2 Timothy 2:1–13

February 4th, 2025| Topic: 2 Timothy, aBeLOG | 0

The servants of God, strengthened by God’s grace and entrusting the work of God to faithful people of God, face potential suffering, but seek only to please their faithful God and to further his cause—undistracted, upright, and industrious—thus gaining great eternal rewards.

This passage continues Paul’s appeal to Timothy that he be willing to suffer for God and for the gospel.

What Timothy has “heard” publicly from Paul, “in the presence of many witnesses” (2:2), he is to convey to others who are “faithful.” While 2:2 seems to be dealing mostly with speech, this is not to divorce sound words from sound living—the “pattern” of life lived according to those “words that are sound” (1:13). Thus we have a series of concentric circles of teaching being developed: apostle (Paul) to delegate (Timothy) to elders (“faithful people”) to “others.” And then Paul unleashes three illustrations typical of Greco-Roman models of instruction: that of the soldier (2:3–4: singlemindedness), the athlete (2:5: rule-keeping), and the farmer (2:6: hard work). The outcomes of such strivings are, respectively, the pleasure of the recruiter, winning the prize, and receiving a share.

For the soldier, it is the singlemindedness that is critical here, an undistracted devotion to duty that precludes entanglement in “the things of [daily] life” (2:4). Whether or not such entanglements are sinful is not the issue here; it is simply that such an embrace of the world ought not to be a priority for the recruited soldier, for it is a distraction for a single-minded warrior. Perhaps one could say that what is being criticized here is not involvement, but entanglement—undue and overwhelming liaisons with the world that drain one’s time, resources, energies, and focus.

For the athlete that Timothy (and each believer) is called to be, such lawful competition “by the rules,” Paul intimates here, means to exhibit a life marked by uprightness in every facet, and in every situation, i.e., the consistent manifestation of godliness.

For the farmer, the emphasis is on industriousness and hard work, which will thus give that person the a right to the produce of the field on a future day—the anticipation of rewards then, for all the effort expended now.

All that to say, no matter what the intensity of the struggle, no matter what the shape of the strife, no matter what the scope of the battle, there will be rewards for the undistracted, upright, and industrious servant of God, one who is willing to endure to the end.

The pattern of Paul following Christ for the sake of the cause, the gospel, and its causative agent, God in Christ, is found in the single sentence of 2:8–10. Paul affirms that he “suffered affliction” as an “evil-worker” and endured, so that the ones he ministered to, “the elect,” may also be experience “salvation”—here, future glory (2:9–10). Thus we have the messianic model of Jesus, the “seed of David,” and the pattern of the apostle—suffering first, enjoying glory later. As well, this is the road that Timothy and all believers should anticipate treading, in that same sequence.

Paul then closes with what appears to be a hymn in 2:11–13, carefully structured in parallel, dealing with two positives: conversion (2:11) and endurance (2:12a), as well as two negatives: denial (2:12) and faithlessness (2:13). The negative elements indicate that these are ever-present dangers for the believer. That, of course, does not indicate loss of salvation: If we deny him, he might deny us (loss of rewards), but he, in the end, is faithful no matter what (as far as salvation is concerned), for he cannot deny himself.

[For more details, see my commentary on 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus.]