hardly won for Christ, not by the slick, automatic application of a formula, but by tears and sweat and pain, especially in prayer and in sacrificial personal friendship. Again, it is ‘the hardworking farmer’ who can expect good results.
This notion that Christian service is hard work is so unpopular in some happy-go-lucky Christian circles today that I feel the need to underline it. I have already mentioned that the verb signifies to ‘toil’. Arndt and Gingrich say that it means first of all to ‘become weary, tired’ and so to ‘work hard, toil, strive, struggle’. Both the noun (kopos) and the verb (kopiaō) were favourite words with Paul, and it may be healthy for us to see what strong exertion he believed to be necessary in Christian service.
It goes without saying that the word can be used of manual labour, and Paul applied it to his tent-making. ‘We labour,’ he could write, ‘working with our own hands’ (1 Cor. 4:12; cf. Eph. 4:28; 1 Thes. 4:11). But in his view spiritual work involved exertion too. He was quick to recognize thoroughness in others and sent special greetings at the end of his Roman letter to ‘Mary who has worked hard among you’ and to ‘the beloved Persis who has worked hard in the Lord’ (Rom. 16:6, (12b). Not that Paul expected more of others than he was prepared to give himself. His exertions for the gospel were phenomenal. He could write of ‘labours, watching, hunger’ because, like his Master before him, he was often too busy to sleep or to eat, and could claim in respect of the other apostles, ‘I worked harder than any of them’ (2 Cor. 6:5; 1 Cor. 15:10; cf. Gal. 4:11; Phil. 2:16). If we were to press him about the nature of this toil, I think he would reply in terms of those two apostolic priorities ‘prayer and … the ministry of the word’ (Acts 6:4). For he alluded in his first letter to Timothy to those elders ‘who labour in preaching and teaching’ (1 Tim. 5:17), and described to the Colossians his ‘toil, striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me’ (Col. 1:29–2:1; cf. 1 Tim. 4:10) in a context which seems to refer to the prayer-battle in which he was engaged on their behalf.
The blessing, of God rested upon the ministry of the apostle Paul in quite exceptional measure. No doubt many explanations of this could be given. But I find myself wondering if we attribute it sufficiently to the zeal and zest, the almost obsessional devotion, with which he gave himself to the work. He gave and did not count the cost; he fought and did not heed the wounds; he toiled and did not seek for rest; he laboured and asked for no reward except the joy of doing his Lord’s will. And God prospered his efforts. Again, it is ‘the hardworking farmer’ who gets a good crop.
So far, then, we have looked at the first three metaphors with which Paul illustrates the duties of the Christian worker. By them he has isolated three aspects of wholeheartedness which should be found in Timothy, and in all those who like Timothy seek to pass on to others ‘the good deposit’ they have themselves received: the dedication of a good soldier, the law-abiding obedience of a good athlete and the painstaking labour of a good farmer. Without these we cannot expect results. There will be no victory for the soldier unless he gives himself to his soldiering, no wreath for the athlete unless he keeps the rules, and no harvest for the farmer unless he toils at his farming.
5. The Way to Understanding (verse 7)
This verse concludes the first paragraph of the chapter. There is an important biblical balance here. If Timothy is to know and understand the truth, not least as expressed in the metaphors Paul has just employed, two processes will be necessary, the one human and the other divine. Timothy himself must ‘think over’ or ‘reflect on’ (NEB) the apostle’s teaching, listening to it carefully and applying his mind to it. For then the Lord will grant him understanding in everything. According to this better text, which the RSV follows, what Paul here expresses is a promise, and not merely a wish.
There are at least two important implications of this combination of human study and divine illumination for anybody who wants to inherit the promised gift of understanding from the Lord.
First, if we are to receive understanding from the Lord, we must consider what the apostle is saying. This is a good example of Paul’s self-conscious apostolic authority. He commands Timothy to ponder his teaching and promises that the Lord will grant him ‘understanding in everything’ if he does so. He sees nothing anomalous about claiming that his teaching as an apostle merits careful study, or that it can be interpreted by the Lord alone, or that this is the way for Timothy to grow in understanding. It is clear evidence that Paul believed his teaching to be not his own but the Lord’s. Indeed, in the following verses, almost imperceptibly, he equates ‘my gospel’ (8) with ‘the word of God’ (9).
Secondly, if we are to receive understanding from the Lord, we must consider what the apostle is saying. Some Christians never get down to any serious Bible study. The reason may of course be purely ‘carnal’, namely that they are too lazy. Alternatively, it may be ‘spiritual’ (though I fear I would have to call it ‘pseudo-spiritual’), namely that they believe understanding will come to them from the Holy Spirit and not from their own studies (which is a totally false antithesis). So all they do is to skim through some Bible verses in a haphazard and desultory fashion, hoping (and even praying) that the Holy Spirit will show them what it all means. But they do not obey the apostle’s command, ‘Think over what I say.’
Others are very good at Bible study. They are ‘hardworking farmers’, as it were. They use their minds and grapple with the text of Scripture. They compare versions, consult concordances and pore over commentaries. But they forget that it is the Lord alone who imparts understanding, and that he imparts it as a gift.
So we must not divorce what God has joined together. For the understanding of Scripture a balanced combination of thought and prayer is essential. We must do the considering, and the Lord will do the giving of understanding.
6. Suffering a Condition of Blessing (verses 8–13)
We come now to a new paragraph before the apostle introduces three more metaphors to illustrate the role of the Christian worker. So far we may summarize his theme by the epigram ‘nothing that is easy is ever worth while’, or rather the reverse ‘nothing that is worth while is ever easy’. No soldier, athlete or farmer expects results without labour or suffering. Here Paul continues the same theme. But having illustrated it by metaphor, he goes on to enforce it from experience—the experience first of Christ (8), then of himself as an apostle (9, 10) and lastly of all Christian believers (11–13).
a. The experience of Christ (verse 8)
The command to ‘remember Jesus Christ’ at first sight seems extraordinary. How could Timothy ever forget him? Yet the human memory is notoriously fickle: it is possible to forget even one’s own name! The epitaph over Israel’s grave was ‘they soon forgot’, and it was to overcome our forgetfulness of Christ crucified that he deliberately instituted his supper as a feast of remembrance, a fragrant ‘forget-me-not’. Even so the church has often forgotten Jesus Christ, absorbing itself instead now in barren theological debate, now in purely humanitarian activity, now in its own petty, parochial business.
How and why, then, are we to remember Christ? Essentially because he is the gospel, the heart of the good deposit. Indeed, Paul expresses it, he is the heart of ‘my gospel’, the gospel ‘not invented by me but entrusted to me’,7 like ‘my deposit’ (1:12). So then, if Timothy is to guard the deposit, and to hand it on faithfully to others, he must ‘remember Jesus Christ … as preached in my gospel’.
In particular, Christ is to be remembered as the one who is both ‘risen from the dead’ and ‘descended from David’. As we meditate on these two expressions, it is remarkable how full an account of the gospel they give. The birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are all implicit in them. And these remind us both of his divine-human person and of his saving work.
First, his person. The words ‘descended from David’ imply his humanity, for they speak of his earthly descent from David. The words ‘risen from the dead’ imply his divinity, for he was powerfully designated God’s Son by his resurrection from the dead.8
Secondly, his work. The phrase ‘risen from the dead’ indicates that he died for our sins and was raised to prove the efficacy of his sinbearing sacrifice. The phrase ‘descended from David’ indicates that he has established his kingdom as great David’s greater Son (cf. Lk. 1:32, 33). Taken together, the two phrases seem to allude to his double role as Saviour and King.
There is another reason why Timothy must ‘remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David’. It is not just because these facts constitute the gospel which Timothy must preach, but because they also illustrate, from Jesus Christ’s own experience, the principle that death is the gateway to life and suffering the path to glory. For he who died rose from the dead, and he who was born in lowliness as David’s seed is now reigning in glory on David’s throne. Both expressions set forth in embryonic form the contrast between humiliation and exaltation.
‘So then, Timothy,’ the apostle seems to be saying, ‘when you are tempted to avoid pain, humiliation, suffering or death in your ministry, remember Jesus Christ and think again!’
b. The experience of the apostle Paul (verses 9, 10)
Paul is suffering for the gospel. He is having to endure the painful indignity of wearing chains ‘like a common criminal’ (NEB)—the only other occurrence of the word in the New Testament is of the criminals crucified with Jesus (Lk. 23:32, 33)—although he is a Roman citizen and an innocent man. But, though he is chained, God’s word is not. Even he himself at his first defence had been given the opportunity and the strength fully to proclaim God’s word to the court, as he will later explain to Timothy in greater detail (4:16, 17). In addition, God’s word could spread (was spreading) through many others, and in particular Timothy must share increasingly in this work.
The relation between Paul’s sufferings and the effectiveness of the gospel is not just one of contrast, however: ‘I am chained; God’s word is not.’ It is actually one of cause and effect: ‘Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain … salvation.’ We notice in passing that the doctrine of election does not dispense with the necessity of preaching. On the contrary, it makes it essential. For Paul preaches and suffers for it (literally) ‘in order that’ they ‘may obtain the salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory’. The elect obtain salvation in Christ not apart from the preaching of Christ but by means of it.
Further, it is not just the preaching but also the resultant suffering which are the means of the elect’s salvation. Paul’s statement that in some sense the salvation of others is secured by his sufferings may at first astonish us. Yet it is so. Not of course that his sufferings have any redemptive efficacy like Christ’s, but that the elect are saved through the gospel and that he could not preach the gospel without suffering for it. It is another case of ‘glory through suffering’, the ‘eternal glory’ of the elect through the sufferings endured by the apostle.
c. Our common Christian experience (verses 11–13)
Paul now quotes a current saying or fragment of an early Christian hymn which he pronounces reliable.9 It consists of two pairs of epigrams, which are general axioms of Christian life and experience. They apply equally to all believers. The first pair relates to those who remain true and endure, the second pair to those who become false and faithless.
‘If we have died with him, we shall also live with him;
if we endure, we shall also reign with him’ (11b, 12a).
The death with Christ which is here mentioned must refer, according to the context, not to our death to sin through union with Christ in his death, but rather to our death to self and to safety, as we take up the cross and follow Christ. The former Paul describes in Romans 6:3 (‘do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?’); the latter he expresses both in 1 Corinthians 15:31 (‘I die every day’) and in 2 Corinthians 4:10 (‘always carrying in the body the death of Jesus’). That this is the meaning in the hymn fragments seems plain from the fact that to ‘have died with Christ’ and to ‘endure’ are parallel expressions.
So the Christian life is depicted as a life of dying, a life of enduring. Only if we share Christ’s death on earth, shall we share his life in heaven. Only if we share his sufferings and endure, shall we share his reign in the hereafter. For the road to life is death, and the road to glory suffering (cf. Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 4:17).
‘If we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself’ (12b, 13).
This other pair of epigrams envisages the dreadful possibility of our denying Christ and proving faithless. The first phrase ‘if we deny him, he also will deny us’ seems to be an echo of our Lord’s own warning: ‘whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven’ (Mt. 10:33).
What then of the second phrase ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful’? It has often been taken as a comforting assurance that, even if we turn away from Christ, he will not turn away from us, for he will never be faithless as we are. And it is true, of course, that God never exhibits the fickleness or the faithlessness of man. Yet the logic of the Christian hymn, with its two pairs of balancing epigrams, really demands a different interpretation. ‘If we deny him’ and ‘if we are faithless’ are parallels, which requires that ‘he will deny us’ and ‘he remains faithful’ be parallels also. In this case his ‘faithfulness’ when we are faithless will be faithfulness to his warnings. As William Hendriksen puts it: ‘Faithfulness on his part means carrying out his threats … as well as his promises.’10 So he will deny us, as the earlier epigram asserts. Indeed, if he did not deny us (in faithfulness to his plain warnings), he would then deny himself. But one thing is certain about God beyond any doubt or uncertainty whatever, and that is ‘he cannot deny himself’.
The idea that there may be something which God ‘cannot’ do is entirely foreign to some people. Can he not do anything and everything? Are not all things possible to him? Is he not omnipotent? Yes, but God’s omnipotence needs to be understood. God is not a totalitarian tyrant that he should exercise his power arbitrarily and do absolutely anything whatsoever. God’s omnipotence is the freedom and the power to do absolutely anything he chooses to do. But he chooses only to do good, only to work according to the perfection of his character and will. God can do everything consistent with being himself. The one and only thing he cannot do, because he will not, is to deny himself or act contrary to himself. So God remains for ever himself, the same God of mercy and of justice, fulfilling his promises (whether of blessing or of judgment), giving us life if we die with Christ and a kingdom if we endure, but denying us if we deny him, just as he warned, because he cannot deny himself.
Looking back over the first half of this chapter (verses 1 to 13), the apostle Paul seems to have been hammering home a single lesson. From secular analogy (soldiers, athletes, farmers) and from spiritual experience (Christ’s, his own, every Christian’s) he has been insisting that blessing comes through pain, fruit through toil, life through death, and glory through suffering. It is an invariable law of Christian life and service.
So why should we expect things to be easy for us or promise an easy time to others? Neither human wisdom nor divine revelation gives us such an expectation. Why then do we deceive ourselves and others? The truth is the reverse, namely ‘no pains, no gains’ or ‘no cross, no crown’.
It is this principle which took Jesus Christ through a lowly birth and a shameful death to his glorious resurrection and heavenly reign. It is this principle which had brought Paul his chains and prison cell, in order that the elect might obtain salvation and glory. It is the same principle which makes the soldier willing to endure hardship, the athlete discipline and the farmer toil. It would be ridiculous, therefore, to expect our Christian life and service to cost us nothing.
In the second part of 2 Timothy 2 (verses 14–26), Paul continues his vivid portrayal of Timothy in his role of teaching and transmitting the faith, and therefore by derivation of every Christian minister, teacher or worker. He now uses three more metaphors—the ‘workman who has no need to be ashamed’ (15), the ‘vessel for noble use’ (21) and ‘the Lord’s servant’ (24). Each adds a further feature to the portrait.
7. Metaphor IV: The Unashamed Workman (verses 14–19)
We will leave verse 14 aside for the moment and proceed straight to verse 15. Several facts are immediately evident from this exhortation to Timothy to aim to be an unashamed workman.
First, the kind of work the Christian workman does is teaching. He is called to handle ‘the word of truth’.
Secondly, there are two kinds of workman. On the one hand, there are those who are ‘approved’, ‘tried and true’ (AG), who having been tested like coins or metals and passed the test are recognized as ‘sterling’;11 on the other hand there are those who are not approved, because they fail the test. The former group have ‘no need to be ashamed’, while the latter ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves.
Thirdly, the difference between these two categories concerns their handling or treatment of ‘the word of truth’, the good deposit.
So Paul sets these two kinds of teacher in contrast, and supplies an example of each. Timothy (15) is to be a good workman, approved and not ashamed. Hymenaeus and Philetus (17), however, are bad workmen who have forfeited God’s approval (whatever approval they may have obtained from men) and have every reason to be ashamed.
Further, the work of these good and bad workmen is summed up in pregnant verbs. The good workman ‘cuts straight’ (15, literally) the word of truth; the bad workman ‘swerves’ (18) or deviates from the truth. We must look at these more fully and separately.
a. The good workman
The verb in verse 15 (orthotomeō), translated in RSV ‘rightly handling’ means literally not to ‘divide rightly’ (AV) but to ‘cut straight’. It is a very unusual word and occurs three times only in biblical Greek, once in the New Testament (this verse) and twice in the book of Proverbs, where in 3:6 we read ‘He will make straight your paths’, and in 11:5 ‘The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight’.
How then is ‘the word of truth’ being pictured that Timothy is commanded to make or cut it straight? Not as a sacrificial victim to be cut into pieces, as some ancient commentators thought; nor as a loaf, so that ‘Paul assigns to teachers the duty of carving or dividing the Word, like a father dividing the bread into small pieces to feed the children’;12 nor as a ribbon to be cut into strips, or a plot into allotments, as some modern dispensationalists teach; nor even, I think, as a stone which masons cut to fit into a building, as C. K. Barrett suggests;13 but rather as a road or path or—to be more modern—as a motorway or freeway needs to be cut straight through the countryside. Thus, Arndt and Gingrich define the verb as meaning to ‘ “cut a path in a straight direction” or “cut a road across country (that is forested or otherwise difficult to pass through) in a straight direction”, so that the traveller may go directly to his destination’. Or, possibly, the metaphor may be taken rather from ploughing than from roadmaking, so that the NEB, following Chrysostom, renders it ‘driving a straight furrow in your proclamation of the truth’.
‘The word of truth’ is the apostolic faith which Timothy has received from Paul and is to communicate to others. For us it is, quite simply, Scripture. To ‘cut it straight’ or ‘make it a straight path’ is to be accurate on the one hand and plain on the other in our exposition. Apparently Sophocles used the word for ‘to expound soundly’ (MM). Thus the good workman is true to Scripture. He does not falsify it.14 Nor does he try to confuse people, like Elymas the sorcerer, by ‘making crooked the straight paths of the Lord’ (Acts 13:10). On the contrary, he handles the word with such scrupulous care that he both stays on the path himself, keeping to the highway and avoiding the byways, and makes it easy for others to follow.
b. The bad workman
The metaphor Paul employs to describe the bad workman is taken neither from civil engineering nor from agriculture but from archery. So now the truth is likened not to a road being built or a furrow being ploughed but to a target being shot at. The verb (18) is astocheō, which comes from stochos, a ‘target’, and means to ‘miss the mark’ and so to ‘deviate’ from something. It occurs three times in the Pastoral Epistles:
‘Certain persons by swerving from these (sc. genuine love, a good conscience and sincere faith) have wandered away into vain discussion’ (1 Tim. 1:16). ‘For by professing it (sc. ‘what is falsely called knowledge’) some have missed the mark as regards the faith’ (1 Tim. 6:21). ‘Who have swerved from the truth …’ or as in NEB, ‘shot wide of the truth’ (2 Tim. 2:18).
We are now in a position to grasp the alternative which Paul sets before every Christian teacher entrusted with the word of truth, and which determines whether he will be a good or a bad workman.
The word of truth is a target. As he shoots at this target, he will either hit it or miss it.
The word of truth is a road. As he cuts this road through the forest, he will make it either straight or crooked.
As a result of what he does, that is, how he teaches, others are bound to be affected, for better or for worse. If he cuts the road straight, people will be able to follow and so keep in the way. If, on the other hand, he misses the mark, the attention of the spectators will be distracted from the target and their eyes will follow the arrow however widely astray it has gone.
Of this grave danger Paul warns Timothy here. There were some in Asia who were teaching serious error. Instead of preaching Paul’s gospel which included ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead’ (8), the pledge and pattern of his people’s resurrection, they were saying ‘that the resurrection is past already’ (18). Of course in one sense it is, in that Christ has risen and his people have already risen with him. Yet the resurrection of the body lies still in the future. The false teachers, however, were denying any bodily resurrection to come (cf. Acts 17:32; 1 Cor. 15:12). They were perhaps early Gnostics to whom the body was an evil encumbrance and the concept of any bodily resurrection therefore as inconceivable as it was undesirable. So they ‘spiritualized’ it as a release from the flesh through gnōsis (knowledge), or by asserting that the promise of resurrection had been entirely fulfilled when by faith and baptism we were raised with Christ. Similarly today some ‘demythologize’ the resurrection and speak only of faith rising in the Christian’s heart.
Such heretics were substituting for ‘the word of truth’ what Paul calls ‘disputing about words’ (14). The verb he employs here (logomacheō) occur nowhere else in the New Testament, although the noun logomachia, ‘word-battle’ (AG), is found in 1 Timothy 6:4 and some MSS of Titus 3:9. He seems to be referring to something ‘like the hair-splittings of the schoolmen’15 in the middle ages. Elsewhere he calls it ‘godless chatter’ (16, kenophōnia or ‘empty talk’).16
Paul’s instruction to Timothy about such bad workmen or false teachers is to ‘avoid’ them: ‘… charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers’ (14). ‘Avoid such godless chatter, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will eat its way like gangrene’ (16, 17a).
The damage caused by such false teaching is double. It is both ‘godless’ and ‘gangrenous’. That is, in the first place, it leads people away from God. What verse 16 literally says is that those who hold such teaching ‘advance into more and more ungodliness’. It is hardly an ‘advance’, however. As Patrick Fairbairn comments,17 it is ‘a forward movement in the wrong direction’. In the second place, it spreads its infection in the community. Three times Paul reiterates this for emphasis: It ‘does no good, but only ruins the hearers’ (14b). ‘Their teachings are as dangerous as blood poisoning to the body and spread like sepsis from a wound’ (17 JBP). ‘They are upsetting the faith of some’ (18b).
These two tendencies of heresy are most revealing. We would be wise to ask ourselves regarding every kind of teaching both what its attitude is towards God and what effect it has upon men. There is invariably something about error which is dishonouring to God and damaging to men. The truth, on the other hand, always honours God, promoting godliness (cf. Tit. 1:16), and always edifies its hearers. Instead of causing a katastrophē (14), upsetting them or turning them upside down, it builds them up in faith, love and holiness.
Although the faith of men can be upset (18b), the foundation of God remains secure. This is the true church which he is building. It has a twofold ‘seal’ or ‘inscription’ (JBP, NEB). The first is secret and invisible, namely ‘The Lord knows those who are his’ and will therefore keep them safe for ever. The second is public and visible, namely ‘Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity’, and so let him prove that he belongs to the Lord by his holiness. The reference is probably to the Old Testament story of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, from which incident both quotations come (Nu. 16:5, 26). Ultimately, Paul is saying, it is only the Lord who knows and recognizes his own people, and can tell the true from the spurious, for only he sees the heart. But though we cannot see the heart, we can see the life, which is the one reliable evidence of the heart’s condition, and is apparent to all. Both ‘seals’ are essential, however, the divine and the human, the unseen and the seen. Together they bear witness to ‘God’s firm foundation’, his true church.
It is doubtless the reference to the necessity of departing from evil which leads Paul to the next metaphor.
8. Metaphor V: The Clean Vessel (verses 20–22)
The picture which the apostle is conjuring up is clear. Every house is equipped with vessels or utensils of different kinds, pots and pans and dishes and the like. In a ‘great house’ or stately mansion these are many and varied. They may be divided approximately into two groups. There are the ‘vessels of gold and silver’, which are ‘for noble use’, possibly ‘for special occasions’ (JB), and in particular for the personal service of the master of the house. There are also vessels ‘of wood and earthenware’, which, apart from being of cheaper quality in themselves, are reserved for ignoble or menial use in the kitchen and the scullery.
To what is the apostle alluding by this metaphor? There can be little doubt that the ‘great house’ is God’s house, the visible or professing church. But what are the ‘vessels’? The use of the term elsewhere in the New Testament suggests that they stand not simply for members of the church, but for the church’s teachers. For example, Jesus had said to Ananias about the newly converted Saul of Tarsus: ‘he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel’ (Acts 9:15). Years later Paul described himself and his fellow-workers by a similar image when he wrote: ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7). In these verses ‘instrument’ and ‘vessel’ translate the same Greek word (skeuos) as Paul is now using in his letter to Timothy. A skeuos was any kind of utensil. It is true that when he called himself an earthen vessel he was applying the metaphor differently, for he was there emphasizing his physical infirmity, and not implying that he was fit only for ignoble use. Nevertheless, the theme of service is prominent in each verse. As a ‘vessel’ Paul’s function was to carry Christ’s name before unbelievers, and in the earthenware vessel he carried the treasure of the gospel, as a fragile pottery lamp carries the light.
From this usage I think we would be justified in concluding that the two sets of vessels in the great house (gold and silver for noble use, wood and earthenware for ignoble) represent not genuine and spurious members of the church but true and false teachers in the church. Paul is still, in fact, referring to the two sets of teachers he has contrasted in the previous paragraph, the authentic like Timothy and the bogus like Hymenaeus and Alexander. The only difference is that he changes the metaphor from good and bad workmen to noble and ignoble vessels.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the privilege which the apostle here sets before Timothy in verse 21. Indeed he extends it to any and every Christian minister or worker who will fulfil the condition, for his statement is couched in quite general terms: ‘if anyone purifies himself’. The privilege is described by simple, yet beautiful expressions. ‘He will be a vessel for noble use.’ This is then elaborated by three further expressions: ‘consecrated’ (permanently set apart), ‘useful (or ‘serviceable’) to the master of the house’ and ‘ready for any good work’. No higher honour could be imagined than to be an instrument in the hand of Jesus Christ, to be at his disposal for the furtherance of his purposes, to be available whenever wanted for his service.
The master of the house lays down only one condition. The vessels which he uses must be clean. His promise hinges on this. It is evident at once that some kind of self-purification is the indispensable condition of usefulness to Christ, but exactly what is it? The words ‘from what is ignoble’ are the RSV interpretation of apo toutōn ‘from these’ (plural), and ‘these’ must refer back to the ‘vessels for ignoble use’ of the previous verse. In what sense, then, are we to purify ourselves from these? It cannot mean that we are to cut adrift from all nominal church members whom we suspect of being spurious, and secede from the visible church, for Jesus indicated in his parable that the weeds had been sown among the wheat and could not be successfully separated from them until the harvest. Besides, we have already seen that it is teachers rather than members who are indicated by the two sorts of vessels. This fact and the context suggest, therefore, that we are to hold ourselves aloof from the kind of false teachers who, like Hymenaeus and Philetus, both deny some fundamental of the gospel and (according to 1 Tim. 1:19, 20) have also violated their conscience and lapsed into some form of unrighteousness. But Paul’s condition is more radical even than this. What we are to avoid is not so much contact with such men as their error and their evil. To purify ourselves ‘from these’ is essentially to purge their falsehood from our minds and their wickedness from our hearts and lives. Purity, then—purity of doctrine and purity of life—is the essential condition of being serviceable to Christ.
That this is the correct interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the metaphor of the great house and its vessels (verses 20 and 21) is sandwiched in between two clear allusions to personal holiness: ‘Let every one who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity’ (19) and ‘So shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness …’ (22). It is perfectly true that in his sovereign providence God has sometimes chosen to use impure vessels as the instruments both of his judgment and of his salvation. In Old Testament days he described pagan Assyria as ‘the rod of my anger’, with which he smote recalcitrant Israel, and which he then discarded (Is. 10:5 ff.). He also called the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ‘my servant’ through whom he judged his people, and the Persian king Cyrus his ‘shepherd’ and his ‘anointed’ through whom he redeemed them (Je. 25:9; 27:6; 43:10 and Is. 44:28; 45:1). But these were exceptional cases; they were also national, rather than personal. The overwhelming emphasis of Scripture is that God chooses to use clean vessels, ‘instruments of righteousness’ (Rom 6:13), for the fulfilment of his purposes. Certainly in Paul’s exhortation to Timothy he must purify himself if he is to be fit for the Master to use.
The apostle now elaborates what he means in an outspoken appeal which is both negative and positive. Negatively, Timothy is to ‘shun youthful passions’. This is not to be understood exclusively as a reference to sexual lust, but to ‘self-assertion as well as self-indulgence’,18 to selfish ambition, headstrong obstinacy, arrogance and indeed all the ‘wayward impulses of youth’ (NEB). Positively, Timothy is to ‘aim at’ the four essential marks of a Christian—‘righteousness, faith, love and peace’—and he is to pursue these in good company (maybe to compensate for the company he will have to avoid if he is to ‘purify himself from what is ignoble’), the company of those ‘who call upon the Lord from a pure heart’, that is, who share with Timothy the same hunger for righteousness and who with unalloyed sincerity cry to God to satisfy their hunger.
As we listen to Paul’s moral exhortation, it is important not to miss the sharp contrast between its negative and positive aspects and in particular between the two verbs ‘shun’ and ‘aim at’. Both are strongly suggestive. Pheugō (‘shun’) means literally to ‘seek safety in flight’ or ‘escape’ (AG). It is used literally of flight from physical danger, as when Moses fled from Pharaoh’s wrath and the holy family from Herod’s (Acts 7:29; Mt. 2:13). So too the hireling flees from the wolf; and the Judean Christians, when in AD 70 Jerusalem was surrounded by the legions of Rome, were to flee to the mountains (Jn. 10:12, 13; Lk. 21:21). In just the same way, when the verb is used figuratively, it denotes flight from spiritual danger. All sinners are urged to ‘flee from the wrath to come’ (Mt. 3:7). All Christians are commanded to flee from idolatry, from immorality, from the spirit of materialism and the love of money, and here from youthful passions (1 Cor. 10:14; 6:18; 1 Tim. 6:11). True, we are also told to withstand the devil, so that he may flee from us (Jas. 4:7). But we are to recognize sin as something dangerous to the soul. We are not to come to terms with it, or even negotiate with it. We are not to linger in its presence like Lot in Sodom (Gn. 19:15, 16). On the contrary we are to get as far away from it as possible as quickly as possible. Like Joseph, when Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce him, we are to take to our heels and run (Gn. 39:12).
The verb diōkō (‘aim at’) is the exact opposite. For if pheugō means to run away from, diōkō means to run after, to ‘pursue, chase, in war or hunting’ (LS). Its distinctive literal use in the New Testament (about 30 times) is of persecution. Paul himself uses it to describe his pre-conversion activities, how he violently persecuted God’s church (Gal. 1:13) and in his raging fury against the Christians even harried them out of Jewry into foreign cities (Acts 26:11). Metaphorically, this verb is used to portray the Christian’s pursuit of the will of God. Under the figure of a chariot-race Paul describes himself as straining forward with eagerness, and adds ‘I press on’ and again ‘I press on toward the goal’ (Phil. 3:12, 14). In particular, the Christian is urged19 to pursue moral righteousness with the same assiduity with which the Jews pursued legal righteousness (Rom. 9:31). In other passages this righteousness or ‘holiness’ (Heb. 12:14) is broken up into its constituent parts and supplemented with other virtues. Thus, we are to go in hot pursuit of ‘righteousness, faith, love and peace’ (here) or ‘righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness’ (1 Tim. 6:11), or simply ‘love’ (1 Cor. 14:1), and specially that love for strangers called ‘hospitality’ (Rom. 12:13) and the ‘good’ of others which love always seeks (1 Thes. 5:15), or simply ‘peace’, that all-inclusive grace, together with ‘what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding’ (Heb. 12:14a; 1 Pet. 3:11 quoting Ps. 34:15; Rom. 14:19). In all these verses the same verb diōkō ‘pursue’ is used.
So, then, putting back together these two parts of Paul’s exhortation which we have studied in separation, we are both to run away from spiritual danger and to run after spiritual good, both to flee from the one in order to escape it and to pursue the other in order to attain it. This double duty of Christians—negative and positive—is the consistent, reiterated teaching of Scripture. Thus, we are to deny ourselves and to follow Christ. We are to put off what belongs to our old life and to put on what belongs to our new life. We are to put to death our earthly members and to set our minds on heavenly things. We are to crucify the flesh and to walk in the Spirit. It is the ruthless rejection of the one in combination with the relentless pursuit of the other which Scripture enjoins upon us as the secret of holiness. Only so can we hope to be fit for the Master’s use. If the promise is to be inherited (‘he will be a vessel for noble use’), the condition must be fulfilled (‘if any one purifies himself from what is ignoble’).
9. Metaphor VI: The Lord’s Servant (verses 23–26)
The metaphor changes yet again. The vessel in the house becomes a slave in the household. The skeuos is transformed into a doulos. But before outlining the kind of behaviour fitting to the Lord’s servant, Paul sets the context in which he has to live and work. He reverts to the ‘wordy debates’ of verse 14 and the ‘godless chatter’ of verse 16.
The word translated ‘controversies’ (23) (zētēsis, a singular noun) is normally used in one of two senses. It means either an ‘investigation’, like the legal enquiry into charges against Paul which Festus told King Agrippa he was at a loss to know how to make (Acts 25:20), or a ‘discussion’ like the debate between the apostles and the Judaizers over circumcision (Acts 15:2, 7). If it is used here in the former sense, it will refer to some kind of philosophical investigation and could be translated ‘speculation’. But if it is used in the latter sense, the allusion will be to a ‘controversy’.
The word occurs three times in the Pastoral Epistles, once in each letter (1 Tim. 6:4; 2 Tim. 2:23; Tit. 3:9), or four times if the slightly stronger word ekzētēsis is added (1 Tim. 1:4). This latter word certainly seems to mean a ‘useless speculation’ (AG). In the context it is the fruit of a preoccupation with ‘myths and endless genealogies’. At the end of the same letter, however, the word zētēseis (plural) is coupled with logomachiai, meaning ‘word-battles’, both of which are said to ‘produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions and wrangling’ (1 Tim. 6:4, 5a). So there the emphasis is rather upon heated controversy.
Perhaps there is no need to choose between the two meanings. They certainly appear to be combined in Titus 3:9 where Titus is told to avoid four things—‘controversies (zētēseis), genealogies (the speculative idea again), dissensions (ereis) and quarrels (machas, ‘battles’) over the law’. This last word is prominent in 2 Timothy 2 also, for in verse 23 Paul warns that zētēseis ‘breed quarrels’ (machas again), and forbids people, in verse 14, logomachein (to dispute about words; cf. 1 Tim. 6:4) or in verse 24 machesthai (to quarrel or fight). Calvin’s expression ‘quarrelsome speculation’20 neatly unites both emphases.
What, then, is being prohibited to Timothy, and through him to all the Lord’s servants and ministers today? We cannot conclude that this is a prohibition of all controversy. For when the truth of the gospel was at stake Paul himself had been an ardent controversialist, even to the extent of opposing the apostle Peter to his face in public (Gal. 2:11–14). Besides, in these very Pastoral Epistles he is urging Timothy and Titus to guard the sacred deposit of the truth and contend for it. Every Christian must in some sense ‘fight the good fight of the faith’ (1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7), seeking to defend and preserve it. What is forbidden us is controversies which in themselves are ‘stupid and senseless’ and in their effect ‘breed quarrels’. They are ‘stupid’ or ‘futile’ (JB) because they are speculative. For the same reason they are ‘senseless’ (apaideutos), literally ‘uninstructed’ or even ‘undisciplined’, because they go beyond Scripture and do not submit to the intellectual discipline which Scripture should impose upon us. They also inevitably ‘breed quarrels’ because when people forsake revelation for speculation, they have no agreed authority and no impartial court of appeal. They lapse into pure subjectivism and so into profitless argument in which one man’s opinion is as good (or bad) as another’s. If only the church had heeded this warning! The combination of unbiblical speculations and uncharitable polemics has done great damage to the cause of Christ.
The fundamental characteristic of ‘the Lord’s servant’ is to be ‘gentleness’ (24, 25a). We have already seen that he is called to a teaching ministry. He therefore needs to be ‘an apt teacher’ (didaktikos), endowed with a gift or aptitude for teaching. His instruction will sometimes have to be negative as well as positive That is to say, he is called not only to teach the truth to the people committed to his care, but also to correct error. He must not shrink from ‘correcting his opponents’, the ‘people who dispute what he says’ (JB). But in all his ministry, instructing and correcting alike, he will exhibit the same distinctive quality. He ‘must not be quarrelsome’. Instead, he will be ‘kindly to everyone … forbearing’ and characterized by ‘gentleness’. The first word (ēpios) means ‘mild’ and is used by Paul to describe the attitude of ‘a nurse taking care of her children’ (1 Thes. 2:7). The second word (anexikakos) means literally ‘bearing evil without resentment’ (AG) and so forbearing of people’s unkindness, patient towards their foolishness and tolerant of their foibles. The last word of the three (praütēs) adds to the gentleness portrayed by the other two the notes of ‘humility, courtesy, considerateness and meekness’ (AG). Its opposite is to be brash, haughty and rude.
All this is the demeanour which is fitting in ‘the Lord’s servant’ and is, of course, deliberately reminiscent of ‘the servant of the Lord’ portrayed in the ‘servant songs’ of Isaiah. That servant was a teacher, for the Lord God gave him ‘the tongue of those who are taught’, and he used it wisely. He knew ‘how to sustain with a word him that is weary’. So meek was he in his ministry that he would never shout or make a noise, and so sensitive that he would deal gently with people whose courage had been bruised and whose faith burned low. He would never break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. And when people rose up in opposition to him he did not resist or retaliate. He gave his back to the smiters, his checks to those who pulled out his beard, his face to those who spat upon him, and eventually allowed himself to be led like a sheep silent and unresisting to the slaughter (Is. 50:4; 42:2, 3; 50:6; 53:7). Such was Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord’s servant par excellence, who described himself as ‘gentle and lowly in heart’ (Mt. 11:29). And this same ‘meekness and gentleness of Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:1) must characterize all who claim to be the Lord’s servants today.
Moreover, if the Lord’s servant adorns his Christian teaching with a Christian character, and if he is meek in his dealings with the wayward, ‘correcting his opponents with gentleness’, lasting good may follow. God himself, through such a gentle ministry, may perform a conspicuous work of salvation.
We must observe carefully in verses 25b, 26 how these opponents of apostolic truth are regarded. They are evidently sinful, for they need to ‘repent’, and also in error for they need to ‘come to know the truth’. But most striking of all is that the evil and the error in which they are involved are both seen as symptoms of ‘the snare of the devil’ from whom they need to be rescued. And further, important as is the part played by the gentle servant of the Lord in correcting them, it is God who gives or grants (dōē) them repentance, God who illumines their mind to acknowledge the truth, and God who liberates them from Satan’s power.
Although the RSV is not incorrect in its rendering of the first two as separate stages (‘repent and come to know the truth’), the Greek expression is literally ‘grant them repentance unto (eis) acknowledgment of truth’, thus making their acknowledgment of the truth the consequence of their repentance. It is a good example of the strong link which Scripture everywhere forges between the moral and the intellectual. Everybody knows that our belief conditions our behaviour, but not everybody is so clear that our behaviour also conditions our belief. Just as to violate our conscience leads to the shipwreck of our faith (1 Tim. 1:19), so to repent of our sin leads to an acknowledgment of the truth.
There is some uncertainty about the last phrase of verse 26 ‘after being captured by him to do his will’. It is not clear whether the him (who captures them) and the his (whose will they do) relate to God or to the devil. Some commentators think that both refer to God and thus describe the divine capture which secures the people’s escape from the devil. They are ‘caught now by God and made subject to his will’ (NEB mg.). The verb ‘captured’ is zōgreō and means to ‘capture alive’ (AG). Its only other New Testament use is in Luke 5:10, where Jesus tells Peter the fisherman that in future he will ‘catch men’. Perhaps for this reason some commentators attribute the capture to the Lord’s servant himself; e.g. Lock: ‘May it not even be that I shall be a fisher of men, and save them alive, and bring them back to do their true Master’s will?’21
Others think that the captivity is the devil’s, although the will is God’s. In this case the people ‘escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him, to do his (that is, God’s) will’ (RSV mg.).
But most commentators seem to follow AV and RSV in taking both ‘him’ and ‘his’ as relating to the devil. In this case the phrase is simply enlarging on what is meant by the snare of Satan. In it ‘the devil caught them and kept them enslaved’ (JB). If this is correct, it enables us to see behind stage in every Christian evangelistic and teaching ministry. Behind the scenes, invisible to men on the stage and in the audience, a spiritual battle is being fought out. The devil’s grim activity is graphically depicted. He is likened to a hunter who captures his quarry alive in some clever ‘snare’ or trap. He also drugs or inebriates them, for the word used of his captives’ escape (ananēphō) means literally to ‘become sober’ or ‘come to one’s senses again’ (AG) after a period of diabolical intoxication. From such a captivity, in which men are both trapped and doped by the devil, only God can deliver them by giving them repentance unto an acknowledgment of the truth. Yet he effects the rescue through the human ministry of one of his servants, who avoids quarrelling and teaches with kindness, forbearance and gentleness.
Looking back over the chapter, we are now able to picture in our minds the composite portrait of the ideal Christian minister or worker which Paul has been painting with a variety of words and images. As good soldiers, law-abiding athletes and hardworking farmers, we must be utterly dedicated to our work. As unashamed workmen we must be accurate and clear in our exposition. As vessels for noble use we must be righteous in our character and conduct. And as the Lord’s servants we must be courteous and gentle in our manner. Thus each metaphor concentrates on a particular characteristic which contributes to the portrait as a whole, and in fact lays down a condition of usefulness. Only if we give ourselves without reserve to our soldiering, running and farming can we expect results. Only if we cut the truth straight and do not swerve from it shall we be approved by God and have no need to be ashamed. Only if we purify ourselves from what is ignoble, from all sin and error, shall we be vessels for noble use, serviceable to the Master of the house. Only if we are gentle and not quarrelsome, as the Lord’s true servants, will God grant our adversaries repentance, knowledge of the truth and deliverance from the devil.
Such is our heavy responsibility to labour and suffer for the gospel. No wonder the chapter began with an exhortation to ‘be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus’.