2 Timothy 4:19-22

That’s very, very interesting.
Friends, welcome back.
Thanks for being with us today as we
close out the text of 2 Timothy.
We are in the late fourth chapter as Paul moves
to his kind of final goodbyes.
It’s interesting he kind of started some of that.
Then he got into
a little bit of a moment of praise that we saw yesterday.
And today we get into those kind of
final greetings and what would probably be called a benediction or a blessing as Paul
kind of says goodbye to this
congregation.
Although,
you know, there’s not a third Timothy
whether Paul knew that would be the case,
whether he understood he was writing his final letter.
The early part of chapter four makes you a little suspicious that he may have known that,
but this is a kind of
a
parting word really.
So I’ll read them for you.
It’s not going to sound
probably like there’s a lot here,
but there are a couple of interesting things for us to talk about.
Verse 19,
“Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus.
Erastus remained in Corinth.
Trophimus I left in Melathus.
Do your best to come before winter.
Ibulis sends greetings to you,
as do Pudom,
Linus,
Claudia,
and all the brothers and sisters.
The Lord be with your spirit.
Grace be with you.” So we read this and it sounds like a lot of hard
to pronounce names and it is,
but there are some
crossovers here.
We know Prisca and Aquila from
other books.
We know Inestra even from praise in the Timothis,
the letters that we’ve already seen.
There’s this very interesting line that has been taken sort of poetically.
This is shown up in some historic sermons and some writings.
“Do your best to come before winter.” It’s
a practical line in this book.
It just means try to come soon,
try to come before travel gets difficult,
try to bring my cloak before I need it.
But spiritually speaking, philosophically speaking,
it has been for people kind of a springboard to use it as a metaphor.
What does it mean to come before winter?
There’s a richness to those words that have developed in the Christian
history that probably aren’t intended.
I mean, I think when Paul writes this,
I think he’s being
100% practical, but the community of faith has heard in them
deeper things and that’s been an interesting development.
Michael, anything to add?
Only note,
sometimes it’s helpful to turn to
scholars on things like this,
things like that you might not know just reading it.
The name Pudens is a name in the Roman culture that was sort of an upper middle class kind of name,
so that might help us learn that he was well to do.
We see in other places that Arastus is not only
someone who’s in Corinth,
but he does public works.
We know that because some of the references
we have in the other gospels,
both in Acts,
or not, sorry, not gospels, but New Testament works,
as well as Romans.
You know, it’s interesting,
Clint,
because as we turn to these scriptures,
as scripture,
as we turn to them seeking to find meaning,
we don’t find names particularly devotional.
It certainly doesn’t encourage us today,
though it would be easy if we were to allow
ourselves to use our imagination to replace with some of these names the men and women of faith
who have been significant in our own faith development and recognize that
Paul,
as he writes this, is writing to real people whom he loves,
who he literally calls,
as we see at the end of this passage,
brothers and sisters.
You know,
this idea when he writes,
“The Lord be with your spirit,”
that’s singular, so to you, Timothy, your spirit, but grace be with you is plural,
everyone.
I mean, these are in many ways short hands in,
I think, the Christian language for how our faith is communal.
These names remind us that it’s not just,
you know, the royal we, the church around the world,
it’s also the churches we know it,
the people that we live with,
the people who we care for
and who have taught the faith to us how we live and treat one another in the midst of that matters.
On the other hand, you know,
we’re looking for devotional material in the midst of material,
which is deeply relational,
and to some extent I think it’s worth just preserving that,
that these are people who are part of Paul’s mission and witness,
and we’re grateful for them because they were instrumental,
just the very bare surface of the text.
These are the men and women who made it
possible for the faith to be handed one generation to the next,
and all of us,
on some level, owe something to these individuals for the part that they played in it.
Yeah, that’s certainly the study aspect of this text.
If there’s a devotional element,
Michael, it probably comes from us substituting our own list of names,
people who have meant something to us, you know,
largely through your connections,
you and I had opportunities to be in proximity
with that youth group from New York City who came here and we went there, and you know,
if you were to write letters to that group,
it would be very natural to ask,
“How is Malcolm doing?
How is Pastor O’Connell doing?
How is Chris?
How is Xaviera?” And they
might be, I mean, if there’s a devotional aspect of this,
it is to encourage us to be grateful
for the people of faith who have connected us to Christ and to whom we feel connected.
And I think, you know,
it is easy to forget that Paul is perhaps in a cell writing to a church,
but he’s part of a broader network and he’s part of a bigger family.
And these, this list of names,
though difficult to read,
reinforces that idea that Paul understands
himself to be a part of a much deeper and broader community,
and hopefully we should all be so lucky.
And if we are so lucky, which,
you know, then we are blessed and we should be thankful of that blessing.
I think the last word is interesting here, Michael, verse 22,
“The Lord a very standard kind of way for a letter to end.” And it maybe doesn’t sound particularly
insightful, but do keep in mind,
this is an older servant of Christ,
a man who has served churches
and been an evangelist,
who has been persecuted,
who has struggled, who has succeeded,
and is coming to the end of his career and his life.
And he is writing to a much younger person now
taking some mantle of leadership in the church.
And what he wishes upon him is very interesting.
“The Lord be with your spirit.” In other words,
the Lord keep your spirit up.
Paul, I think, knows
how difficult ministry can be,
how difficult life can be.
I think these are encouraging words, but
behind that it is Paul’s prayer that Timothy not lose heart,
that he not lose spirit, that he keep,
you know, we’ve read it over and over again in this book, “Persevere,
continue, endure, do the work.” And then ultimately his ability to do that will be found,
as Paul understands it, in grace.
“So the Lord be with your spirit and grace be with you.” Paul,
we have said this a hundred times,
Paul understands that everything we do is dependent upon the grace of God working in us and through us.
And so a very fitting place for him to close the letter and a very fitting way for
him to draw this to a close.
We now have written,
wrote,
we have read about the first and the second
letters to Timothy and in both Paul has very passionately critiqued the opponents.
In some cases he’s named them.
But another thing that he’s done is consistently write to Timothy with 100% an undeterred trust.
I mean, he speaks to Timothy with the full recognition that they are on the same page,
that they have the same gospel,
that they’re working on the same task.
And that is a
gift.
It’s a gift that we shouldn’t take for granted in our Christian walk when we have fellow
believers that we can trust so thoroughly.
I think we find throughout Christian history those
for whom that trust is betrayed or moments in which that trust doesn’t hold.
And here to see
that sort of passing the baton happen also reflects the kind of humility,
a kind of thorough
awareness, Clint, of the fact that God works beyond just our one life.
For all of the times
that people critique Paul of being self-centered or maybe harsh,
I think it’s worth pausing here
at the end of these two letters to remember,
yes, there’s been some hard words,
but it ends with
words of real affection.
I mean, all of these people that Paul clearly, deeply cares for,
the person Timothy,
who he envisions being the one to carry on the work.
Paul clearly does not
believe that he’s the only one that matters or that he’s some specially gifted leader that the
church will rise or fall upon.
He believes in this community.
He believes in the leadership of those
that will follow him.
And that kind of humility,
I think, is worth noting.
I don’t think that’s
reading into the text.
I mean, I think that’s clear in what we see today.
So it’s worth noting
that Paul’s a man of complex character.
And for those who want to kind of pigeonhole him,
this is also in the Bible,
and I think it’s worth making sure we remember that.
The last word I would say about the last word here is that it’s very interesting.
In
the Greek language,
the word “you,” in English,
it works a little bit the same.
If I speak to you,
I’m generally speaking to an individual.
I can’t address a group as you,
but typically in English,
if we want to make “you” plural,
we add something like “you guys” or “you all” or “all of you,”
something like that.
In Greek,
they changed the word “you” so that they would know as they read
it and spoke it,
whether it is the singular or the plural.
And it’s very interesting, Michael.
“Grace be with you” is plural here,
which I think does not in any way negate that this is for
Timothy, but remember we’ve said several times in this study that Paul expects this letter
to be read to the entire church.
So as he wishes grace upon Timothy,
he does it with a word that
extends to the entire congregation,
and there’s a lot in there.
We could talk about Paul’s understanding of leadership,
of servanthood, but I think it’s very interesting and very fitting
that as he closes the word with grace,
it is not only for the individual to whom he writes,
it is for the community in which that individual serves.
And I think if you understand Paul to some extent,
and I like to hope that I do,
I think that’s very fitting of who I understand him to be.
Yeah, and I don’t want to, you know,
beat this too long or dig too deep,
but I do just want to
point out what I’ll put up here so that you can see.
Just look at the not insignificant number of
women named in the text.
For the fact that we’ve had some conversations here about women and their
role in the church that we’ve admitted to you,
we have to read carefully,
and that has lots of
historic implications in the way that the church understands women and leadership,
all these kinds of things.
Paul,
clearly in a letter intended for everyone is lifting up women and their role in the
importance that they play in the midst of this place.
So culturally,
I think that also matters,
and it’s worth noting that Paul goes out of his way.
He could have named all men.
That could have easily been a choice that he would make.
Maybe those would have been the leaders,
and so he would
have picked those names,
but he didn’t.
He picked a representative group of people,
and he greeted all of them in a letter meant for the whole church.
That matters, and it should inform our reading
that’s come earlier, that Paul does have a much more holistic understanding of the Christian faith
than we sometimes get when we sort of hone in on one verse or one paragraph.
We make that the theology that doctrinally everyone needs to sort of put their initials by.
I think that it’s
dangerous to do that,
because when you look at the scriptures,
you see sections like this that
make you think, “Huh,
you know, there must be more to it than just that one paragraph.
There must be more nuance here than what I saw at first.” And for those of you who have stuck with us this whole time,
I think if you read sections like this and you hold in the other hand some of those moments
where we honed in on what Paul said specifically to some of the women in that Ephesian community,
I think it matters.
It changes how we come to it.
Yeah,
maybe this is an extended conversation for
another time, but I think in many ways Paul is eminently practical much more than he is doctrinal.
In other words, if a person does good things and fits the mold of a servant of Christ,
Paul is always going to celebrate that.
I think irrespective of who or what they are,
and I think we see evidence of that here.
Paul, for a man whose name has been used in support
of many, many, many rules,
I think a case could be made that Paul is actually not a rules guy.
That’s not where he comes from.
That’s not how he gets to where he gets,
and I think we misunderstand
him if we think that Paul is giving us a rule book in his writings.
I think particularly
Paul’s understanding of the law and what it does and what it doesn’t do.
I don’t think you can
read Paul like that and get a sense of who he’s actually trying to be and what he’s trying to say.
So I think that’s a good insight, Michael.
Well, friends, of course, we’d be interested as we come
to the end of this book.
Feel free to let us know what you thought,
what may be challenged or encouraged you,
questions that you might have.
It’s always fun to continue on the conversation.
But that said, we’re glad to have traveled this ground with you,
and we’ll, of course, keep you up to date as plans for the next study come together.
But until then,
like, share all those things,
this video, this series,
and we look forward to joining with you again really soon.
Thanks, everybody.