2 Timothy 1:6-7

That intrigues me.
Welcome back.
We’re glad you’re here on this overcast Tuesday
as we continue through the second letter
from Paul to Timothy.
We pick up today where we left off yesterday,
the sixth verse as Timothy has been commended by Paul.
And now Paul continues in a kind of new direction here.
Let me read a few verses.
We’ll stop and we’ll discuss them.
“For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift
of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,
but rather a spirit of power and of love
and of self-discipline.” These are great
verses,
a charge to Timothy.
This word rekindle is really,
it’s a word that means to keep something burning,
but not something that’s gone out.
It doesn’t mean to rebuild a fire.
It means to stoke a fire,
to continue to give it fuel.
And so this idea here,
Paul is encouraging Timothy
to keep this within you,
to be passionate, to have this faith continue to burn in you to provide warmth.
And then wonderful verse here, verse seven,
“For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,
but of power, love, and self-discipline.” And keep in mind,
this is said in the backdrop
of calling Timothy to leadership.
So what do leaders need?
They need courage.
They need not to back down from their task.
They need a spirit of power,
but to do so out of love and self-discipline.
I think,
Michael, these are an example of the way
that Paul can occasionally just put entire sermons
into a few sentences.
And I think this is the kind of verse,
these two verses, you can unpack these for a long time.
There’s a lot in here.
So I did allude to verse six today,
yesterday.
So if you missed our study,
jump back and check that out,
especially the end there.
But what I think is fascinating is this connection
to a faith that extends back into the lives
of those people who we consider are mothers
and fathers of the faith,
those who have carried the torch
from one generation to the other.
And I think that language of rekindling is beautiful here
because there’s a sense in which every generation
must nurture the flame that we’ve been given.
Every generation of Christians seeks to carry on
and faithfully pass on the faith that we have received.
And what is, I think, amazing about this passage
is how it flows effortlessly
into the gift that we have been given.
Notice the word gift,
right?
It’s not a thing that we’ve worked for or achieved.
We can’t consume it or acquire it.
It has been given to us.
But the Spirit of God who works within us
brings with it power,
love, and self-discipline.
The striking thing, Clint,
is I actually heard verse seven
a lot growing up that we’ve been given
a spirit of power,
love, and self-discipline.
And unto itself,
it is a inspiring kind of verse,
right?
The idea that we would have power and love
and self-discipline that we are out in the world
sort of championing the gospel is a compelling image.
But you gotta connect it to the context.
You have to remember that that is the spirit
that lives within this timeless faith
passed from one generation to the next,
that we uncover these gifts literally
in the context of community.
And that is, unfortunately,
the most difficult place
to practice the spirit of power
and of love and self-discipline,
right?
Is in the midst of community,
in the midst of people who we need to have
self-discipline and love for
because they get on our nerves.
There’s a beautiful kind of nuanced complexity
to this section and Paul is both preaching
and he’s mentoring and he’s encouraging
and he’s doing it all at the same time.
I think you’re right, Clint.
Sometimes you see just condensed sections
and I think that this is definitely it.
But be careful to not read it out of context.
Yeah, I think an entire,
I suspect an entire sermon
could be preached on verses six and seven.
You know,
the idea of rekindling,
of staying passionate, of staying connected to your faith,
of continuing to burn bright and give off warmth.
And then this idea,
I mean, we are not to shrink back
from the challenges of our faith
or the challenges of the world.
We’re not given a spirit of cowardice,
but of power.
But I think it’s so wise of Paul.
I think we see the wisdom of this man
and his the depth of how he understands Christian leadership
that he says that is a power of love and self-discipline.
It is not a power over.
It is not a power to overthrow.
It is not a power to control.
It is a power to love.
And it comes through conquering oneself,
being disciplined,
continuing to walk the path of Christ and stay the course.
And that is the way forward.
That is the kind of power.
It is,
power is a dangerous word if misunderstood.
And I think Paul is wise to temper it here
with these very helpful words,
love and self-discipline.
So yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Michael.
Great stuff.
I just want to point out,
this is a little bit less true in Greek, but in English,
I think there is a theme through these passages that’s helpful.
When we look, if we go like to verse three,
you’re going to see the word remember.
And then you’re going to see in verse four, the word recall.
In verse five, the word reminded.
And here in verse six, the word rekindle.
Re means to do again, right?
To repeat, to do over.
And so,
remember, recall,
remind,
rekindle.
I just,
if I were, again, if I were preaching this passage,
I think it’d be very tempting to grab those words
and talk about how what we do over and over again
shapes who we are.
It not only shapes who we are,
but it gives us time and time again an opportunity
to discover more depths than what we knew before.
I think your comment about self-discipline is helpful, Clint.
You could speak more than I about that image
that Paul uses elsewhere,
where he talks about physical discipline
and how we discipline our body.
That happens every time,
right?
Every time you do another pushup,
it gives you an opportunity to stretch further
and further and further.
And we sometimes forget the amount of effort love takes.
We think of love often in an emotive sense,
but love as a Christian conviction requires practice.
It requires those who set their minds and hearts
and hands and feet to the task of love.
And we will only grow that muscle as it goes.
So I think self-discipline is the exact right word.
And it’s striking because when we read the Bible,
we do so often without the full context of its writing.
We’re not the original community to receive it, in other words.
But it is clear as we come to this letter,
that Paul, as he’s gonna come in verse eight years,
gonna show that there’s some stuff going on
in his personal life that Timothy
and the community in Ephesus would have known about.
It’s important that we remember
that we should at least interrogate
or ask questions of the text as to when we see this idea
of God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,
that doesn’t mean that we go run into dangerous situations.
It means that God is with us even in the midst
of whatever circumstance we find ourselves in.
It’s just to say we should read the scriptures
with some thoughtfulness, with some historical awareness,
because I think that that opens to us readings
we wouldn’t have if we just sort of sat down
and read the Bible like a nonfiction book
or something like that.
Yeah, and I think we wanna,
I just briefly wanna go back again to this phrase
and you mentioned it, Michael.
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.
And tomorrow’s passage, as we go on,
we’ll see that Paul says this from difficult circumstances.
So Paul here, I think understands
that life is difficult at times.
Life can be overwhelming.
There are hardships,
there are struggles,
there are difficulties, there are disappointments and tragedies,
there are reasons in various moments
of our life where things get heavy and get hard.
And I think in those moments,
this is a beautiful reminder,
God did not make us to give in.
God did not give us a spirit that shrinks back,
that is made small.
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, of fear.
God equips us to move forward.
God comforts us in our difficult times.
God encourages us to move on,
to be rekindled, to be renewed and remade.
And I think if you happen to be one of those people
that find yourself in a season of difficulty,
this is a wonderful promise.
God did not make you to shrink back
from the challenges of life.
This is a challenging word to the church
and to us as believers in those moments
where life is difficult.
And I think it’s just a wonderful reminder
that God calls us
not to be small,
but to stand out
in the power of His love
and in our self-discipline, our discipleship,
to move forward in the name of Christ
and to be ambassadors of Christ.
I think that’s a really,
again, what we’ve kind of actually done at Michael,
we said we could preach a whole sermon from these verses
and we’ve come probably pretty close.
Yeah,
I think what strikes me, Clint,
is how often the Bible seems malleable
to our own preconceptions.
And if you come to the Bible with this idea
that real strength is power over another,
then this idea that we don’t have a spirit of power this
may resonate.
And you might turn towards like this
and find in it support for that perspective.
But if you allow this text to live over Jesus Christ,
if you,
my daughters have this thing that they do where they take,
it’s like a transparency
and they can color in the transparency
and they can put things on top of it
and you can see the two things together,
it becomes a kind of blending of the two things.
If you allow Jesus Christ to be superimposed over this text,
you see that a lack of cowardice
is willing to climb the cross,
being willing to pray for forgiveness
for those who stand at the foot of execution.
It looks like a kind of cosmic strength
that we cannot even comprehend.
And yet,
it is a strength rooted in love
of self-giving, of service.
Yes,
I think you’re exactly right,
Clint.
There’s a sermon-esque element to it,
but what strikes me in a text like this
is whether you’re a Christian leader,
Paul’s writing to someone seeking to serve
in a Christian church,
or you’re a person who is a Christian living in the world,
which is every one of us,
trying to live in the way of Jesus,
then these words should be our marching orders,
that there is nothing that we should refrain from
that shows the love of Christ to another person.
There’s no challenge that should keep us
from exercising the spirit of power within us,
which is for the sake of another,
and which by definition,
that self-discipline, it reigns our own selfish desires in.
I mean,
that is,
man, I mean,
if we could write that one sentence,
we would feel pretty good about that day’s work.
And this is a beautiful exposition of the gospel.
Yeah, great challenge, I think, to all of us as we read these verses,
to be rekindled, to have our faith renewed,
to burn bright the idea of a flame that doesn’t go out,
that continues to burn and to be reminded
that God has not called us to small living.
God has not called us to shrink back in fear.
God has given us power to love and to serve
and to grow in faith.
And that’s the promise we received through Jesus Christ.
Yeah, really, really wonderful verses today.
I would say,
if you’ve been with us thus far,
keep on, join us again tomorrow,
join us for the next conversation.
There’s a way in which going as slowly as we are
is both instructive, and it also obscures the way
that this is all interconnected.
So join us tomorrow.
Thanks for being with us today.
If you find it helpful,
certainly give it a like
and share it so that others might be able
to join the conversation.
But until tomorrow, be blessed.