2 Timothy 1:6-12 (2)

How can we live faithfully as Christians?  It will help if we remember that we are called to stand for the gospel of Christ.  We will be better suited for faithfulness if we live for something that is worth dying for.  Anything less than that will not be worth the price we may be called to pay.  

Timothy should not be ashamed.  Rather he should share in sufferings.  But we must remember that the people he should not be ashamed of are those whose lives are integral to the gospel.  One is our Lord whose sufferings and resurrection ARE the gospel.  The other is Paul who was appointed to the gospel ministry.  When Paul commands Timothy to share in the sufferings he is not suggesting Timothy have some kind of well-developed martyr complex.  It is not just sufferings; it is share with me in the sufferings for the gospel!  That is the kind of suffering that the power of God will help us to endure faithfully.

Think for a few moments about what God is doing.  He saved us and called us with a holy calling.  Both are past tense.  So we ask first, how did God do this?  The answer is that He did not use our own works to do this.  Think of what this means to faithfulness.  Our salvation or the fact that we have a calling to be holy is not our doing.  God is doing this and He is doing it for His own purpose and by His own grace.  Our faith contributes nothing to our salvation; it only receives what God has done.  What we are called to is a life that is God’s making.

Then we ask, when did God do this?  The answer is two-fold.  First, God did this before time began.  God’s grace was at work in His plan in eternity, a plan that involved creation, sin, the sacrifice of His Son and the exaltation of His Son.  But then God revealed all this when His Son appeared in His incarnation.  He lived a sinless life and then died a sacrificial death.  In His resurrection He abolished (conquered) death and made it possible for people to have life eternally.  All this was made possible through the gospel.  What God planned before time began is realized when the gospel is preached and people believe.

Again, we see that Paul can present himself to Timothy as an example in this.  Paul was appointed a preacher of the gospel, an apostle to give us a Biblical record of the gospel and its effect, and a teacher of the Gentiles so people from all nations could exalt Christ.  Paul’s suffering for the gospel made sense.  And so did Paul’s confidence about the future.  In light of the work of Christ, Paul could be faithful even to death because the gospel was not just the subject of his preaching; he had a personal commitment to the gospel.

Do you see the joy and assurance in this?  Let us be faithful, sharing in the sufferings of something that is the eternal difference in the life of every person.  Let us join Paul in the preaching of the gospel until our lives are over.  And then let us rest in the life and immortality that is for every one whose faith is in the Christ of the gospel!