No Fear

2 Tim 1.7 Paul confronts Timothy's fearfulness

Paul was stirring Timothy up because he was naturally a timid person. He was easily shaken by setbacks. Paul gives Timothy the reason why he must not let this spirit of fear shut him down: because the spirit of fear does not come from the Holy Spirit. Timothy must learn to identify that his anxieties and worries were the remains of his old self trying to exert themselves where they no longer belong.

This is one of the key understandings that will help us grow into very strong Christians: correctly identifying what is from the Spirit of God and what comes from our old sinful self. Dealing with fear provides us with an excellent example. When we are too timid to do a good work, we might think we are being humble, or we might be telling ourselves that we don't want to make a mistake and muck up God's work. Whatever excuse we use, we can expose fear by noticing how it works against what the Spirit of God wants to produce in us.

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of power. Fear is the total opposite of that. Fear is powerlessness. Fear is an admission that we have no power and cannot do what lies in front of us. Fear is unbelief. It is refusing to believe that the Spirit of God will strengthen us to do what is too hard for us but what God intends us to do..

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love. Fear paralyses us so that we cannot do acts of love. The act seems too costly to us;too uncomfortable – so we turn away from it. The spirit of fear robs others of God's love they should have experienced through us. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of love who not only assures us that we are loved by God but enables us to complete the acts of love that others need. For example, when you are too ashamed to speak up and share from the Bible the promise that encouraged you, your fear is failure to love. The person who needed that encouragement goes without because of your fear. The Spirit of love drives out fear – he expells it – because when the love of God for us occupies our thoughts, we no longer live under the fear of punishment. We know that God is for us. We need to fan into a flame the gift of God, so that fear does not stop us from loving as we should.

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of self-control. Fear is the opposite of self-control, because instead of us being in control of our thoughts, feelings and actions, we are ruled by fear. It controls us and won't allow us to do what we know we ought to do. However, the Spirit of God puts us firmly in union with Christ. We don't see ourselves any longer as fragments being blown around by the winds of chance. We know ourselves to be firmly grafted into Christ and he in us. So our true self – our true identity – is clear to us. I am no longer a rebel or an enemy of God. I am no longer a cast-off. I am at home in Christ.

It is no longer “I” who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2.20). I have self-control because the Spirit of God encourages me to act confidently as I truly am, a son of God. I choose not to be blown around by the chill wind of fear.

So, Paul's argument to cut down Timothy's fearfulness is that he has a new Spirit at work in his life now and he must not allow the old fearful attitude control him. He must stand up confidently in the Spirit of God, by faith. He must put to death his fear and step out in faith in the Christ who provides the Spirit of power of love and of self-control.

Feed that Fire

At some point, possibly at Timothy's baptism, Paul was praying for Timothy and committing him to God's work. As Paul stood there with his hands on Timothy, it became clear to both of them (and likely the Christians gathered around at the time) that God was calling Timothy to the work of preaching the gospel. (A little further on in this letter, Paul reminds Timothy to do the work of an evangelist).

The point is this: Paul urges Timothy to fan into a flame the gift of God. That gift is the faith that makes a decisive commitment of itself to the calling of God. In other words God had work for Timothy to do. To do that work required faith, because without faith it is impossible to please God and everything that is not of faith is sin. Timothy's faith was not to remain a heritage or a credential to hang onto. Paul said, Timothy's faith in Christ was to be the method by which he got stuck into the life's work that God was giving him. You must feed the spark of your faith so that you have the fire and energy at work in you – the filling of the Holy Spirit – that will drive you and sustain you in your service of God. What is that service? What is that work you are supposed to be doing for God?

There are two parts to it. There is the common part and the specific part. The common part of the work you are supposed to be doing for God is common because it is the same for every Christian. It is not hard to find out. It is written. It is here in the Bible. It is things such as:

• being an obedient, respectful child to your parents

• working diligently at school, showing respect to teachers and resisting peer pressure to be rebellious

• looking out for the downcast and troubled and helping them as you are able

• acting in a pure manner in the matter of sex – keeping it within the safe and delightful boundaries of marriage

• living as the light in your workplace, being honest, helpful, kind and hard-working

• regularly reading, thinking about and living out the Bible

• meeting often with Christians to learn together, serve together and especially to worship and prayer

• always being ready to explain to people the reason for the hope you have

• killing sin in your life (because if you are not killing sin it will be killing you)

• building the Church

You don't need to wait for a calling to do those things. They are mandatory. They are the normal Christian life. They are what you do because they are the way Christ expresses his life in and through you. This basic Christian work for all disciples of Jesus is to keep in step with the Spirit and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – as Peter put it.

But there is also a You-specific part of your service for God. This is the particular Christian work he prepares you to do and the particular people he calls you to do that work for and with. This is usually something that becomes clearer and clearer as you get serious about the common part of your Christian calling. You have to fan it into a flame. Sadly, many Christians never occupy that specific calling God has for them. Their work lies like an abandoned patch of ground, covered in weeds. Jesus taught us the parable of the talents so we would be stirred up to avoid this dangerous failure. Some managers are given some money to invest while the business owner is away. Two of the three set the money to work and show a good return for the owner when he comes back. The third put the money aside (actually he buried it). He got into very serious trouble when the business owner came back to discover that the man hadn't even put the money in the bank to earn interest. It was taken from him and given to the man who had earned a large return. And he was sacked.

Fan into a flame the gift of God. Use what God has already given you. Share with others what you are learning from the Bible (start with your children, your brother or sister, your best friend, or your homegroup). Feed your faith. Get the spark into a flame. If there is an opening to do some kind thing for someone, do it and build on it so that it leads to more good works. If you have some success in praying for something, build on that and bring more things to God in prayer. If you find that someone you asked to come to a home group or church meeting comes, then ask some more people. If one of your children comes and asks an important question about life and about God, then turn off the TV and look for some more opportunities to talk about serious things. If someone is willing to come and study the Bible with you, then grab the opportunity and be sure that you pass on what you learned from it to others. Fan into a flame the gift of God. Add fuel to the fire. Go from small things to bigger things.

Now, when you are building a fire, you start with those fine fibres and you move on to slightly thicker sticks until you are putting on large logs because you have a bonfire going! This is exactly how it works spiritually. You have to keep upping the ante! You have to keep building the capacity of the fire to burn. You need to increase your hunger for righteousness by feeding it with bigger challenges and greater issues. The bigger the challenges that your faith in Christ overcomes – the more ready you are for even bigger ones.

Get Your Fire Roaring

2 Timothy 1.6,7

We must get our inner fire roaring so that we are stirred up to fight for the Church

Timothy had been entrusted with something of great value and he must not be the one to let it fall into disuse. Shame on any of us who live in the benefits passed onto us by those who have walked in the faith of Christ, if we ourselves become careless and uncommitted. It is like the young man who inherits the wealth and resources earned by his father who worked hard and built up a profitable business. But then the son indulges himself in the inheritance and fails to pay attention to the business. Before he realises what has happened, the business fails to grow, the resources are used up and he ends up bankrupt. We have to use the good resources of faith and knowledge passed on to us by faithful people. The faith of Timothy's immediate maternal family as well as the investment that Paul had put into his life, were all good reasons why he should fan into a flame the spiritual gift God had entrusted to him. For this reason (that is, the fact that you have been blessed by faith and knowledge taught to you by the word and example of others) I remind you to fan into a flame the gift of God.

Paul describes the gift of God as a spark in Timothy that needs fuel and oxygen to make it into a roaring fire. When you are lighting a fire in difficult circumstances – perhaps with a flint or by rubbing sticks together – you have to keep your focus on the spark. It is only tiny, but it is the start of your roaring fire. You have to prepare very fine fibres to receive the spark so that it catches. You have to gently blow on it when it smoulders so that a combination of the fuel (the fibres, and the kindling) and the oxygen will cause the spark to enlarge into a hungry flame that demands more and more and more wood.

Jesus said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied. This is a very telling statement, because it also gives the reason why there is such a lack of satisfaction in our lives. We are restless, anxious, lacking in peace when we are starved of righteousness. Righteousness is the quality of God's character revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Those who do not hunger and thirst to eat and drink Christ's life are left with a hollow hunger that they try to feed with spiritual potato chips. And they always remain unsatisfied. How do you eat and drink Christ? How do you go for righteousness like a hungry and thirsty person? By feeding on his Word. By praying about everything. By looking at, thinking about, and deciding on everything according to what God has revealed in the Bible.

You hunger and thirst for righteousness by using faith – that is, stepping into every situation deliberately depending on what God has promised to do for you in Jesus Christ. In all these ways, we are fanning the spark of spiritual life God gave us, into a flame. We are hunting and hungering and thirsting after righteousness – God's good life – in Christ – for us.

Timothy had a gift of God. It was the faith that was passed on to him effectively by his mum and nana. But Paul was also talking about the work that that faith would accomplish. Faith is never an abstract thing, like a 'vibe' or an 'attitude'.

Faith is a decisive investment of ourselves in concrete, real actions proposed by God. God has works for us to do. Without faith it is impossible to please God, so these works prepared by God (your life's work) can't be done without faith. In fact, everything that is not of faith is sin (Romans 14.23). That means that all thoughts, feelings and actions that do not spring up from the soil of confidence in God are sins.

Working Now and Preparing for Then

1.3-5 Paul felt a very strongly that God had put he and Timothy together in the work of growing the Church.

He thanked God that he had brought them together. He prayed for Timothy and thought about him and his work all the time. He remembered Timothy's tears at their last parting and longed to see him again. It was not just Timothy's pleasant personality or company that Paul longed for. Timothy's faith and the work it had produced stirred Paul's gratitude to God. Paul had introduced Timothy to Christ's work so that the faith that had been successfully passed on to Timothy by his mother and grandmother had matured into brave and effective service.

This excited Paul, because he was seeing the Church grow across generations. This wasn't a brave effort by Paul to get a few churches going in his lifetime. He was seeing those he had first known as children now being raised up by Christian family members and growing into the workers who would build the Church when he was gone. He saw Timothy as one of those to whom he was passing on the baton.

Paul honours the work of the women in Timothy's home who had made sure that the faith of Christ had been securely passed on to him.

• The relationships we form with fellow Christian workers as we study the Bible, pray and serve him together, are very deep. For example, a Christian marriage has the spoken and unspoken agreement that we are in this life together so we can serve Christ better – so it will have a depth to it that romance on its own cannot reach. Young people, take great care that you invest your love in a partner with whom you can work freely with Christ. You need to be able to put Christ and his work first without your partner feeling jealous or aggrieved (because, she or he also has Christ as her highest treasure). Much potential Christian service has been lost – and some Christian lives shipwrecked – because a person gave away his or her romantic love to someone who did not love Christ with his or her whole mind, heart and strength.

• Paul's concern for Timothy shows that one of the best things we can do for those we love is to pray for them – especially that their work for God will be successful. Because if they are successful in that – they will have the best life possible now and an eternal one to follow. Do you love your children? Then pray and work for them so that they are totally committed in every way to follow Christ. That is the way to give your loved ones the best possible future.

• Paul was excited by Timothy's potential. Our aim must be to pass the baton on to the next runners. We must live lives that contain as much of God's wisdom and grace as possible, so we have plenty to pass on to those who must continue to serve Christ after we have finished our race. Get more hungry for righteousness yourself – then you will have something to pass on to others.

• Much of this work must first happen in our homes. See how this worked for Timothy. Lois and Eunice came to faith in Christ – perhaps it was the daughter who led her mother to Christ. We know from elsewhere that Timothy's father was Greek and his mother Jewish. His father was probably not a believer. Yet when the gospel came to Lystra, his mother and grandmother came to faith and raised Timothy to trust in Christ. By the time Paul visited his town some years later when he was probably about 18, the Christians there spoke well of him and Paul asked him to join his team as he moved on to plant Churches. Timothy's outstanding career as a Christian worker could not have happened if his mother and grandmother had not done the work of living and sharing the gospel inside their home.

• We also, learn from Paul's training of Timothy, about the need for a vision for the church well beyond our own time - because we are preparing young people for it. We who are mature have a responsibility to articulate and foreshadow what is to come, because those who are younger tend not to look far enough ahead. We must not be satisfied with 'hanging on' tenaciously to our beliefs in our life time. We must advance God's Kingdom by preparing people for the next stage of its expansion.

Get on the Highway

2 Timothy 1.3 Paul emphasises the continuity between the Old Testament and his present work.

He identifies himself as a servant of God in the same tradition as the Old Testament characters. I serve God with a clear conscience as did my ancestors. Paul looked back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joseph and the rest and saw continuity between their service of God and his. The work of growing the Church – a work that he had drawn Timothy into – was not some personal mission that Paul had invented. It was the same work that God had been unfolding since earliest times. Paul drew strength and confidence – which he wanted Timothy to have – from their place in the great unfolding of God's plan. This is a calling and a work that Timothy should feel secure in. And you should be convinced of its importance too.

We can draw the same security and confidence in our Christian work. We are not struggling to accomplish a brave failure. We are in the direct line of God's people. We are on the highway of God's plan that is forging through every time and generation. Isaiah speaks of this in chapter 35:

8 And a highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Way of Holiness;
the unclean shall not pass over it.
It shall belong to those who walk on the way;
even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.
9 No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Paul's challenge to Timothy and us is: Get onto that highway and advance the work of God in your time.

Here is a Word that brings Grace to You

We are starting a series of studies of Paul's letter to a younger Christian worker, Timothy. In this letter, Paul is stirring up Timothy to serve Christ more confidently. So this letter is useful to all Christians – that we might be fully committed to successfully completing the purpose for which God put us here in life. It is also useful to us as a church, because it describes how the church grows itself so that not only can it do a good job of bringing the good news to people now – but it is strong enough now to grow forward into the next generation.

2 Timothy 1.1-7
1.1-2 Paul introduces this letter by gives his credentials.

He is an apostle of Christ Jesus. That is, he is Jesus' messenger to the churches. His task is to plant churches and deliver the Bible teaching necessary to get them established and make them grow.
He is an apostle by the will of God. This is not something granted to him by others nor something that he took up for himself. God willed it - and the remarkable complete transformation of his life supports his claim. He was an enemy of Christ and the Church and became its biggest supporter.
Paul's calling to be an apostle aligns with (is in accordance with) the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. This means that what Paul did as an apostle is evidence of Christ's life and energy at work. He is an apostle according to the promise of life in Christ – that is, his apostleship is a demonstration of the life that is promised to those who receive Christ. Here is the point: Paul's life demonstrates what he teaches. Paul doesn't just say “I am an apostle, so you should do what I say.” He gives evidence of what he teaches in his own life. You must do the same.

Paul refers to Timothy as his 'loved child', because he had raised him to spiritual manhood. Paul was closely involved in seeing Timothy grow up into an effective Chrsitian worker.
To Timothy my loved son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul was was very confident that his message to Timothy came with the weight and value of God's Word to him. He believed that what he wrote in his letter actually brought grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord to Timothy. He wasn't just 'wishing' these things as abstract 'blessings' on Timothy. His teaching was full of God's grace, mercy and peace and he was passing it on to Timothy in the written word.

We also should receive his words as God's Word to us - grace, mercy and peace. We should also speak it confidently to one another as God's grace, mercy and peace. These are at the heart of what Paul is teaching Timothy and why God preserved his letter for the Church over the past 1,900 or so years since it was written. Paul's letter is God's Word. And by studying it you can receive grace from God, mercy from God and peace from God.