Today’s Passage: 2 Timothy 1
An old man in a Roman cell writes to a young man in Ephesus, and the first thing he does is remember. He remembers him in prayer night and day. He remembers his tears at their last parting and says he longs to see him so that he may be filled with joy. He remembers the faith he saw in the boy, and traces it back two generations, to a grandmother named Lois and a mother named Eunice. Only then does he ask for anything, and what he asks for is fire: fan into flame the gift of God that is in you. What follows is the heart of the chapter, one of the most quoted sentences in Paul’s letters and one of the most often twisted, that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and self-control. From there Paul presses the point that costs something. Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, His prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the gospel. And he grounds the courage he is asking for in the deepest ground there is: a God who saved us and called us not because of anything we did, but out of His own purpose and grace, given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, and now brought into daylight by the appearing of a Savior who has abolished death itself. Then Paul says the words that hold up the whole letter, “I know whom I have believed,” and hands the deposit over. The chapter ends with a hard sentence and a beautiful one: everyone in Asia has deserted him, and one man named Onesiphorus searched Rome until he found him.
As you read, hold this: Fan the gift of God back into flame and refuse to be ashamed of Him, because the God who saved you by His own purpose before time began has abolished death, and He is able to guard what you have entrusted to Him.
Context The world of 2 Timothy 1
The Roman world ran on shame and honor the way ours runs on money. A man’s whole standing depended on public reputation, on who would be seen with him, on whose name he could drop and whose company would cost him. To be publicly associated with a condemned prisoner was social suicide, and everyone knew it. When a friend of yours was arrested and chained, the ordinary, sensible, universally understood thing to do was to fade quietly out of his life. Nobody would have thought worse of you for it. That is exactly what Paul is describing when he says everyone in the province of Asia has deserted him, and it is exactly what makes his charge to Timothy so pointed. He is not asking a young man to overcome a vague shyness about religion. He is asking him to walk into a city, in the reign of Nero, and be publicly known as the associate of a man in chains for a crime the empire had decided to punish with fire and beasts.
Set beside that the household Timothy came from, because it explains a great deal. Lois and Eunice were Jewish women living in a Gentile town in the hills of Galatia, and Eunice had married a Greek man. That would have put the family on the edges of both worlds. Timothy had not been circumcised as a boy, which suggests his father’s influence in the home, and yet Paul says the boy had known the Holy Scriptures from infancy, which means his mother and grandmother had taught him faithfully anyway, in a house where it cannot have been easy. Jewish homes taught the Scriptures to children as a matter of course, out loud, from the earliest age. Two women in an ordinary house did the ordinary thing, year after year, and a preacher grew out of it. As for Onesiphorus, remember that Rome in that century held perhaps a million people, sprawling and mazelike, with prisoners held in various places and no public register a friend could consult. A visitor from Ephesus, looking for one chained Jewish preacher in that immensity, would have had to knock on doors, ask soldiers, follow rumors, and risk being noticed himself. Paul says he searched diligently until he found him. It would have taken days.
2 Timothy 1:1–5 (BSB)
¹ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus, ² To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. ³ I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience as did my forefathers, as I constantly remember you night and day in my prayers. ⁴ Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. ⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am convinced is in you as well.
Notice what a man under sentence of death chooses to say first. He does not say, I am cold, or I am afraid, or nobody came. He says he is an apostle by the will of God, “according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus.” Life. That is the word he leads with, sitting in a place designed to end his. Then he calls Timothy “my beloved child,” which he was not by blood, and adds mercy to his usual greeting of grace and peace, as though he knows the young man needs it. And then he thanks God, and tells him how often he thinks of him: constantly, night and day. Consider that. A man with weeks to live is spending his nights praying for somebody else’s ministry. Then comes a detail so tender you can almost see it: “Recalling your tears, I long to see you.” There had been a parting somewhere, and Timothy had wept, and Paul has never forgotten it. He does not scold him for the tears. He treasures them.
Then he reaches back through the generations. He is reminded of Timothy’s anypokritos, pronounced an-oo-POK-ree-toss. Strong's G505, sincere, unmasked, without play-acting. The word Paul chooses is a striking one. Anypokritos is built from the word for a stage actor, the hypokritēs, the man who spoke his lines from behind a painted mask, with the negative particle stuck on the front. So it means, quite literally, faith without a mask: unplayed, unperformed, the real thing all the way through. Greek and Roman theater used those masks constantly, so the picture would have been instantly vivid, and the New Testament uses this same word for love that is not put on, for wisdom from above that is not two-faced, for a sincere heart. Now think about where Paul says he saw it. He saw it in a grandmother and a mother, in a household, which is the one place on earth where a mask cannot be kept on for long. Children see everything. They watch what you do when the visitors leave. Lois and Eunice had a faith that survived being observed at close quarters by the people most likely to catch them out, and that is why it passed down. That is the only kind of faith that ever does. A performed religion may impress a congregation for a season, but it does not travel through a family. Ask God for the unmasked kind, and be content if nobody but the household ever sees it. , “which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am convinced is in you as well.” Stop here longer than you think you need to. This is the only place in the whole New Testament where these two women are named, and they are named as the headwaters of a river. Nobody in Lystra was watching Lois. She held no office, wrote no letter, preached no sermon that anyone recorded. She was an old Jewish woman in a small Galatian town, and she believed God, and she taught her daughter, and her daughter taught a boy, and that boy became the man to whom the last letter of the apostle Paul is addressed, pastoring one of the greatest churches of the ancient world. Praise God for that. Whoever you are and however unnoticed your life feels, understand what this verse is telling you: the ordinary faithfulness of an old woman in an obscure house is the sort of thing God builds ministries out of. She almost certainly died without ever knowing what her faith would come to. Most of us will. Be faithful anyway.
2 Timothy 1:6–10 (BSB)
⁶ For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. ⁷ For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. ⁸ So do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, His prisoner. Instead, join me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. ⁹ He has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but by His own purpose and by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began. ¹⁰ And now He has revealed this grace through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the gospel,
Here is the charge, and it is gentler than we usually make it. Paul does not tell Timothy to get a gift, or to find a new one, or to be someone other than himself. The gift is already there, given by God and marked by the laying on of hands. What Paul asks is that he anazōpureō, pronounced an-ah-zoh-poo-REH-oh. Strong's G329, to rekindle, to fan a fire back to life. Anazōpureō is a compound built out of three pieces, and every one of them matters: ana, again; zōos, alive; pur, fire. To bring the fire back to life. In the ancient world this was a plain domestic word, because keeping a fire was daily work. There were no matches. A household banked its coals at night under ash so that a live ember survived till morning, and in the morning somebody knelt down, scraped the ash away, laid on kindling, and blew steadily until the ember caught and the flame stood up again. Notice two things about that picture. First, the fire is already there. Nobody is being told to strike a new one out of nothing, and there is real comfort in that for anyone who feels cold toward God this morning. The ember from your conversion has not gone out; it is under ash. Second, somebody has to kneel down and do the work. The ember will not fan itself. So do the ordinary things that move air over coals: open the Book, get on your knees, sing, come back to the Lord’s people, take up the duty you have been avoiding. Grace lit that fire. Grace will bring it back up. But grace ordinarily does it through a believer who kneels down and blows. it into flame. Something in the young man had banked down, and anyone who has walked with God for long knows exactly how that happens. It is rarely a dramatic collapse. It is discouragement, and the weight of difficult people, and a hostile city, and the slow chill of hearing that your mentor is in prison and everyone else has walked away. Coals do not go out all at once; they just stop being tended.
Then verse seven, and we must handle it carefully, because it is one of the most quoted and most misused sentences in the New Testament. “For God has not given us a spirit of deilia, pronounced day-LEE-ah. Strong's G1167, timidity, cowardice, failure of nerve. Deilia is not the ordinary Greek word for fear. That word is phobos, and it is a broad word that can mean reverence and awe as easily as terror; Scripture uses it constantly and sometimes commands it. Deilia is narrower and darker. It is timidity, faintheartedness, the failure of nerve that makes a soldier drop his shield and run, and in Greek writing it is always a fault. This is the only time it appears in the New Testament, and Paul chose it deliberately. He is not saying that a Christian never trembles. Jesus Himself sweated in a garden, and Paul told the Corinthians he came to them in weakness and fear and much trembling. What he is saying is that the collapse of nerve, the shrinking away, the quiet decision to keep your head down and say nothing, has no source in the Spirit of God. Feel the difference between those two things and you will stop condemning yourself for being afraid. Courage in Scripture is almost never the absence of fear; it is fear with its hands still on the plow. The question is never whether your heart is pounding. The question is what you do while it pounds. , but of power, love, and self-control.” People take it as a promise that a Christian will never feel afraid, and then, when fear comes anyway, as it will, they conclude that something is wrong with them or that God has failed. That is not what Paul says. Read it again and see that it is a statement about what God gave, not a prediction about what you will feel. The Spirit God put in you is not a spirit whose character is cowardice. Fear may knock; it did not come from Him, and it has no rights in the house. And look at the three things that did come from Him, because they are a wonderfully balanced set. Power, so that you are not merely brave in theory. Love, because power without love turns into a bully, and half the damage done in the name of Christ has been done by people with courage and no tenderness. And self-control, a disciplined and sober mind, because power and love without judgment become mere enthusiasm. That is the Spirit’s furniture: strength, warmth, and a steady head. Timothy, who by every hint was a shrinking sort of man, is not told to become someone else. He is told what he has already been given.
Now comes the cost. “So do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, His prisoner.” Notice that Paul does not call himself Nero’s prisoner, though legally he was. He is the Lord’s prisoner, and the chains are part of an appointment, not an accident. And notice the two things Timothy might be tempted to be ashamed of. First the message itself, a crucified Jew proclaimed as Lord in an empire that had its own lords. Second, the man, an old troublemaker in irons whose friendship could get you arrested. Paul asks for neither pity nor rescue. He asks Timothy to “join me in suffering for the gospel,” and then, in the same breath, tells him where the strength for that will come from: “by the power of God.” He would never ask a timid young man to carry that weight on his own nerve.
And then the ground of all of it, and it is glorious. “He has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but by His own purpose and by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began.” Sit with that. Before time began. Before there was a Timothy to be timid or a Paul to be chained, before the first star, grace was already granted to us in Christ Jesus in the settled purpose of God. Our works had nothing to do with it, then or now. That is why Paul can ask a frightened man to suffer: because the salvation being defended does not rest on the man’s performance. It never did. Paul says the same thing to Titus in almost the same breath.
"He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." Titus 3:5 (BSB)
And then verse ten, which ought to be read standing up. That eternal purpose has now come out into the open “through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the gospel.” Abolished death. The word means to render powerless, to put out of commission, to strip a thing of its authority. Christians still die, of course; Paul is about to. But death has been dethroned. It is no longer a jailer, only a doorway, and Jesus went through it first and came back to prove it. And the second verb is just as lovely: He has illuminated life and immortality, brought them out of the shadows and into the light where we can see them. The Old Testament saints hoped for this in the dark, with only glimpses. Christ turned the lamp on. Praise God that the man who wrote this sentence was weeks away from a Roman sword, and wrote it anyway.
2 Timothy 1:11–14 (BSB)
¹¹ to which I was appointed as a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher. ¹² For this reason, even though I suffer as I do, I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day. ¹³ Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴ Guard the treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.
We have reached the summit of the chapter, and one of the summits of the whole New Testament. Paul lists his three offices, herald and apostle and teacher, and then says that this appointment is the reason he suffers as he does, and immediately adds, “I am not ashamed.” He has just told Timothy not to be ashamed; now he shows him a man who is not. And then the reason, and you must read it exactly as it stands: “for I know whom I have believed.” Not what. He does not say, I know what I have believed, though he could have written a book on it. He says whom. Everything rests on a Person, and Paul knows Him. That is a very different foundation from having your doctrine straight, though Paul cared enormously about doctrine and spends the next chapter defending it. A man can hold correct opinions about Christ and go to pieces in a cell. What holds you when the door shuts is knowing Him.
Then look at the confidence itself, because it is placed with great precision: “I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have parathēkē, pronounced par-ath-AY-kay. Strong's G3866, a deposit entrusted to another for safekeeping. Parathēkē was an everyday commercial word, the ordinary term for a deposit: money or valuables left with a trusted friend, or lodged in a temple treasury, while the owner was away. There was no insurance and no receipt worth much; the whole arrangement stood or fell on the character of the man who took it in. Now watch Paul use the word in both directions within three verses, because it is one of the most beautiful things in the letter. In verse twelve he is the depositor and God is the trustee: everything Paul has, given over for safekeeping to One who cannot fail. In verse fourteen the direction reverses; now the gospel is the deposit and Timothy is the trustee, told to guard it. So the whole Christian life sits between two deposits. You hand yourself to God, who is able. He hands you the truth, which you are to keep. And remember what a deposit is: not capital to trade with, not raw material to improve, not an heirloom you may quietly modernize. It was handed over whole and it is to be handed back whole. Notice too that Timothy does not stand guard alone. He is to keep it “with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.” The trustee is himself indwelt by the God who owns the treasure. to Him for that day.” Not that Paul is able to hold on. Not that Paul’s grip is strong, or his nerve steady, or his record clean. That He is able to guard. Everything Paul has staked on Christ, his soul, his labor, his converts, his whole life’s work now apparently ending in failure and irons, has been lodged in the safest place in the universe, and the receipt is the character of God. That is why the chains cannot shame him. You cannot rob a man whose treasure is not in the room. And notice the phrase “for that day,” which turns up three times in this chapter. Paul is not looking for a verdict from Rome. He is looking past it, to a court that will not close.
Between the two deposits stands verse thirteen, and it is the practical hinge: “Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” The word for pattern means an outline, a sketch, a model that a craftsman keeps in front of him while he works. Timothy had heard Paul teach for fifteen years, and that body of teaching is the shape he is to keep reproducing. And note the two things Paul insists must come with it, because they are the difference between a guardian and a crank. Faith and love. Doctrine held without love curdles into something ugly, and the church has furnished plenty of examples. Sound teaching guarded in faith and love is a treasure kept warm.
2 Timothy 1:15–18 (BSB)
¹⁵ You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes. ¹⁶ May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he has often refreshed me and was unashamed of my chains. ¹⁷ Indeed, when he arrived in Rome, he searched diligently until he found me. ¹⁸ May the Lord grant Onesiphorus His mercy on that day. You know very well how much he ministered to me in Ephesus.
The chapter ends with two names that stand for everyone who left, and one name that stands for everyone who stayed. “Everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me.” That is a hard sentence, and Paul writes it without decoration. Asia was where he had labored longest and most fruitfully; the church at Ephesus was his own planting, and for two years the word of the Lord had spread from there across the whole province. And now, when the news reaches home that the old apostle is in a Roman cell under a hostile emperor, they melt away. He even names two of them, Phygelus and Hermogenes, and those are the only two syllables of their lives that survive. We know nothing else about either man. They were probably not villains. They were probably just careful, sensible people who calculated the cost of being publicly linked to a condemned prisoner and decided against it. Understand how easy that is, and do not be quick to despise them. Most desertions in the church are not betrayals with a kiss; they are a hundred small avoidances that add up to an absence.
And then, blessed be God, there is Onesiphorus. His name means bringer of profit, and he lived up to it. Look at what is said about him and take it slowly, because this is one of the loveliest short portraits in all of Paul’s letters. He “often refreshed” the old man, and the word carries the idea of cool air, of reviving somebody who is exhausted. Not once, either: often. He “was unashamed of my chains,” which is precisely the thing Timothy is being asked to be, so Paul is not asking for something no ordinary believer has managed. And then the sentence that should stay with you: “when he arrived in Rome, he searched diligently until he found me.” Picture it. A man from Ephesus, off the boat in the greatest city on earth, with a million people and no directory, looking for one chained prisoner whom the authorities had every reason to keep buried. He must have knocked on doors, questioned soldiers, followed dead ends for days, and every question he asked put him in danger of being noticed. He kept asking until he found him. This man will never have a book of the Bible named after him. He performed no miracle we know of, preached no sermon, held no office that is recorded. He simply refused to let a friend be alone, and he would not stop looking. Paul prays for him twice in three verses, once for his household and once for the man himself “on that day,” and he reminds Timothy that this was no isolated gesture, because Onesiphorus had already served the church at Ephesus in ways Timothy had seen with his own eyes.
Study notes Going deeper
Look back over the chapter and see how tightly it is woven. It begins with a grandmother’s unmasked faith and ends with a friend’s refusal to be ashamed, and everything in between is about the same question: will you stand with Christ and with His people when it costs you something? Paul does not answer that question by appealing to Timothy’s willpower. He answers it by piling up what God has done. God gave the gift, so fan it. God gave a Spirit of power and love and self-control, so the timidity is not from Him. God saved us and called us by His own purpose and grace before time began, so our standing does not hang on our nerve. God’s Son has abolished death and lit up the road to immortality, so the worst the empire can do is open a door. And God is able to guard what has been entrusted to Him, so nothing you have staked on Him can be lost. Shame, in the end, is a question of what you believe about the One you are ashamed of. Paul had settled it, and could write from a cell the same thing he had once written to the church in the imperial capital itself.
"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Greek." Romans 1:16 (BSB)
He is not bracing himself in that verse. He is stating a reason. You are not ashamed of a thing that is actually working, and the gospel is actually working, saving real people in every nation, generation after generation, including you if you belong to Christ this morning. So take the chapter home in the shape Paul gave it. Kneel down and blow on the coals; the fire is still there under the ash. Refuse the failure of nerve, and notice that the Spirit hands you love and a sober mind along with the courage. Stop asking whether your grip is strong enough and start remembering whose hands you are in. Guard what you were given without adding to it or trimming it, and do it with the help of the Spirit who lives in you. And go looking for the person everyone else has quietly stopped visiting, because somewhere in that great city one man kept knocking on doors, and the Holy Spirit saw fit to write his name down forever. Learn the Word, hold fast to the One you have believed, and give thanks.