Coming Up For Air

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Dwelling on Job's powerful, concentrated testimony in Scripture, Spurgeon cites in Morning and Evening admiringly, "The marrow of Job's comfort lies in that little word "My" – "My Redeemer." Paul draws and offers similar succor from another little word as he opens the second letter to Timothy in Scripture in theological rhapsody. It is well that Paul shows us his credentials and Christ, the authority behind forthcoming instructions. It is well that he extends this sense of purpose to an intimate love of particular individuals like Timothy. It is well that he flies his missional flag with the cut-through colors of grace, mercy, and peace which blazes through any fog of war. It is well also that he traces these qualities to their roots in the un...

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus… "We should consider the Word ," offers Charles Spurgeon in Morning and Evening , "to be as a mirror into which Christ looks down from heaven; and then we, looking into it, see His face reflected as in a glass-darkly." Spurgeon qualifies, "It is true, but still in such a way as to be a blessed preparation for seeing Him as we shall see Him face to face." Blessedly, Scripture itself aids us in developing this Christ centrality. Opening his second letter to Timothy in the canon, Paul has mentioned Christ three times already before the second verse is concluded. Even with the pressing business that will unfold and what comes down to us as 2 Timothy, it takes but little, it seems, to draw the old apostle's thoughts toward his, and our, Savior.  P...

2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father "We get the odd notion," exposes A.W. Tozer, "that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No, Jesus died because God is showing mercy." Inspired Paul is allowed to nudge aside the veil a little on the united Trinity's heart toward us and confront some of these assumptions in 2 Timothy 1:2. If we can ever grow accustomed, believer, to the reality that the unmerited favor that is grace, the absorbed consequences which are mercy, and the combined reality which is peace of realizing who we now are all belong to us in Christ, we can still hold onto a stunted understanding. We can keep the notion that these blessings began with Christ's taking on human flesh and our hours tenuously only so long as He can keep arguing with His temperamental Father successfully. This is unscriptural. Before Christ was a Babe in Bethlehem, the Father gave Abram the grace of faith and reckoned it to him...

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace… In his Morning and Evening devotional, Charles Spurgeon yawps with especially intense fervor on the reality of the position of God's people, declaring, "They shall walk in white"; that is, they shall enjoy a constant sense of their own justification by faith; they shall understand that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to them, that they have all been washed and made whiter than the newly-fallen snow." Walking in white has been a literal phenomenon. It was for the high priest whose filthy garments the Lord exchanged in Zechariah 3. Until it is literal again in Heaven, we can look at Paul's example in his ecstatic opening list in 2 Timothy 1:2 and know that we can give off the piece of our perfected position, a reality as resplendent as a wardrobe will one day be. Because of what Christ has alr...

2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy… "Men are not angered by mere misfortune," lectures CS Lewis through the demonic character Screwtape, "but by misfortune conceived as injury." The Holy Spirit knows that this transference takes place. As he matures in the Spirit and experiences disappointment of even the most just expectations to the point of treachery, so does the apostle Paul. Thus, still in the handshake, the reintroduction of the intimate instruction which comes down to us as 2 Timothy, Paul is already slathering the exercise with mercy. God's love, he bequeaths, is already stepping between Timothy and a sense of impending consequences which could so easily weigh him down. Are we that preemptive in administering broad-spectrum mercy in our relationships? I fear not, for we begrudge the application of Screwtape's maximum. In our reflective moments, we think of ourselves as hardy, forgiving sorts only occasionally touched by a sense of personal inj...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved son: Grace… "What is 'grace'?" This is Thomas Merton's query in his memoir Seven Storey Mountain . He answers, "It is God's own life, shared by us. God’s life is Love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are able to share in the infinitely selfless love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends. Indeed," extends Merton, "outside of Him there is nothing, and whatever exists by His free gift of its being, so that one of the notions that is absolutely contradictory to the perfection of God is selfishness." Under this examination of grace's splendor, it is particularly magnanimous and magnificent that Paul's grace toward Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:2 follows Paul's declaration of sonship over his disciple. Paul has establi...

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved son: 2 Timothy 1:1-2, New King James Version In Shakespeare's masterwork, Lady Macbeth is giving herself even in her subconscious to doing whatever it takes for ambition to succeed. Surrendering any remaining softness in her nature, she pledges, "Take my milk for gall." In whatever aspects our parents have blessed us, we fed on gall as well as milk. The relationship between parents and children in a fallen world is a tangle of delights and unfulfilled ambitions, gratitude and disappointed expectations. Cults wishing to start the world anew uproot people from such relationships and urge them to forget them as quickly as possible. Yet, inspired Paul in 2 Timothy 1:2 enters directly into this metaphorical minefield for the word choice with which to name his passion for Timothy. Spurgeon imparts in Morning and Evening , "The ra...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, a beloved… E.M. Forster challenges in The Longest Journey , "You cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process."   He presses them, "You cannot substitute 'the safer personal influence' for real 'personal intercourse." Real teaching, he writes, is not built on 'formulae, like kindly traps, 'handled within the safe shadow of authority." Don't we persistently try, though? Sensing our own limitations and mortality, we want to have an influence especially on those who come behind us. We want to have that influence from a safe distance without opening ourselves up to the vulnerability and risk that comes from real relationships between two fallen humans still under Christ's construction. Challenged by a statement like Forster's we would retreat to tropes about tem...

A former pastor of mine challenged toward looking at life and ministry with both eyes, or firing at its challenges with both barrels. "Broadcast Truth," he would say, "but focus expectation." The Holy Spirit's writing style through Paul in the opening of 2 Timothy shows just this holistic approach. Paul's introduction of himself and his mission in 2 Timothy 1:1 has been an invitation to and admonition toward his big picture thinking. Witness his calling again, and we hear the trumpets that marshal the Lord's galactic forces. Paul is evidence in one human microcosm's of what Martin Luther King Jr. will call the long moral arc of the universe which bends toward justice. The opening of what comes to us as 2 Timothy 1:2 is a kind of a comedown, but a holy and healthy one. That moral arc, King will say, is a long one. His rhetoric, like Paul's, stirs mass movements, but both of them know the impact of a personal touch over time on specific individuals...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus… "It takes resources to be revolutionary," connects Tim Hanauer. The apostle Paul knows it. He uses this reality as an occasion to advertise his dependence on Christ upfront in his spiritual handshake in 2 Timothy 1:1. There is a sweet symmetry in this. For in that initial introduction, Paul has already said he is an apostle OF Christ. That is, he is consumed by Christ's brand, Christ's mission, Christ's reputation. The cross of Christ is his equivalent to McDonald's's golden arches. But when was the last time you heard or saw McDonald's take up precious advertising space or cultural attention to tell us what vendor supplies their napkins, or their straws? Yet, Paul doesn't hesitate to tell us quickly and repeatedly that while Christ is on the marquee at the front of his life, Christ is also his supply at the back door. Without being...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life… "Transformation," equates David McCants, "requires faith in action."  Just so, the spontaneity and certainty of the Lord's work in him is all over Paul's introductory business card in 2 Timothy 1:1. Apostleship is not something he wears as an onerous mantle, to be shed when grace is more manifest. The title, the role, intercessory, sometimes indeed heavy, is to Paul a manifestation of grace itself. His calling to this work is, he says, according to the promise of life. Do we expect to be slathered in Christ's grace and remade by it AS we work, AS we minister? Or, are we like the fighter who expects today to be mostly bruising combat, separated from tomorrow's bruising combat only by a brief interval of renewal in the corner? I suspect that if we approach today according to the promise of life, as an extension of all that God has promised here and in the herea...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God… Spurgeon revels in and reveals the believer's internal conversation in Morning and Evening , discerning, "if God so wills: the worst calamity is the wisest and the kindest thing that could befall to me if God ordains it." "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Paul, face what issues he will in Ephesus in 2 Timothy has that ballast in place and says so before the presenting problems begin. To be an apostle OF Christ in itself could encumber with anxieties if at every moment Paul was concerned about spoiling Christ's glorious brand, about distracting from what Christ did perfectly with whatever Paul does imperfectly. Yet, even in the ensuing phrase, there is Paul's reassuring glance backward. Paul is here, at this point in life and ministry because God willed it. God brought him to this moment and all that involves, and God will bring him through it. What contagi...

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ… Somebody asked John Sununu, Chief of Staff to Pres. George HW Bush if he had a difficult job. Sununu negated the possibility. He explained that in a city of competing agendas, he had a constituency of one. The apostle Paul must have known something of this assurance. He opens what comes down to us as 2 Timothy writing to a man whose progress means a great deal to him. Through the man for whom the letter is titled, Paul certainly hopes to influence Timothy's church at Ephesus which is not without its problems. Through and sometimes in spite of that church, Paul, called as the apostle to the Gentiles whom Christ said would testify for Him in Jerusalem and Rome, the search for market-testing phrasing and methods which would bolster all three could have been maddening. It could have been, but Paul knew Whose hat, whose title, and Whose authority he wore. Paul was, he declares from the opening, Christ's apostle. All things, all roles, all goal...

"Paul, an apostle…" 2 Timothy 1:1, New King James Version Historian Joseph Ellis wrote in Founding Brothers that one of the unusual aspects of the writing of the founding fathers was that they seemed to write, even to each other, with a conscious awareness that history would witness their dialogue. Paul gives something of that sense as well as he opens what comes down to us as 2 Timothy. Yes, he is writing to the same son in the faith he intimately counseled at the close of 1 Timothy to guard his own potential drift. Yes, he is writing to the same young disciple whose connection to his mother's and grandmother's faith he understands. He prophesied about the plans God has for Timothy in particular. He once circumcised Timothy before taking him on a mission, which gives a new, literal level to the bond between them. Yet Paul is one man. He is a mentor to one, conversation by conversation, and apostle to the Gentiles at the same time. His larger impact, he knows, consis...

20 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge— 21 by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. A reality TV producer of the short-lived but excellent Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 defends his quest for eyeballs and attention. "Rumor will work as well as truth," he posits. Perhaps surprisingly, the apostle Paul would agree. It is the abrupt closing note to his first letter to Timothy including in the biblical canon, he points to what Hebrews will call the shipwreck of faith which can be wrought by, "just talking." The dynamics, he says of being a conduit for the day's conventional wisdom, the effort to stated just a little more smartly, to adroitly have one foot in God's Word, and one foot in the wisdom of the world, has caused many to leave themselves away from the simple but profound Gospel they want said they believed. In this, the reality TV p...

20 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge… "Every culture," inveighs Tim Keller in the July 16 entry of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life , "has deep 'background beliefs' about life that are so taken for granted that they are invisible to us as beliefs.  We think of them," he admits, "as 'just the way things are.'"  Inhaling the life-giving, healthfully contrarian spirit of Proverbs 12:1 and 15, Keller counters, "No one becomes wise unless they allow these beliefs to be examined and challenged, supremely by God's Word but also by teachers, colleagues, family members, and friends. If you always know best, you are STUPID. This, as 1 Timothy 6 winds down, is the necessity of purpose-driven speech. Just as the previous phrase in verse 20 can be used to muzzle us in artificial, legalistic gloom which would, in speaking, qu...

20 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings… Tim Hughes in "Justice of God" entreats, "Keep us from just singing!" Paul would no doubt double down on that prayer, asking the Lord to keep himself, to keep Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20, and to keep those who will read it from just speaking. At least when we sing we meditate to some degree, we rehearse a little bit. Speech, however, comes almost as naturally as breathing. As disciplined as James is and commands the readers of his epistle to be, even he admits we can't tame the human tongue. It will speak, and it will speak amiss. The phenomenon of depravity demonstrated by speech is worse than we thought. We can grow accustomed to the idea that we will give account to the Lord for every word and train circumspection to the point of glumness that we might not say anything specifically blasphemous or specifically destructive toward our neighbor, but this isn't...

20 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust… In his sermon, "Presumptuous Sins," Charles Spurgeon is on guard for himself and his listeners. He quotes, "The Apostle Paul warns saints against the most loathsome of sins. He says, 'Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, idolatry, inordinate affection,' and such like." What!," reacts Spurgeon in mock surprise, "do saints want warning against such sins as these? Yes, they do," solemnize is the prince of preachers, concluding the thought with the reminders, "the highest saints may sin the lowest sins, unless kept by divine grace. You old experienced Christians, boast not in your experience," Spurgeon pleads, "you may trip yet, unless you cry, 'Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.'" If anything, we experience a plea of Paul for Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20 as more emphatic, more personal. We have, by God's grace he...

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, 19 storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life. Let Christ be as unique with others, insists Francis Chan in Crazy Love , as He has been with you. Then, there's the other side. There is the side of Him revealing Himself uniquely through the walks of those humans behind whom we follow. There is the spirit in which Paul can insist on the fullness of Christian freedom in Galatians 4, exhorting, follow me as I follow Christ. In that sense, he can similarly leave footsteps for Timothy to follow. More amazing still, this sense of the power of one individual's trek can carry forward to a third spiritual generation. Even before Timothy engages in the particular fight with...

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, 19 storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come… In The Children , David Halberstam draws an interesting distinction. He compares those African-American civil rights pioneers born in the South they were trying to change with Northerners who came alongside them.  "It was not that Southern blacks lacked anger," pinpoint Halberstam, " but, he believed, they had grown up with a certain tempering quality of patience." He quotes John Lewis, one of the Southerners. “We were rooted in those communities and their churches, and we had an understanding of how far you could go, one step at a time. Sometimes I think the Northerners thought they could just come down South and just liberate the natives. Thos...

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, 19 storing up for themselves a good foundation… Dwight Macdonald connects in his profile of Dorothy Day in the October 4 and 11th issue of the New Yorker that the essence of her movement was "the union of the everyday and the ultimate." That is a synthesis much older than Day and much broader than her Catholic Worker movement. The apostle Paul endorses it to a startling degree with his word choice in 1 Timothy 6:19, saying that in the now repurposed good work now do for Christ, the rich are storing up for themselves a good foundation. I'm bristling to object. If such a metaphor can from someone whose theology I have reason to suspect, I would be ready to aim a fusillade of inspired Paul at this human-centered notion....

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share… "Real networking, declares Matthew Aaron Perman in What's in Best Next , "is about finding out what you can do to equip others to be successful." Perhaps that's why Paul gives us two verbs at the close of 1 Timothy 6:18 to describe the new creature's use of riches. He is, says Paul, ready to give the riches he's got. There is a transfer, a surrender, of what now belongs to Christ from the hands of one brother to the hands of another. Perhaps this readiness to give is simply double down in the next expression of willingness to share. But I can't escape the possibility that sharing is a separate challenge for the old, enriched man, and a second opportunity for Christ as the Second Adam to shine through. A...

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give… "The test of moderation," discerns Charles Krauthammer in his aptly named book The Point of It All , "is not what you want but what you're willing to give." The wealthy Christians in Ephesus, Paul trusts, will change by the Holy Spirit's work. He positions Timothy to confront their old grasping habits and mindset, and thereby to release the true purpose of their holy ambition in Christ. This new life, he assures as verse 18 continues, is born with readiness to give. Krauthammer is right. Charting of the slow death of the old man, and the slow emergence of the new man in Christ confirms that our selfish wants don't go away. A new picture in our heads and hearts, though, of our purpose and that of the opportunities we a...

17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works… Screwtape is livid in the last exchange of CS Lewis's epistolary between demons. The human patient whose doom they hoped to secure has passed into Glory. Screwtape the master tempter belittles his nephew in failure for any consolation he hoped to secure as the patient passed from one world to the next. He mocks, "Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy," he sets up."But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. But when he saw them," concedes Screwtape, "he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, no...