2 Timothy 2:8-15 Commentary

While verse 14 falls near the end of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, it’s at least arguably central to it. After all, while translations like the NIV separate it with a paragraph break from the rest of this Lesson, it can be seen as speaking to both what follows and precedes that break that translators have inserted.

“Keep reminding them [hypomimneske*],” insists Paul in verse 14, “of these things [tauta].” Of course, that summons quickly raises two questions about this pivotal verse. Who is the “them” Paul wants Timothy to remind of tauta (“these things”)? While the apostle doesn’t identify Timothy’s “target audience,” it’s hard to imagine he has in mind people who have troubled him like Phygelus and Hermogenes (1:15), or Hymenaeus and Philetus (22:17).

It seems more likely that Paul is summoning Timothy to remind of “these things” people like Onesiphorus and the members of his household (2:16-18). They, after all, have stood faithfully by the apostle when so many others deserted him because of his suffering for the gospel. Yet preachers can admit to uncertainty about the precise identity of verse 4’s “them.”

Paul does not, what’s more, make perfectly clear the content of tauta (“these things”). Is he referring to what he’s just written, or what he’s about to write? Or is the apostle, in fact, as I’d humbly suggest, referring to “these things” as both what he’s already written and what he goes on to write?

Paul begins this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with verse 8’s stirring call to “Remember [mnemoneue] Jesus Christ.” He then goes on to point out that this memory has a content that includes remembering who Christ is as well as what it means to follow him. As my colleague Karl Jacobson has noted, this theme of memory is echoed in verse 4’s summons to Timothy. There, after all, Paul invites his son in the faith to help people remember that by reminding God’s people of “these things.”

In verses 8-13 Paul lays out some of the Christian faith’s essentials that no follower of Jesus ever wants to forget. The apostle professes Jesus was “raised [egermenon] from the dead, descended [ek spermatos] from David.” In professing that faith, Paul reminds his mentee that part of the content of Jesus’ friends’ profession of faith is both Jesus’ lineage as a descendant of David and his resurrection from the dead.

Paul doesn’t want Timothy to ever forget just who Jesus is: Israel’s promised Messiah whose work God approved by raising him from the dead. In fact, by calling Timothy to mnemoneue (“remember”) that, the apostle implies that it’s easy for God’s adopted children to forget Jesus’ identity.

Paul goes on to assert that Christians’ faith by which we receive God’s amazing grace inextricably links us to him. “If we died with him [synapethanomen], we will also live with him [syzesomen],” Paul reminds Timothy in verses 11b-13. “If we endure [hypomenomen], we will also reign with him [symbasileusomen]. If we disown him [arnesometha], he will also disown [arnesetai] us; if we are faithless [apistoumen], he remains faithful [pistos].”

This fascinating series of statements almost overflows with both surprises and a warning. Paul insists God will raise to life Jesus’ friends who let the Spirit put to death our sinful nature that is disobedience of God. The apostle promises God will, what’s more, by God’s amazing grace, raise to life the kind of rescued and obedient life for which God created us. Quite simply, Paul reminds God’s adopted children that to follow Jesus is to die to our sinful selves so that God may raise us to a life of obedience with Jesus.

What’s more, the apostle promises, Jesus’ friends who endure the kind of misery Paul and so many of our Christian sisters and brothers must suffer will eventually enjoy a glory similar to that of our Savior Jesus Christ. In Christ there is what verse 10 calls “eternal glory [doxes aioniou].”

Christians’ suffering is sometimes great. Paul himself was “chained [desmon] like a criminal [kakourgos] (9). But, the apostle insists, God’s dearly beloved people whom the Spirit graces with endurance will ultimately receive the gift of God’s amazing grace that is eternal glory enjoyed in God’s presence. “If we stick it out with him,” The Message paraphrases Paul as writing in verse 12a, “we’ll rule with him.”

What the apostle goes on to tell Timothy in verses 12b and 13 is perhaps more troubling and surprising. With an eye perhaps to those who have deeply bothered Paul, the apostle insists that Christ will turn his back on those who turns their backs on God. But in almost the very next breath the apostle also goes on to insist that Christ will remain faithful to those who are faithless.

Preachers can admit that this combination is mysterious at least partly because its two assertions seem to contradict each other. But we might also remind our hearers that this is a warning given in the specific context of widespread rejection of Paul’s gospel. It also leaves room not for God’s ultimate rejection of those who reject God but for God’s faithfulness not just to himself, but also to even the faithless as getting “the last word.”

Paul may mean that even as God’s faithless people reject him and experience the consequences of God’s rejection, God remains faithful because that’s at the heart of who God is. God remains faithful to even faithless people because God, according to verse 13, “cannot disown [arnesasthai] himself.”

In verse 14 Paul summons his mentee to “Keep reminding God’s people [hypomimneske] of these things.” The Message paraphrases the apostle’s summons to his son in the faith as “Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God’s people.” Because even Christians’ attention easily wanders towards what seem like peripheral issues, the Spirit tasks church leaders like Timothy to help us keep our focus on what’s essential.

Those “essentials” certainly include verses’ 8-13 assertions of both Jesus and his friends’ identity. However, the apostle may also be insisting that the Holy Spirit can use an ongoing awareness of those essentials to help minimize the conflicts and divisions that plague Christ’s Body that is the Church.

“Warn [diamartyromenos] God’s people before God,” Paul insists in verse 14, “against quarreling about words [logomachein].” Some things about this assertion are clearer than others. The apostle is summoning his mentee to solemnly warn God’s people against what The Message calls “pious nitpicking.”

Yet he makes less clear the nature of those words about which he doesn’t want Jesus’ followers to argue. Is Paul warning them against arguing about God’s nature? Against arguing about what it means to die, live and reign with Christ? Against arguing about what exactly it means to disown Christ? Against arguing about what it means that God remains faithful even in the face of human faithlessness?

Or do Paul’s commands to warn against nitpicking address the kinds of ethical and theological debates that plague Christ’s 21^st century Church? North American Christians spend a great deal of time and energy quarreling about things like politics, sexuality and climate change. We even argue about how central those divisive issues are to our Christian faith by which we receive God’s grace.

No matter the content of Timothy’s contemporaries’ arguments, Paul insists they were highly unproductive. Such arguing, he asserts in verse 14b, “is of no value [ep’ ouden chresimon], and only ruins [katastrophe] those who listen [akouonton].” The apostle insists such pious nitpicking isn’t just a colossal waste of God’s adopted children’s time. It’s also destructive to those who listen to it.

In verse 15 Paul goes on to charge Timothy as well as the rest of God’s dearly beloved people, “Do your best to [spoudason] present [parastesai] yourself to God as one approved [dokimon], a worker [ergaten] who does not need to be ashamed [anepaischynton] and who correctly handles [orthotomounta] the word of truth.”

It’s as if Paul insists God’s people should quit quibbling about words and get on with the lifesaving and affirming work of ministry. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul invites Jesus’ friends to focus on lovingly serving God and our neighbor to the very best of our ability. In the words of The Message, he summons us to “Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won’t be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple.”

A substantial part of the danger of endlessly arguing about what it means to follow Jesus is that it consumes our time for actually following Jesus. Arguing about words also saps our energy for summoning others to join us in doing so. It may even be that Christians sometimes choose to debate these matters as a way of escaping the scrutiny of Jesus’ call to our own radical discipleship and faithfulness. Preachers might even ask our hearers and ourselves: since all of this arguing bothered Paul and so many of his brothers and sisters in Christ, imagine what it does to those who don’t believe but watch and listen to those who call ourselves Christians argue amongst ourselves.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his book, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon Bill McKibben relates a story Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes told about a visit with Britian’s royal family. Gomes was invited to join Britian’s Queen Mother for lunch after they’d worshipped in the same church that morning.

He writes: “There in her one hundred and second year, she was holding court in the form of a lovely pre-luncheon party in a setting worthy of a Merchant and Ivory film, and eventually I was summoned into the royal presence … Among other observations, the Queen Mother remarked how excellent the sermon had been.

“’Don’t you agree?’ she asked me, which is a difficult question for an honest clergyman to answer, so I did what anybody would do under the circumstances: I agreed. Then, with that world-class twinkle in her eye, the Queen Mother remarked, ‘I do like a bit of good news on Sunday, don’t you’?”

The “things” Paul charges Timothy with reminding God’s people of are nothing, if not, finally, good news.