2 Timothy 4:6-8 – The Invulnerable Reward
6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.
"He will never break His promise," Rich Mullins sings of God in "My Deliverance Is Coming," "though the stars should break faith with the sky."
Paul has a similar sense of unshakable continuity in 2 Timothy 4:6-8. He and Rich both know our tendency by habit to use the physical as a frame of reference for the lasting. Paul has been accustomed to identifying with the body in which the Lord has placed him. People have seen that body and said, "Paul" whether they liked him or despised him.
That body has been hearty enough to carry him through the hardships and persecutions he with in Scripture. But that body's ability to cope and survive, he knows, is being poured out like a drink offering. We might compare its lapsing time to the sense of an hourglass.
Yet Paul is convinced he will still be Paul when that body is beheaded. The fight he has fought, the race he has run, the faith he has kept will be relevant by God's grace to what is to come. As important and unsettling a transition as death is, the equivalent in one life of Rich Mullins's stars falling from the sky, an event emitter enough to be described as precious in the Lord's sight, it will not cast into doubt His promises. Death will not even unsettle Heaven's accounts.
Paul is sure, in fact, that his reward is already waiting for him. Paul's sense of lack of control has got to be jarring, as one day his cell will open, and, as the Lord said to Peter, he will extend his arms and people will take him where he does not, in a sense, want to go.
Yet, the arbitrariness of Rome does not ruffle the intimate plans of God. The mutual love of His appearing, Paul says, adheres a fellowship that neither bars, nor laws, nor death itself can separate. As we, granted another day on the side of those living in this mortal frame, drill down more deeply into level Christ, we relish the promises we see fulfilled, and even more the ones we haven't yet.
"He will never break His promise," Rich Mullins sings of God in "My Deliverance Is Coming," "though the stars should break faith with the sky."
Paul has a similar sense of unshakable continuity in 2 Timothy 4:6-8. He and Rich both know our tendency by habit to use the physical as a frame of reference for the lasting. Paul has been accustomed to identifying with the body in which the Lord has placed him. People have seen that body and said, "Paul" whether they liked him or despised him.
That body has been hearty enough to carry him through the hardships and persecutions he with in Scripture. But that body's ability to cope and survive, he knows, is being poured out like a drink offering. We might compare its lapsing time to the sense of an hourglass.
Yet Paul is convinced he will still be Paul when that body is beheaded. The fight he has fought, the race he has run, the faith he has kept will be relevant by God's grace to what is to come. As important and unsettling a transition as death is, the equivalent in one life of Rich Mullins's stars falling from the sky, an event emitter enough to be described as precious in the Lord's sight, it will not cast into doubt His promises. Death will not even unsettle Heaven's accounts.
Paul is sure, in fact, that his reward is already waiting for him. Paul's sense of lack of control has got to be jarring, as one day his cell will open, and, as the Lord said to Peter, he will extend his arms and people will take him where he does not, in a sense, want to go.
Yet, the arbitrariness of Rome does not ruffle the intimate plans of God. The mutual love of His appearing, Paul says, adheres a fellowship that neither bars, nor laws, nor death itself can separate. As we, granted another day on the side of those living in this mortal frame, drill down more deeply into level Christ, we relish the promises we see fulfilled, and even more the ones we haven't yet.
As I read this I could not help but think of how God also sometimes roots his promises in the stability of designed creation. To the expelled nation in Jeremiah's day, God says:
ReplyDeleteThus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar -- the LORD of hosts is his name: If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. (Jer. 31:35-36)
However, this still lines up perfectly with Paul's perspective on God's promises even when facing the uncertainty of death. This is because God is not making a promise here based on the regularity of cosmological constants. Rather, he is using them as evidence of his power to accomplish what he providentially sets forth. In Jeremiah, this was the continuity of the nation of Israel, even in the face of debilitating exile. For Paul, this was confidence that God was the keeper of all promises, even as Caesar's axe was swung. For us, we can find peace in the God who controls the fixed order of things, as did Jeremiah and Rich Mullins and the God who superintends death and oppression, as did Paul. Even when the stars and moon seem to be falling from the sky all around us, as our lives are crashing in and becoming desolate, it is the King of the Universe who is still in control and is faithful by his own power, not by the regularity or predictability of creation and our lives.
I've got a sticky brain that can tend to analogize farther than is helpful, but this was my Facebook status a couple of years ago, to your cultural point:
DeleteIsaiah 6:1-7 and 2 Timothy 3:1-5 – Cultures degrade so quickly and thoroughly from their biblical foundations that intercession should be our habit for those inside and outside the Church.
Excellent use of the wide-angle lens to connect what God shows about the fate of a man to the fate of nations. If anything, the principle applies to a greater degree.
ReplyDeleteWe are so ready to decide all is well are always lost based on the state of a given culture. God sees them come and go. He sees aspects of each which testify to Him, and aspects of each which draw His perfectly controlled ire.
Thank you for your faithfulness. Rejoice with me, please, as this has gotten some traction over on the rich Mullins Facebook page, also. May it, along with you and I, as Rich signed, be God's.