Only the Grateful Believe
Commentary
In 1637, Eilenburg, Saxony, was surrounded by the dark night of the soul. Europe was at war. Eilenburg was tossed back and forth by the armies. Three times during that year it was attacked and severely damaged. When the armies left, refugees poured in by the thousands. Diseases ran rampant. Food was scarce.
There was only one pastor in the city, a fellow named Martin Rinkart. His journal for 1637 indicates that he conducted over 4,500 funerals that year, sometimes as many as forty or fifty a day. Life was a constant death, and each morning stank of disaster.
Still, somehow, even today, 1637 is important for nearly every Thanksgiving celebration around the world for Christians still sing the song Pastor Rinkart wrote that year. They sing it with gusto. They sing it with faith. They sing it, not because it catalogues a list of reasons for thanksgiving, but because thankfulness is all that is left when the bottom drops out of the world.
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
This is the theme found in our lectionary readings for today. As exiles from Judah try to survive in Babylon, Jeremiah reminds them that only those who wait in the hope of faith will survive this long displacement. When the apostle Paul pens his final winsome letter to his son-in-the-faith, Timothy, he ties hope and expectation in Jesus’ promises to faith and faithfulness. And Jesus himself marvels at the faith of the Samaritan leper who acted on his thankfulness by coming back to his healer with words of gratitude. Truly, indeed, only the grateful believe!
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 B.C.). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources, and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 B.C. by its eastern bully province, called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 B.C., Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
This is the background to the amazing letter carried forward in Jeremiah 29. The full and tragic exile that would follow Jerusalem’s destruction in 586 was still a decade into the future. But Babylonian disruptions had already displaced many among the noble and priestly families of Judah, including Daniel and his friends (Daniel 1) and the company in which Ezekiel was a part (597 B.C.). The political propaganda of the time continually rehearsed the idea that the Babylonian people movement was part of a friendly cultural interchange that would soon reunite families who could share their travel experiences.
But Yahweh (and Jeremiah, who had become privy to the heavenly counsel) knew otherwise. Babylonia was not a buddy ally, seeking only the best for this remnant of once-great Israel. The Babylonians were on a bellicose expansion campaign that would net them the entire old Assyrian kingdom and regions beyond as well. The most amazing part of this story is that Babylonia’s imperialism was divinely sanctioned and had become a tool in Yahweh’s long-game strategy to bring Israel back into close redemptive fellowship after the curses of the Sinai Covenant (Exodus 23) had properly run their course. Babylonian domination was part of a larger divine plan to chastise the Judah remnant of Abraham’s family in a bid to cleanse their wandering hearts and restore their fealty to the Creator of all and redeemer of Israel.
But the process would take time. Hence the message of this letter: Yahweh is your God. The land promised to Abraham is your homeland. You have not been forgotten. You will return. But only after the chastising “time out” has run its course. So settle in. Build your homes. Create your families. Develop your businesses. And do not forget who you are or Whose you are. Remember Yahweh. Remember Jerusalem. Remember Zion.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Because we have no journal or historical record of Paul’s travels after Acts 28, we have to admit more speculation than clarity. There are the strong bookends for dating the last decade of Paul’s life, of course: his release from prison in Rome in 59 A.D. and his death around 67 A.D. In between we have to arrange the pieces with the few clues ferreted out of Paul’s writings, buttressed by a number of hints from other early church testimonies.
Because of Paul’s promise to visit Philemon, made sometime during 59 A.D., along with our knowledge of the typical flow of traffic around the Mediterranean and the bits of travel reports that Paul makes to Timothy and Titus, it seems reasonable to assume that Paul traveled with Titus and Timothy from Rome to the island of Crete, soon after Paul’s release in 59 A.D. There he installed Titus as pastor, and then continued his journey to the mainland of Asia Minor. By late 59 A.D. Paul was likely enjoying the warm hospitality of his friends Philemon and Onesimus, just outside of Colossae.
Around the turn of the next year, Paul probably headed down the Lycus and Maeander river valleys to Ephesus, which had been his base of missionary operations six or seven years before. The congregation in Ephesus was large and growing, and Paul assisted in installing as pastor there his most promising protégé, Timothy. Perhaps sometime during the year 60 A.D., Paul traveled on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3), probably wanting to spend time with his friends and ministry supporters in Philippi (Philippians 1:25-28, 2:24).
From that city, many have speculated, Paul traveled on to Spain. This was certainly his plan a few years earlier, when he wrote to the church in Rome (Romans 15:24). Also, in 96 A.D., Clement of Rome (1 Clement 5:5-7) reflected on Paul’s travels to the “farthest bounds of the west,” a term used in the Roman Empire to designate Spain. There are other supportive references in the Muratorian Fragment, Chrysostom’s Tenth Homily on 2 Timothy, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lecture 17:26 of his Jerusalem Catecheses.
That kind of journey would have required at least a year or two. It was probably sometime during these travels, early in the decade of the 60s, that Paul wrote 1 Timothy. It is a warm and encouraging letter, filled with the advice of a mentor, and the seasoned reflections of a man who has observed the strengths and weaknesses of congregational life.
In the first half, Paul addresses Timothy primarily as a pastor, urging him to watch out for false teachers (1 Timothy 1), establish appropriate practices in worship gatherings (1 Timothy 2), and appoint spiritually mature persons as leaders within the congregation (1 Timothy 3). Woven throughout these instructions are a number of personal notes: Paul rues his early persecution of the church (1 Timothy 1:12–13) and uses God’s grace on his unworthy self as an illustration of the immeasurable quality of divine mercy (1 Timothy 1:14–17). Paul reminds Timothy of the prophecies that had once been spoken about the younger man in a public worship setting (1 Timothy 1:18), and how reflecting on this divine testimony can keep Timothy from making some of the same mistakes that have fallen on other leaders (1 Timothy 1:19–20). And Paul expresses his intended travel plans to visit Timothy soon (1 Timothy 3:14).
The second half of Paul’s letter is much more personal in its general contents. Paul gives wise counsel about how to deal with difficult members of the congregation, even though many consider Timothy too young to wield leadership authority (1Timothy 4). At the same time, Paul reminds Timothy to treat each person with respect, and suggests strategies for nurturing healthy pastoral care and wholesome congregational life (1 Timothy 5). Finally, in a very strongly worded warning, Paul cautions Timothy about the insidious leeching character of wealth. He uses this indictment to encourage Timothy to practice disciplines of restraint and moderation, advising others to do so as well for the sake of their spiritual health (1 Timothy 6).
It is possible and indeed probable that Paul wrote his letter to Titus around the same time as he did his first epistle to Timothy. Although Titus is much shorter, it deals with most of the same themes: the young pastor should appoint good leaders to prevent false teachers from destroying the church (Titus 1); he should treat with respect the various social groups in the congregation, and urge them to express godly piety (Titus 2); he should encourage members of the church to live in peace and faithfulness (Titus 3:1–11). Some of the wording, especially related to the qualities of character required for those in leadership, is almost identical between the letters to Titus and Timothy.
Paul ends his letter to Titus with a few personal notes, announcing that he will soon be in Nicopolis, on the east side of Greece, anticipating “winter” (Titus 3:12–15). Since there is no reference in these letters to grave persecutions that might be developing, nor any indication of the apostle Peter’s death (which probably happened early in the attack on Christians that followed Rome’s burning in July of 64), Paul probably penned 1 Timothy and Titus around the middle of 63 A.D.
Paul’s next years were likely quite hectic. When the fires began burning Rome in the middle of 64 A.D., Emperor Nero was quick to point the accusing finger toward Christians. As a leading figure in the Christian movement, Paul soon became a hunted man. It is probable that the winter of 63–64 A.D., spent in Nicopolis, was the last peaceful time in his life. Nero would die in 68 A.D., but not until he had killed thousands of Christians, including both Peter and Paul.
In his attempts to stay ahead of warrants for his arrest, Paul probably flitted from location to location from late 64 through early 66 A.D. His travel notes to Timothy, in the second letter sent to the young pastor, certainly have the air of haste and mobility about them. During that year or so, Paul spent time in Corinth (2 Timothy 4:20), Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20) and Troas (2 Timothy 4:13), at minimum, and probably a number of other places as well. But Troas was to be his last voluntary stop. There, in the city where he had first come to know doctor Luke sixteen years before, Paul was arrested and hauled off to Rome, without even being able to take along his few personal belongings (2 Timothy 4:13).
Evidently there were several different arraignments and trials, during the legal process that would lead to Paul’s death (2 Timothy 4:16). After all, Paul’s Roman citizenship provided him with protections that Peter and others did not enjoy. In between some of these court matters, Paul sent a final letter to his younger friend Timothy. It is warm and passionate, urgent and reflective, pessimistic and optimistic, all at the same time. Paul encourages Timothy to live faithfully as a pastor, carrying on the tradition of his godly forebears, grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and learning from the example of Paul’s own life as his spiritual mentor (2 Timothy 1:1–2:13). Paul also reminds Timothy of some of the key teachings that are critical for church leaders to espouse regularly (2 Timothy 2:14–3:9). Finally, Paul lapses into tender reminders of the times they spent together and offers his strong personal testimony of faith and trust in Jesus, even as he senses his execution looming (2 Timothy 3:10–4:8). Some final greetings and urgent instructions end the letter (2 Timothy 4:9–22).
Luke 17:11-19
A schoolteacher asked her students to make a list of the things for which they were thankful. Right at the top of Chad’s list was the word “glasses.” Some children resent having to wear glasses, but evidently not Chad! She asked him about it. Why was he thankful that he wore glasses?
“Well,” he said, “my glasses keep the boys from hitting me and the girls from kissing me.”
The philosopher Eric Hoffer says, “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings!” That is too true, isn’t it?
There is an old legend about the angels of heaven coming to earth to gather prayers into large baskets. Thousands return with their baskets overflowing with every request, from a child’s prayer: “Bless Mommy and Daddy and Sister and Brother and my pet hamster” to the atheist’s cry: “O God! What do we do now?”
But a single lonely angel returns to heaven with a half-empty basket of thanksgiving notes. That’s all there are. Like the ten lepers Jesus healed, we run off with the nine and only once in a while stop to think and thank.
Application
At the start of his career, Abraham Kuyper was a young preacher in a rural Dutch village. He had been schooled in the best of modern theology, and his sermons were well-polished masterpieces.
Not all in his congregation were impressed, though. Pietronella Baltus did not care for his preaching, and she spoke her mind to him more than once. Certainly, his sermons were intelligent and well delivered, she said, but they did not declare the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Kuyper was intrigued. Who was this woman to serve as his critic? He began to visit her, and, over tea, she explained Jesus to him. She told him about faith and God and things outside of his experience. With her simple wisdom and vision, Pietronella Baltus silenced the knowledge of the great preacher. He knew his theology, but he did not know her God. He knew his dogmatics, but he did not know her Christ. He knew his church’s history, but he did not know her Lord.
After sitting at her feet, Kuyper rose up a different man. For the rest of his life, he spoke of the woman who had changed his heart, opened his eyes, and swept the cobwebs out of his soul. She was his teacher, his friend, his miracle of faith. She lived on in his heart and mind, ever bracketed by quotation marks.
You see, the quotation marks of our lives surround not only the great ideas we have learned, but also the great people we have known. Autobiographies of great people always contain pages of thanks to those who taught and influenced the authors throughout their pilgrimage.
Of course, at the top of the page, for those who truly believe, is gratefulness to God. So, it was for Jeremiah while serving as letter-writing secretary for Yahweh. And thus, it was for Paul as he penned his final letter to his understudy Timothy, reflecting on a life lived in divine service and surrounded by people who had formed a community of care and witness. And, too, it was for Jesus as he spoke his homely parables to remind us of who we are and whose we are.
Alternative Application (2 Timothy 2:8-15)
It is hard to exaggerate the impact of Paul’s life and theology on the Christian church. More than anyone else, he urged and practiced intentional mission outreach as an essential aspect of Christian life. Moreover, Paul saw his primary target audience as the large Gentile community that extended well beyond Palestine and the Jewish communities tucked into the corners of the Roman Empire. In reaching for the nations, Paul saw the fulfillment of what God had intended to do through the seed of Abraham. The church was, for Paul, God’s next major strategy in reclaiming the human race for its original relationships and purposes.
Because of the vision of Christ that captured him on the road to Damascus, and the startling news of Jesus’ resurrection, Paul nurtured in his converts an apocalyptic ethic and lifestyle. Paul’s message was deceptively simple: Jesus came a little while ago and shook things up; now Jesus is coming again soon, so live as if that matters.
Paul also was the key figure in helping the church transition from its original temporary mission outposts, into an organization with adaptable but supportive structures. In this way he clarified the meaning of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and crafted a perspective that started as personal testimony and ended as comprehensive worldview theology. By the time congregations exhausted their conversations with Paul, they had a tool kit of core theological and ecclesiastical concepts that could be applied to most situations they would encounter.
Added to these things was the intensive and extensive mentoring, through which Paul multiplied his gifts and passions in dozens of other key figures who would carry on, long after he was gone. Not only did Paul teach and model well, but he sustained contact with congregations and individuals who were part of his journey. In so doing, he helped to knit together the early communities of believers that eventually made the church of Jesus a global enterprise, rather than merely a few isolated religious philosophy clubs scattered around the major cities of the Mediterranean world.
God created all things, with humankind as the heartbeat and pinnacle of life on planet earth. Israel was God’s witness to the nations of the ancient world. Jesus came to permanently weld God’s redemptive designs to human history. And Paul organized the spreading missional church that emerged from among Jesus’ followers.
Some claim that Paul is really the founder of Christianity, since Jesus was merely a good teacher who never left a record or an organizational plan. But this is to misread both Jesus and Paul. What God did in Jesus changed human history forever, with or without Paul. In fact, apart from Jesus, there could be no Paul as we know him (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 1:21; 3:1-21). At the same time, however, it is hard to imagine the growth and spread of Christianity separated from Paul. Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), the “foundation” (Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:11) and “cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20-22; 1 Peter 2:4-8) of the church; Paul was its first prominent building supervisor and CEO (Ephesians 3:1-13).
There was only one pastor in the city, a fellow named Martin Rinkart. His journal for 1637 indicates that he conducted over 4,500 funerals that year, sometimes as many as forty or fifty a day. Life was a constant death, and each morning stank of disaster.
Still, somehow, even today, 1637 is important for nearly every Thanksgiving celebration around the world for Christians still sing the song Pastor Rinkart wrote that year. They sing it with gusto. They sing it with faith. They sing it, not because it catalogues a list of reasons for thanksgiving, but because thankfulness is all that is left when the bottom drops out of the world.
Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
This is the theme found in our lectionary readings for today. As exiles from Judah try to survive in Babylon, Jeremiah reminds them that only those who wait in the hope of faith will survive this long displacement. When the apostle Paul pens his final winsome letter to his son-in-the-faith, Timothy, he ties hope and expectation in Jesus’ promises to faith and faithfulness. And Jesus himself marvels at the faith of the Samaritan leper who acted on his thankfulness by coming back to his healer with words of gratitude. Truly, indeed, only the grateful believe!
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 B.C.). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources, and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 B.C. by its eastern bully province, called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 B.C., Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
This is the background to the amazing letter carried forward in Jeremiah 29. The full and tragic exile that would follow Jerusalem’s destruction in 586 was still a decade into the future. But Babylonian disruptions had already displaced many among the noble and priestly families of Judah, including Daniel and his friends (Daniel 1) and the company in which Ezekiel was a part (597 B.C.). The political propaganda of the time continually rehearsed the idea that the Babylonian people movement was part of a friendly cultural interchange that would soon reunite families who could share their travel experiences.
But Yahweh (and Jeremiah, who had become privy to the heavenly counsel) knew otherwise. Babylonia was not a buddy ally, seeking only the best for this remnant of once-great Israel. The Babylonians were on a bellicose expansion campaign that would net them the entire old Assyrian kingdom and regions beyond as well. The most amazing part of this story is that Babylonia’s imperialism was divinely sanctioned and had become a tool in Yahweh’s long-game strategy to bring Israel back into close redemptive fellowship after the curses of the Sinai Covenant (Exodus 23) had properly run their course. Babylonian domination was part of a larger divine plan to chastise the Judah remnant of Abraham’s family in a bid to cleanse their wandering hearts and restore their fealty to the Creator of all and redeemer of Israel.
But the process would take time. Hence the message of this letter: Yahweh is your God. The land promised to Abraham is your homeland. You have not been forgotten. You will return. But only after the chastising “time out” has run its course. So settle in. Build your homes. Create your families. Develop your businesses. And do not forget who you are or Whose you are. Remember Yahweh. Remember Jerusalem. Remember Zion.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Because we have no journal or historical record of Paul’s travels after Acts 28, we have to admit more speculation than clarity. There are the strong bookends for dating the last decade of Paul’s life, of course: his release from prison in Rome in 59 A.D. and his death around 67 A.D. In between we have to arrange the pieces with the few clues ferreted out of Paul’s writings, buttressed by a number of hints from other early church testimonies.
Because of Paul’s promise to visit Philemon, made sometime during 59 A.D., along with our knowledge of the typical flow of traffic around the Mediterranean and the bits of travel reports that Paul makes to Timothy and Titus, it seems reasonable to assume that Paul traveled with Titus and Timothy from Rome to the island of Crete, soon after Paul’s release in 59 A.D. There he installed Titus as pastor, and then continued his journey to the mainland of Asia Minor. By late 59 A.D. Paul was likely enjoying the warm hospitality of his friends Philemon and Onesimus, just outside of Colossae.
Around the turn of the next year, Paul probably headed down the Lycus and Maeander river valleys to Ephesus, which had been his base of missionary operations six or seven years before. The congregation in Ephesus was large and growing, and Paul assisted in installing as pastor there his most promising protégé, Timothy. Perhaps sometime during the year 60 A.D., Paul traveled on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3), probably wanting to spend time with his friends and ministry supporters in Philippi (Philippians 1:25-28, 2:24).
From that city, many have speculated, Paul traveled on to Spain. This was certainly his plan a few years earlier, when he wrote to the church in Rome (Romans 15:24). Also, in 96 A.D., Clement of Rome (1 Clement 5:5-7) reflected on Paul’s travels to the “farthest bounds of the west,” a term used in the Roman Empire to designate Spain. There are other supportive references in the Muratorian Fragment, Chrysostom’s Tenth Homily on 2 Timothy, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lecture 17:26 of his Jerusalem Catecheses.
That kind of journey would have required at least a year or two. It was probably sometime during these travels, early in the decade of the 60s, that Paul wrote 1 Timothy. It is a warm and encouraging letter, filled with the advice of a mentor, and the seasoned reflections of a man who has observed the strengths and weaknesses of congregational life.
In the first half, Paul addresses Timothy primarily as a pastor, urging him to watch out for false teachers (1 Timothy 1), establish appropriate practices in worship gatherings (1 Timothy 2), and appoint spiritually mature persons as leaders within the congregation (1 Timothy 3). Woven throughout these instructions are a number of personal notes: Paul rues his early persecution of the church (1 Timothy 1:12–13) and uses God’s grace on his unworthy self as an illustration of the immeasurable quality of divine mercy (1 Timothy 1:14–17). Paul reminds Timothy of the prophecies that had once been spoken about the younger man in a public worship setting (1 Timothy 1:18), and how reflecting on this divine testimony can keep Timothy from making some of the same mistakes that have fallen on other leaders (1 Timothy 1:19–20). And Paul expresses his intended travel plans to visit Timothy soon (1 Timothy 3:14).
The second half of Paul’s letter is much more personal in its general contents. Paul gives wise counsel about how to deal with difficult members of the congregation, even though many consider Timothy too young to wield leadership authority (1Timothy 4). At the same time, Paul reminds Timothy to treat each person with respect, and suggests strategies for nurturing healthy pastoral care and wholesome congregational life (1 Timothy 5). Finally, in a very strongly worded warning, Paul cautions Timothy about the insidious leeching character of wealth. He uses this indictment to encourage Timothy to practice disciplines of restraint and moderation, advising others to do so as well for the sake of their spiritual health (1 Timothy 6).
It is possible and indeed probable that Paul wrote his letter to Titus around the same time as he did his first epistle to Timothy. Although Titus is much shorter, it deals with most of the same themes: the young pastor should appoint good leaders to prevent false teachers from destroying the church (Titus 1); he should treat with respect the various social groups in the congregation, and urge them to express godly piety (Titus 2); he should encourage members of the church to live in peace and faithfulness (Titus 3:1–11). Some of the wording, especially related to the qualities of character required for those in leadership, is almost identical between the letters to Titus and Timothy.
Paul ends his letter to Titus with a few personal notes, announcing that he will soon be in Nicopolis, on the east side of Greece, anticipating “winter” (Titus 3:12–15). Since there is no reference in these letters to grave persecutions that might be developing, nor any indication of the apostle Peter’s death (which probably happened early in the attack on Christians that followed Rome’s burning in July of 64), Paul probably penned 1 Timothy and Titus around the middle of 63 A.D.
Paul’s next years were likely quite hectic. When the fires began burning Rome in the middle of 64 A.D., Emperor Nero was quick to point the accusing finger toward Christians. As a leading figure in the Christian movement, Paul soon became a hunted man. It is probable that the winter of 63–64 A.D., spent in Nicopolis, was the last peaceful time in his life. Nero would die in 68 A.D., but not until he had killed thousands of Christians, including both Peter and Paul.
In his attempts to stay ahead of warrants for his arrest, Paul probably flitted from location to location from late 64 through early 66 A.D. His travel notes to Timothy, in the second letter sent to the young pastor, certainly have the air of haste and mobility about them. During that year or so, Paul spent time in Corinth (2 Timothy 4:20), Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20) and Troas (2 Timothy 4:13), at minimum, and probably a number of other places as well. But Troas was to be his last voluntary stop. There, in the city where he had first come to know doctor Luke sixteen years before, Paul was arrested and hauled off to Rome, without even being able to take along his few personal belongings (2 Timothy 4:13).
Evidently there were several different arraignments and trials, during the legal process that would lead to Paul’s death (2 Timothy 4:16). After all, Paul’s Roman citizenship provided him with protections that Peter and others did not enjoy. In between some of these court matters, Paul sent a final letter to his younger friend Timothy. It is warm and passionate, urgent and reflective, pessimistic and optimistic, all at the same time. Paul encourages Timothy to live faithfully as a pastor, carrying on the tradition of his godly forebears, grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and learning from the example of Paul’s own life as his spiritual mentor (2 Timothy 1:1–2:13). Paul also reminds Timothy of some of the key teachings that are critical for church leaders to espouse regularly (2 Timothy 2:14–3:9). Finally, Paul lapses into tender reminders of the times they spent together and offers his strong personal testimony of faith and trust in Jesus, even as he senses his execution looming (2 Timothy 3:10–4:8). Some final greetings and urgent instructions end the letter (2 Timothy 4:9–22).
Luke 17:11-19
A schoolteacher asked her students to make a list of the things for which they were thankful. Right at the top of Chad’s list was the word “glasses.” Some children resent having to wear glasses, but evidently not Chad! She asked him about it. Why was he thankful that he wore glasses?
“Well,” he said, “my glasses keep the boys from hitting me and the girls from kissing me.”
The philosopher Eric Hoffer says, “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings!” That is too true, isn’t it?
There is an old legend about the angels of heaven coming to earth to gather prayers into large baskets. Thousands return with their baskets overflowing with every request, from a child’s prayer: “Bless Mommy and Daddy and Sister and Brother and my pet hamster” to the atheist’s cry: “O God! What do we do now?”
But a single lonely angel returns to heaven with a half-empty basket of thanksgiving notes. That’s all there are. Like the ten lepers Jesus healed, we run off with the nine and only once in a while stop to think and thank.
Application
At the start of his career, Abraham Kuyper was a young preacher in a rural Dutch village. He had been schooled in the best of modern theology, and his sermons were well-polished masterpieces.
Not all in his congregation were impressed, though. Pietronella Baltus did not care for his preaching, and she spoke her mind to him more than once. Certainly, his sermons were intelligent and well delivered, she said, but they did not declare the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Kuyper was intrigued. Who was this woman to serve as his critic? He began to visit her, and, over tea, she explained Jesus to him. She told him about faith and God and things outside of his experience. With her simple wisdom and vision, Pietronella Baltus silenced the knowledge of the great preacher. He knew his theology, but he did not know her God. He knew his dogmatics, but he did not know her Christ. He knew his church’s history, but he did not know her Lord.
After sitting at her feet, Kuyper rose up a different man. For the rest of his life, he spoke of the woman who had changed his heart, opened his eyes, and swept the cobwebs out of his soul. She was his teacher, his friend, his miracle of faith. She lived on in his heart and mind, ever bracketed by quotation marks.
You see, the quotation marks of our lives surround not only the great ideas we have learned, but also the great people we have known. Autobiographies of great people always contain pages of thanks to those who taught and influenced the authors throughout their pilgrimage.
Of course, at the top of the page, for those who truly believe, is gratefulness to God. So, it was for Jeremiah while serving as letter-writing secretary for Yahweh. And thus, it was for Paul as he penned his final letter to his understudy Timothy, reflecting on a life lived in divine service and surrounded by people who had formed a community of care and witness. And, too, it was for Jesus as he spoke his homely parables to remind us of who we are and whose we are.
Alternative Application (2 Timothy 2:8-15)
It is hard to exaggerate the impact of Paul’s life and theology on the Christian church. More than anyone else, he urged and practiced intentional mission outreach as an essential aspect of Christian life. Moreover, Paul saw his primary target audience as the large Gentile community that extended well beyond Palestine and the Jewish communities tucked into the corners of the Roman Empire. In reaching for the nations, Paul saw the fulfillment of what God had intended to do through the seed of Abraham. The church was, for Paul, God’s next major strategy in reclaiming the human race for its original relationships and purposes.
Because of the vision of Christ that captured him on the road to Damascus, and the startling news of Jesus’ resurrection, Paul nurtured in his converts an apocalyptic ethic and lifestyle. Paul’s message was deceptively simple: Jesus came a little while ago and shook things up; now Jesus is coming again soon, so live as if that matters.
Paul also was the key figure in helping the church transition from its original temporary mission outposts, into an organization with adaptable but supportive structures. In this way he clarified the meaning of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and crafted a perspective that started as personal testimony and ended as comprehensive worldview theology. By the time congregations exhausted their conversations with Paul, they had a tool kit of core theological and ecclesiastical concepts that could be applied to most situations they would encounter.
Added to these things was the intensive and extensive mentoring, through which Paul multiplied his gifts and passions in dozens of other key figures who would carry on, long after he was gone. Not only did Paul teach and model well, but he sustained contact with congregations and individuals who were part of his journey. In so doing, he helped to knit together the early communities of believers that eventually made the church of Jesus a global enterprise, rather than merely a few isolated religious philosophy clubs scattered around the major cities of the Mediterranean world.
God created all things, with humankind as the heartbeat and pinnacle of life on planet earth. Israel was God’s witness to the nations of the ancient world. Jesus came to permanently weld God’s redemptive designs to human history. And Paul organized the spreading missional church that emerged from among Jesus’ followers.
Some claim that Paul is really the founder of Christianity, since Jesus was merely a good teacher who never left a record or an organizational plan. But this is to misread both Jesus and Paul. What God did in Jesus changed human history forever, with or without Paul. In fact, apart from Jesus, there could be no Paul as we know him (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 1:21; 3:1-21). At the same time, however, it is hard to imagine the growth and spread of Christianity separated from Paul. Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), the “foundation” (Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 3:11) and “cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20-22; 1 Peter 2:4-8) of the church; Paul was its first prominent building supervisor and CEO (Ephesians 3:1-13).
