Share in Suffering as a Good Soldier

For the third part of our series on Paul's letters to Timothy, we moved onto 2 Timothy this week. I read the following quote from John Stott to introduce 2 Timothy:

"The church of our day urgently needs to heed the message of this second letter of Paul to Timothy. 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. 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."

Our discussion centered around 2 Timothy 2:1-7:

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.


Here are some points that guided our discussion:

• This passage contains 3 analogies that all highlight different aspects of being faithful to the Gospel and suffering for it. All three require higher levels of discipline.
• The solider analogy focuses on single-mindedness; the athlete analogy focuses on obedience; the farmer analogy focuses on hard work, perseverance, and looking toward the reward.
• The passage also contains a promise - though the content of this passage may seem confusing at first, we are promised that God will give us understanding if we study it. (The same concept should be applied to studying all of God's Word.)

 The Soldier Analogy

• Getting entangled in civilian pursuits may look like focusing on worries outside of our mission, focusing on the cares of this life, and going through our daily routines without having a sense of higher purpose in them. These things distract us from our "battle" and cause us to forget that our lives aren't about just this life.
• If we want to please God, we cannot afford to live like civilians. We must live differently, and therefore we must be strengthened by God's grace (verse 1).
• Soldiers are called to suffer (verse 3). Suffering is all over Paul's letters; in fact, it seems he had greatest intimacy with Christ when he was suffering. James also calls us to rejoice in suffering (James 1:2), yet it seems that we avoid suffering for the most part. 
• Should we be praying to share in Christ's sufferings? And shouldn't we be living our lives in ways that we will suffer for our faith?
• When we look at the New Testament and read about other saints (like Mother Theresa, for example), we see them model this kind of suffering and single-mindedness for the Gospel. 
• Has our faith really been tested that much?
• Have we had Gospel living accurately modeled for us? Furthermore, are we sure that we've been taught by what Paul would call faithful men who have guarded the Gospel (verse 2) that he's fighting for in 1 & 2 Timothy? (Or, conversely, have we been taught a Gospel that isn't faithful to the Biblical picture? We have to remember that the false teachings Paul is combating in these letters are false teachings that have risen up from WITHIN the church, not from the outside.)

 In closing, here are a few more thoughts:

• I purposely left a lot of what we talked about in question form, because I don't think we brought everything to a conclusion last night. And that's good - because I don't think we can tie this up with a neat bow. The picture we see in the New Testament contrasts from the picture of our lives. So what do we do now? Continue working through that.
• We focused a lot on the soldier analogy, but ran out of time before we moved onto much else in the passage. At the beginning of the passage, we see a one-on-one discipleship/teaching model that Paul is instructing Timothy to use. Then we also have two other analogies, an exhortation to study God's Word, and an accompanying promise that God will give us understanding when we do so. Don't miss those parts of the passage.
• I wanted to offer this quote I found in a commentary: "The three images here reinforce the main command to persevere in suffering. But Paul's teaching does not apply only to unusual circumstances. He portrays the normal Christian life. In fact, to judge from the New Testament, it is not the presence of struggle and suffering in the life of the Christian that ought to be questioned, but rather the absence of them." 
• Do you question the absence of suffering and struggle in your life? Shouldn't it bother us that our lives don't match up with what we see in the New Testament?