An Introduction to 2 Timothy

Two Timothy chapter 1:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus,

“To Timothy, my beloved child:

“Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

“I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. 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, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior [Jesus] Christ …, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you[’ve] heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

“You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me earnestly and found me—may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day!—and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus.”

Amen.

Our gracious God, we realize that while heaven and earth may pass away, your Word will never pass away.[1] It is fixed in the heavens.[2] And we ask, as we study the Bible now, for your help, the help of the Holy Spirit, so that we might bring the affections of our lives, the feelings of our hearts, under the jurisdiction of the truth of your Word. We’re tempted to get it the other way around, and it always disappoints us. So please help us to this end, we pray. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

Well, let me initially draw your attention to a few verses at the end of chapter 3, beginning in 2 Timothy 3:14. Paul is describing the peculiar circumstances that are presented there in the environment in which Timothy is working, and he says to him, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings.” What an amazing privilege it is to have from childhood been acquainted with the Bible! And many who are in the building this morning are going to be able to tell that story. They are enjoying that same privilege as a result of your exercising your parental duties and privileges. And they’re “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Now, I begin there this morning, in what is essentially an introduction to 2 Timothy, because I want you to notice that Paul in this letter—which is essentially his swan song, his final letter—he is saying to Timothy, “I have finished the race, and I want to make sure that you also finish the race. I now have kept the faith. I have fought the fight. I have finished the race. The time for my departure is now at hand,[3] and I am deeply concerned,” says Paul, “that the gospel ministry that I have exercised will in turn be exercised by you and through you in generations still to come.” And the language that he uses there at the end of chapter 3 is very clear. He is concerned that that which Timothy has become convinced of—and it is a wonderful thing to be convinced of things, the truth of God’s Word. “You have absolutely laid hold of it. You’re convinced of these things. I want to make sure that you continue, that you hold fast to the things you become convinced of, and that you see it right through to the end of your life.” In other words, it is the concern of a pastor for those under his care. And Paul the apostle is a pastor as well as an evangelist, and as he exercises this ministry now towards the end of his life, he wants to make sure that Timothy holds the line.

Now, you may be saying to yourself—you probably are—“Is this, then, where we’re going to go for the foreseeable future in terms of our next series of studies?” And the answer to that is yes. It wasn’t the case in the early part of this week or even all through last week. I was moving in a different direction in my own thinking. But on Thursday morning, I had taken a break from my studies for Sunday to prepare for a pastors’ conference that I have to speak at this coming week. And as I began to work through the material for that conference in 2 Timothy, it struck me that 2 Timothy is particularly apropos the context in which we find ourselves as a church.

Now, of course, it goes without saying that the Bible is always relevant, that it is always applicable. But there are occasions when certain portions of the Scripture appear to tie in very directly and very appropriately with the context of a congregation. And I think that that is true of Timothy, and that’s why I’ve decided to change my course. Paul is seeking to pass the baton of gospel ministry into the hands of this young man, whom he refers to as his child or as his son. And it is in this respect that I see the first tie-in with where we are as a church and what Paul is doing here in this second letter.

Building into the Next Generation

I have three areas that I suggest to you tie in with the decision to proceed with 2 Timothy as our area of study. And this is the first: For the past couple of years, our church leadership has been encouraging us to think in terms of “building into the next generation.” That phrase has been used widely, has been taught in a small-group context, has been reinforced in literature—and, indeed, in literature that is available to us even this morning. The reason for this is because the leadership of the church recognizes that as we move into another phase of life together, that construction of new buildings—such as the building that is going up now for children, a children’s building that will be able to cope with twelve hundred children on a Sunday morning rather than six hundred children, as we presently are able to do—the reason for the construction of that building, the reason for the construction of the Truth For Life building, (which will begin hopefully before the year is out, on the grounds of the old VFW), and the construction of a chapel that will join on with our Commons area, all of these areas of construction are directly related to this notion of building into the next generation. And the same is true in terms of the planned renovation: the doubling of the size of the existing fellowship hall, the complete refurbishment of the building in which you sit now, the transformation of all of the corridors around us—it’s a tremendous amount of renovation that is planned.

And someone might justifiably say, “Well, isn’t that an amazing amount of expense and endeavor? After all, we’ve got all that we need at the present time.” At the present time. Of course, if you want to see your time, our time, as the only time, then we can stop anytime we want. But if we actually do believe that we’re building into the next generation, that we anticipate that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we can ask or even imagine,[4] it surely would be illegitimate of us to feel that somehow or another we had reached the apex in our journey, that we were at the destination. And as I was mulling this over, I said to myself, “You know, it is absolutely crucial that we understand this message of 2 Timothy at this point for us as a church.”

Paul is able to say to Timothy, “I’m reminded of your sincere faith, which was in your grandmother and which is in your mother and which I am convinced,” he says, “is now in you.” And his concern, then, is that Timothy will continue in what he’s become convinced of and that he will become competent in doing what he’s charged to do in pastoral ministry in order to teach a whole new crop of coming leaders, in order to teach a whole new development of young lives that are fastened on, laid hold of by God the Holy Spirit and stimulated and stirred into giving their time and their energy and their lives for the gospel. Because it is this gospel that is at the very heart of Paul’s life, of course.

Just as it is easy for an untended fire to go out, so it is crucial that the flames of gospel ministry are being continually nurtured.

But you will notice, if I can point this out to you, that in chapter 1, Paul issues Timothy with a charge to “guard” the gospel. That’s in verse 14: “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” So, “I want to make sure, Timothy, that you guard the gospel.” In chapter 2, he says, “I want to make sure that you share in suffering for the gospel”—“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”[5] In chapter 3, as we’ve noted—and we began here—“Make sure, Timothy, that you continue in the gospel”—convinced and continuing. And then, in chapter 4, to which we will eventually come: “Make sure, Timothy, that you’re engaged in preaching this gospel.” That’s 4:2: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season.”

Now, what he recognizes is simply this: that just as it is easy for an untended fire to go out, so it is crucial that the flames of gospel ministry are being continually nurtured. That’s 1:6: “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.” In other words, “Timothy, you’re not just going to be sitting on an armchair somewhere, not sitting in a deck chair, but if you’re going to be engaged in this gospel ministry to which God has called you, to which you have been set apart by the laying on of hands, then you’re going to have to be prepared to make sure that you stir up within yourself the very flames of gospel energy. And God is at work within you ‘to will and to do of his good pleasure,’[6] but you have a part to play as well.”

Now, this is a very personal letter. You would understand that. It’s written by the seasoned campaigner to his young lieutenant, if you like. But a personal letter such as this also had a public dimension to it. A personal letter like this would not just have been read by Timothy in his bedroom, but it would have been read in the hearing of the entire congregation—or entire congregations—so that the congregation would be aware of what it was that the apostle was calling their pastor to do.

Now, if you think about that, it makes sense. Otherwise, why would he introduce himself as he does in his greeting: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus”? You mean Timothy didn’t know he was an apostle of Christ Jesus? That’d be like me writing a letter to my son saying, “This is from Alistair Begg, the senior pastor of Parkside Church.” And my son would say, “Well, I knew that. Why did you need to write that in the letter?” Well, the reason that it is written in that way is because he is providing his credentials so that when somebody in the congregation might have said, “Well, why should we pay attention to this?” the answer is: because of its source, because it is apostolic in its authority, because God has moved the apostle Paul to write as he has written. This is the very Word of God. And the way in which he establishes that is by identifying, in a public arena, his apostolic credentials, thereby making the congregation aware of the challenges and responsibilities to be faced by their pastor.

So, for example, in verse 15 he tells Timothy, “They have turned away from me,” referring to folks in Asia. He uses hyperbole, I think: “You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me.” It’s just been a wholesale defection from him. And then in chapter 4 he says, “And they will turn away from you as well.” Chapter 1: “They have all turned away from me.” Chapter 4: “They will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear”[7]—“and they’ll turn away from you as well, Timothy.” Now you see how important it is that the congregation understands what their pastor is up against.

Also, that they might understand the ministry that Timothy is to exercise. As the man of God, it is a ministry of the Word of God. That’s the significance, again, of verses 16 and 17. Paul is not writing that so that Timothy might say, “Oh, really? I didn’t know that the Scripture was inspired by God.” This is not a verse to explain the inspiration of Scripture. What he’s saying is “Because Scripture is breathed out by God, it provides, Timothy, you with the opportunity to teach it in such a way that it exposes rebellion, that it corrects mistakes, that it trains people how to live God’s way[8] and in the awareness of the fact that it is through God’s Word that the people of God are put together and they’re shaped up and established for the tasks that they have.” Hence our emphasis at the moment on the front of the bulletin: the “Read your Bible every day.” Because as we read our Bibles every day, it reinforces what is being done Sunday by Sunday.

So, let me recap: I believe that a study now in 2 Timothy is particularly appropriate, first of all, because it ties in with the present focus of our church’s leadership—number one.

The Framework of Ministry

Number two: because it ties in—and this is a personal allusion, which I hope you will allow me—because it ties in with what has been and remains the framework of my life. It ties in and remains the framework of my life.

I thought you might like to see this photograph that I took yesterday morning in the flyleaf of an old Bible. You will see that this goes back to—what is that?—forty-seven years ago this particular week. I didn’t realize it was this particular week until I looked inside, and there it was, the fifteenth of January. Last Sunday was the twelfth, so that would be, what, Wednesday or something like that? So forty-seven years ago, on the fifteenth of January, I was given this Bible. I was moving with my family from Scotland to England. The people with whom I’d been spending time as a small boy in Sunday school decided that it would be good for me to have a Bible, and they decided to give me a Bible reference.

I think you know that I haven’t had very many Bible references given to me in my life. I don’t mean that I haven’t had many readings of the Bible, but in terms of stand-out verses, I don’t have very many of them. When people ask me, “Do you have a life’s verse?” I never know what to say. I mentioned the fact that my mother had given me something at the end of a letter—that that stands out to me—and this one too. Verse 15 of 2 Timothy in the King James Version, which is the Bible that I was given: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”[9] That’s quite interesting, isn’t it? I was fourteen years old. It was just a verse to me at the time. I’m not sure that I made very much of it at all. Forty-seven years later, it appears almost prophetic, for in actual fact, my entire life has been about trying to do what Paul says to Timothy to do in that verse. I really don’t have any other string to my bow. I have nothing else that I can testify to as being significant. I’m really kind of monomaniacal just doing this. “Do your best to present yourself to … one approved.”[10]

And this 2 Timothy, actually, is at the very heart of all that we do every day. If I might expand the framework of my life and include my colleagues in it, I think that is valid and only appropriate. But we turn to this again and again. We turn particularly to 4:5 again and again, where when we’re tempted to discouragement, or when we’re fearful of the future, or when we don’t know what we really should be doing next, somebody will say, “Well, what about 2 Timothy 4:5? ‘Keep your head in all [circumstances], endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, [and] discharge all the duties of your ministry.’”[11] There’s hardly a week passes but someone in the pastoral team will say, “Well, keep your head. Endure hardship. Tell people about Jesus. Do what you’re supposed to do.” What will we do next week? “Keep your head. Endure hardship. Tell people about Jesus. Do what you’re supposed to do.” That’s what Paul is saying to Timothy.

That’s why I say to you, it is particularly appropriate if we’re going to say we’re all about building into the next generation. In other words, our focus is telescopic over the horizon. We are beginning to dream dreams and see visions of things that we ourselves will never enjoy. Some of us aren’t up for that. If we really wanted to turn the city of Cleveland or the city of Detroit around—choosing just two Midwestern possibilities—we would have to launch into something that we would never see the fulfillment of in our lifetime, because it’s so demanding. It’s so rich in potential. And the same is true in pastoral ministry.

Luther had a love affair with Galatians. I have a love affair with 2 Timothy. He said of Galatians, “The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. I have betrothed myself to it as to my wife.”[12] I might not be so bold, but I do have a strong affection. And I hope I have a growing understanding. I thought that I had probably done 2 Timothy a few times here in thirty years. But I had to check, and I discovered I have only ever once preached through the book of 2 Timothy, through the letter of 2 Timothy. I did it in four Sundays. I did a chapter a Sunday morning. And I did it in 1991, in March of 1991, when we were still in Solon High School, in the auditorium. I’m not going to ask if anybody remembers the series. Why would you? I’d forgotten it. But how many of you were actually in the high school auditorium in 1991? Just put up your hands. Maybe 3 percent. So, if I was working on the basis I’d say, “Well, I did 2 Timothy; they should remember that”—well, there may be some who were there remember that, but 97 percent of the people weren’t even there. So it does seem timely, doesn’t it?

And also, I think I understand it better than I did then. Of course, only those who remember the sermon will know, but I can be honest with you. I can tell you. Let me quote to you from 1991: 2 Timothy 1, March 1991, I said of Timothy, “This young man ought to be an encouragement to us all, insofar as he was not a natural.” See, he was not a natural. And as I opened up our study in chapter 1, I was pointing out the fact that Timothy was comparatively young—remember, “Let no one despise … your youth”[13]—that he was physically frail: “Take a little wine for your stomach’s sake.”[14] I came across a commentary that where the person was so paranoid about that very notion being in the Bible that he said that this was clearly for external use only, but… It’s a funny thought, Timothy rubbing wine on his tummy. But anyway, that’s as may be. And also that he was naturally timid. You know, “When Timothy comes to you,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “put him at ease.”[15] And so I said, “You know, the thing about Timothy is that he’s not like anybody else. And so that’s why Paul writes to him as he does. He’s a sort of nervous fellow. He’s a shrinking violet. He really doesn’t know what he’s doing. And so Paul writes to this young man, who is unique in this respect, in order that he might bolster him up and encourage him so that he can get on and do the job.”

But twenty-three years later, I actually think Timothy was normal. I don’t think he was unique. Now, last week I came home with a little something necessary for my stomach’s sake, from Peru. Timothy worked in a climate where his tummy could easily be disengaged. I’m often fearful. I’m no longer relatively young. But you see how relevant it is. If we position this as a letter to a certain kind of individual who was a bit of a coward and so on, then those of us who don’t identify with that in any way in terms of psychology or personality, we immediately assume it has very little relevance to us at all—because after all, we’re not like that. We’re not Timothy. But in actual fact, anybody who’s been in pastoral ministry for any time knows what it is to be fearful, knows what it is to be sensitive in crisis, knows how normal it is to be in need of the promises of God and in the purposes of God just to keep us in the battle—just the fact that you’re still in it, the fact that you’re still standing.

You go to see these great Civil War battles; you say, “How many have we got left?” And you see the camera spans over the battlefield, and there are a few still standing. That’s the picture Paul uses when he says to them, in writing to the church at Ephesus, “You know, you better take to yourselves the whole armor of God. And when you’ve got everything in place, make sure that at the end of the day you are still standing.”[16] That’s what he’s saying to Timothy: “I am about to leave. Make sure that you finish. Make sure that you’re still there.” And it’d be good for the congregation to hear this, wouldn’t it, so they might pray for their pastor, so that they might realize what he’s up against?

Anybody who’s been in pastoral ministry for any time knows how normal it is to be in need of the promises of God and in the purposes of God just to keep us in the battle.

A man by the name of Macleod, who was the last Gaelic-speaking pastor of a church in Newmilns—Church of Scotland church there—he obviously had a pretty rough go of it, because as he left, he wrote a hymn. And his hymn begins with the line: “Courage, brother[s], do not stumble.” He wrote it for all his fellow ministers. And it contains this verse:

Some will love thee, some will hate thee,
Some will praise thee, some will slight.
Cease from man, and look above thee;
Trust in God, and do what’s right.[17]

It’s a good word, isn’t it? It’s a necessary word. That’s what he’s saying to Timothy: “Timothy, make sure that as you engage in this pastoral ministry, you are holding firm. Make sure that you are not ashamed.” “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord.” Oh, was Timothy peculiar in this respect—that he was, you know, just the kind of person who was ashamed? It’s hard to imagine him being ashamed. He gets sent on these amazing assignments.

No, again, I think this is true. Again, when I taught it back in ’91, I said, “You know, he obviously had a problem with being ashamed.” I don’t think he did. Have you never felt ashamed of the gospel? Did you make it through this past week without being ashamed of the gospel? Oh, there’s no shame in saying to people, “I’m a religious person.” They say, “Oh, very interesting.” “I’m interested in spiritual things.” “Very interesting.” “I have God in my life.” “Whoo! Well, there we go.” There’s no shame in any of that. Our culture is able to sidestep that, absorb it, do anything they choose with it. Let me tell you where the shame comes: say, “Jesus Christ is the only Savior. There is no other way. ‘There is … [only] one mediator between God and [man], the man Christ Jesus.’[18] ‘It is appointed unto [man] once to die, [and] after this [comes] judgment.’”[19] And your friends and colleagues in the office say, “Are you kidding me? Do you expect me to believe that the death of a Galilean carpenter claiming to be a Messiah two thousand years ago is not only the pivotal event of human history but upon that event hangs the eternal destiny of everyone who was ever created?” Yeah.

Have you ever been tempted to fudge that? To fudge the doctrine of creation, because you’re afraid that your friends in the physics department at the university will think you’re an idiot? Do you care more about what they think than affirming the truth of God’s Word? That the issues of redemption, that the matters of human sexuality, that the concerns of the family—that the family is not a big social experiment that is being worked out in time, but it was ordained by God, who created the universe, and one man and one woman living together in the company of one another would produce children together according to his plan—have you ever felt ashamed of that these days? Oh, it was really bad work on my part to suggest that Timothy had a peculiar problem. He had the challenge that we all have. And when we fail at that level, then there’s all kinds of compromise and corruption that results.

Retaining the Conviction and Clarity of the Gospel

That brings me to my third point, which I will just make without really any further expansion. Why study 2 Timothy at the moment? Well, first of all, because congregationally it accords with the focus of leadership. Secondly, personally, it aligns with the framework of my life—and I’m allowed to say things like this now that I’m in my sixties. It would sound really presumptuous if I was twenty-four or something like that—you know, “the framework of my life.” Say, “Oh, really? You got a framework to your life?” No. I don’t mean it in any sense of self-aggrandizement. I’m telling you that just as you folks have reached crossroads in your life, the thirtieth anniversary of being here is a crossroad in the life of myself and my wife. It must inevitably be so. The man that I admire more than any other man, Derek Prime, who mentored me, quit after twenty years. I say to myself, “Well, what are you doing an extra ten for? If he was smart enough to stop, you should have stopped a decade ago. What are you doing? What are you doing? Well, whatever you’re doing, you better make sure that the next crop of Timothys is emerging right now—that the generations that are listening to the children’s talks in the evening, that those wriggling little boys, who wriggle just as you wriggled and do as you just did, that they might grow up in generations yet to come to hold the line of the gospel.”

And that’s the third thing. Because our study, at a cultural level, addresses a failure in these things. You don’t have to be a particular student of church history to realize that the history of the church—not least of all the history of the twentieth-century church in America—is a history of people who have continued to desert Paul. To desert Paul. Every so often you run into somebody who says, “Well, you know, I like the Gospels, but I don’t like Paul. I like the Sermon on the Mount, but I don’t like the apostle Paul. I don’t like what he said in Romans chapter 1,” and so on. And again, that desire to be accepted has caused some who should have known better to deviate from course when it comes to evangelical doctrine. And as a result, the churches are nowhere. They’re nowhere.

Loved ones, this is not rhetoric when I say to you that when you come back with me to Western Europe and wander the hallways of vacated church buildings, barring a peculiar intervention by the Spirit of God in our day, you are looking at the future of the United States of America. Because it is the same foundational declension which gives rise to the emptiness—that is, a loss of conviction about the sufficiency and authority of the Bible, which works itself out in the most practical of ways; a loss of clarity concerning the exclusivity of the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ, which works itself out.

And when you say to yourself, “I wonder why that church that once was so vibrant and so strong has very little going on at all,” let me tell you, it’s not because they ran out of ideas and their programs. It’s not because they ran out of cash. It’s because they ran out on the gospel. There are no guarantees that this place will be here twenty years from now. The people won’t be coming to see a new building, that’s for sure. They’re not going to come and gather because these superficial things are a draw. No, the only thing that will maintain it is that the truth that Paul, who’s prepared to live and eventually die for in Rome, has been passed safely into the hands of Timothy so that it might be passed safely into the hands of faithful men so it might be passed from the hands of faithful men to those who will in turn teach others.[20]

Loved ones, that the challenge. It’s a challenge that comes to you as a mom vis-à-vis your children. It’s a challenge that comes as a grandmother. What are you actually feeding into those wee ones that are under your care? It’s a challenge that comes whether I am single or married, whatever it might be, at whatever stage in my life. Are you prepared to commit yourself to be this link in the chain for the gospel?

Let me finish with a quote. The quote’s from John Stott. He says,

The church of our day urgently needs to heed the message of this … letter …. For all around us we see Christians and churches relaxing their grasp of the gospel, fumbling it, in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether.

Why does that make me think of Bernie Kosar? That’s not fair. That’s not fair.

… fumbling it, in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether. A new generation of young Timothys is needed, who will guard the sacred deposit of the gospel, who are determined to proclaim it and are prepared to suffer for it, and who will pass it on pure and uncorrupted to the generation which in due course will rise up to follow them.[21]

“The church of our day urgently needs to heed the message” of this letter, wrote John Stott in 1973. I think we are off to a fair start.

Gracious God, we thank you that your Word charts our course, challenges our lives, invites us to reframe our entire existence around the issues of the gospel. And we want to encourage one another in this regard. Some of us are particularly fearful, and we need the encouragement of one another. So let us then be exhorting one another, and all the more as we see the day of Christ’s return drawing near,[22] so that generations yet unborn will arise and bless our memory because as a church family we held true to these things. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] See Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33.

[2] See Psalm 119:89.

[3] 2 Timothy 4:6–7 (paraphrased).

[4] See Ephesians 3:20.

[5] 2 Timothy 2:3 (ESV).

[6] Philippians 2:13 (KJV).

[7] 2 Timothy 4:3 (NIV).

[8] See 2 Timothy 3:16 (MSG).

[9] 2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV).

[10] 2 Timothy 2:15 (ESV).

[11] 2 Timothy 4:5 (NIV).

[12] Martin Luther, quoted in William Hendriksen, Exposition of Galatians, New Testament Commentary (Baker: Grand Rapids, 1968), 3. Paraphrased.

[13] 1 Timothy 4:12 (ESV).

[14] 1 Timothy 5:23 (paraphrased).

[15] 1 Corinthians 16:10 (ESV).

[16] Ephesians 6:13 (paraphrased).

[17] Norman Macleod, “Courage, Brother! Do Not Stumble!” (1857). Lyrics lightly altered.

[18] 1 Timothy 2:5 (NIV).

[19] Hebrews 9:27 (KJV).

[20] See 2 Timothy 2:2.

[21] John R. W. Stott, The Message of 2 Timothy: Guard the Gospel, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1973), 22.

[22] See Hebrews 10:25.