Summary:

When Paul prays for “mercy” for the house of Onesiphorus (v.16) in this life, but for “mercy” for Onesiphorus himself in the next life at the Judgment Seat of Christ (v.18), we have to assume that he is dead and his family is still alive. Especially since Paul greets his family (IITim.4:19) but not him. So Paul was doubtless praying for the kind of mercy his household would need now that the breadwinner of the family was gone, the food kind of mercy (Ps.136:25).

In time past, God provided this kind of mercy in miraculous ways for the families of His servants (IIKi.4:1-7), but in the dispensation of grace God shows mercy through His people (Rom.12:8).

Why would Onesiphorus himself need mercy at the Judgment Seat of Christ? He is mentioned in context of those who departed from the faith (v.15), so we have to conclude he was one of the Asians who started strong but left the faith. Praying for mercy for his family shows a dispensational difference. In time past, men cursed the families of men who went astray (cf.IISam.3:29; Ps.109:10-12).

We don’t know how Onesiphorus “refreshed” Paul (v.16). Perhaps physically (cf.Ex.23:13) by doing things for him so he could rest. Perhaps emotionally, the kind of refreshing David needed after being cursed and stoned (IISam.16: 13,14). Paul was often cursed, and was once stoned! Perhaps Onesiphorus faithfully delivered some of Paul’s epistles (cf.Pr.25:13). Paul used men like Onesiphorus to deliver his epistles (Col.4:7), and women too (Rom.16:1,2). Perhaps he refreshed Paul in all of these ways, for he “oft” refreshed him. His name means “help-bringer,” and he certainly lived up to it!

Onesiphorus was not ashamed of Paul’s chain (v.16), i.e., his imprisonment. With these words, Paul is providing Timothy a good example, with these words coming right after telling Timothy not to be ashamed of him (1:8). When he says Onesiphorus sought him out “diligently” (v.17) and then later told Timothy to “diligently” seek him out (IITim.4:9,21), we know he was pressing this example. Paul wasn’t a baby that needed company, he just wanted to be sure Timothy grew a backbone. He knew if he didn’t stand for Paul before he died he wouldn’t stand for him afterward.

Finding Paul wouldn’t have been easy. In his second imprisonment he was in Caesar’s palace (Phil.1:13; 4:21,22), but his first imprisonment was in a hired house (Acts 28:30). There were about a million homes in Rome!

In Paul’s mind, Onesiphorus’ faithfulness in the past entitled him to mercy at the Judgment Seat, so he prayed for this. Mercy is when God doesn’t give us what we deserve (cf.Ezra 9:9,13). Onesiphorus deserved to lose rewards for his unfaithfulness, but Paul prayed he wouldn’t.

Prayers like that are not new. God honored a prayer like that in Deuteronomy 9:12-27 because Moses reminded God that He promised He’d make Abraham a great nation, not him, and He had to honor that. God remembered, of course, He was testing Moses to see if he remembered. And since he prayed according to God’s will, God let him “influence” His judgment. The same thing happened when Moses prayed that God wouldn’t allow His name to be reproached among the Gentiles (Numbers 14:12-20).

All that explains why God would let Paul “influence” His decision not to allow Onesiphorus to lose rewards. It is God’s will for faithful service to be rewarded. It is not God’s will to take away rewards if we stop being faithful. The only people who will “suffer loss” of rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ are those who never earned any. They will suffer the loss of what they could have had. For men like that Paul prayed that they would get what they deserved (II Tim. 4:14,15). For men like Onesiphorus, Paul prayed like he prayed in II Timothy 4:16.

How’s that make you feel about your rewards? They are as eternally secure as you are! Nehemiah wasn’t sure about his rewards (Nehemiah 13:14), but you can be sure of yours. You’ve got God’s Word on it!

Summary:

When you pour concrete, you set up wooden forms into which you pour the concrete to shape it as it dries. Baby believers have always needed to be formed into mature saints. He used to use the Law to do that (Rom.2:17-20), but now He uses the form of sound words we hear from Paul (IITi.1:13). We are under law but under grace (Rom.6:15) because we’ve obeyed the form of doctrine given to Paul (Rom.6:17).

Timothy had to be told to hold Paul’s sound words fast for there were still those who wanted to use the law to form believers (ITim.1:7), and Timothy would notice they weren’t as persecuted as he was (Gal.5:3 cf. 6:12). It would be tempting to join them in preaching the sound words of the law, so Paul tells him to hold his words fast.

Job held his integrity fast even when he lost his wealth and family (Job 2:3), and his health (Job 2:7 cf. 27:6). We must hold Paul’s sound words fast in the face of loss as well.

We are to hold his words “in faith and love” (IITim.1:13), i.e., in faithfulness (faithfulness to Christ) and in love for Christ. If you love the Lord, you’ll be faithful to Him (Ps.31:23). If you need incentive, Paul uses that exact phrase “with faith and love which is in Christ” when he tells how God saved him (ITim.1:12-14). The Lord loved him enough to faithfully save him (like He promised He’d save all who trust in Him), so in asking Timothy to hold his words fast “in faith and love,” He’s just asking us to give Him the same faith and love He gave us when He saved us.

We know that “that good thing” (IITim.1:14) is another name for the form of Paul’s sound words when we compare the only other time that phrase is used. Jeremiah used it to describe the entire kingdom program (Jer.33:14-16), so when Paul uses the phrase, it must be to define the entire program of grace—the form of sound words given to him.

Paul reminded Timothy that it was “committed” to him (1:14), and then told him to commit it to others (2:2). They did, and now it is our job to keep Paul’s sound words. It’s the least we can do since the Lord keeps the soul and spirit we “commit” to Him (IITim.1:12).

Keeping it “by the Holy Ghost” means keeping it by the Word (Ps.37:23 cf. 119:133). The only other time the Bible talks about doing something “by the Holy Ghost that dwelleth in us” is Romans 8:11. “If ye live after the flesh” (v.13) your Christian experience dies (cf.ITim.5:6) and you need to “awake” and “arise from the dead” (Eph.5:14). But it is something we must do (Rom.13:11,12 cf. ICor.15:34), not the Spirit. But when we do, we do it “by the Spirit” because we use the Book the Spirit wrote to do it.

“All in Asia” would include the Ephesian church (Acts 20:16), a church dear to Paul (Acts 20:37,38), even friends who may have saved his life (Acts 19:31). If the “some” who had “turned” from Paul to the law (ITim.1:5-7) were the beginning of the “all they which are in Asia” who “turned” away from him, then the turning away of IITimothy 1:15 must be more than a turning away from him personally, but from the message he preached.

When you turn from the truth you soon err from it (IITim.2:18), then you resist it (3:8), then finally shut your ears to it (4:3,4). The reason we have to hold Paul’s sound words fast is because the “some” in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy (1:6,19; 5:15; 6:10,21) became “all” (IITim.1:15) because people didn’t hold Paul’s words fast.

When Paul first preached in Asia he turned them all away from idols (Acts 19:26), but now they had turned from him.

Finally, if all in Asia departed from Paul before he was even dead, this answers the question we are often asked, why the early church didn’t teach what we teach. They had fallen into apostasy, and so what they believed and taught cannot be looked to in order to obtain a guide as to what should be taught. The only reason you should ever believe and teach anything is because it is found in the sound words given to Paul.

Summary:

Paul wasn’t ashamed of the gospel because it can save all who believe it (Rom.1:16), so he told Timothy not to be either (v.8).The Jews should have been ashamed of looking to Ethiopia to save them from the Assyrians (Isa.20:4,5) and the Egyptians (30:1-7), but Timothy shouldn’t have been ashamed of the gospel that saved him and Paul (1:9). Paul was also not ashamed of the gospel because it revealed the righteousness of God (Rom.1:16,17). It tells how God righteously dealt with our sins by having Christ pay for them. The men who say God will overlook sin and let people into heaven should be ashamed, not us!

We should also not be ashamed because we are called with a holy calling (1:9). Why would God even have to say that? Who would doubt it? Well, its because God first called Abraham “alone” with a holy calling (Is.51:2), then called his church out of Egypt (Acts 7:38, “church” means a called out assembly). That means God already had a people he called with a holy calling. So when God called us Gentiles, the Jews held a council to see if we were called with a holy calling also, and they recognized that we were (Acts 15). So we have nothing to be ashamed of on that account either, our calling is as holy as Israel’s calling was.

We’d have to be ashamed if God called us “according to our works” (v.9), but He called us “according to His own purpose and grace.” His purpose for Israel was to glorify Israel by placing salvation in Zion during the kingdom (Isa. 46:10-13), where faithful Jews will rule the “cities” of the Gentiles (Luke 19:17,19). But God’s purpose for us is to rule over the angels (Eph.1:9-21). This calling wasn’t given to us directly, it was given to us “in Christ” (1:9).

We were called to this calling “before the foundation of the world” (1:9), but Israel’s kingdom was prepared “from” or before “the foundation of the world.” This is because God tried to rule the world with Adam but he sinned, then with Noah and he got drunk (Gen.9:1,2). So God made unconditional promises to Abraham and his seed that they would rule the world, his seed being Christ and all Jews in Christ. Since the government of earth broke after the foundation of the world, God planned to fix it afterward. But the angels fell before the foundation of the world, so God planned to fix the heavens before the foundation of the world with us.

Furthermore, God talked about His plan for the earth from the foundation of the world (Acts 3:21) but kept His plan for us secret since the world began (Rom.16:25). Secret until “the appearing” of the Lord (1:10), but not His appearing on earth. He said nothing about God’s plan to fix the heavens when He was here. No, God revealed His plan for the heavens with His appearing to Paul (Acts 26:16).

If the Lord “abolished” death with His death (1:10) why do we still have death? “Abolish” means to annul, as when His death also abolished the law (Eph.2:15 cf. Heb.7:18). They still observed the law at Pentecost (Acts 3:1) until Paul (Rom.6:15), but its power was annulled (Heb.2:14), just as we still have death, and will till the Rapture when death will be swallowed up (ICor.15:54).

“Life and immortality” (1:10) existed in the Jews before Paul, but Paul’s gospel (1:11) brought it to light for us Gentiles. That’s why Paul was made a preacher, an apostle and a teacher. The Lord already had had 12 apostles and lots of preachers and teachers for the Jews.

The “things” Paul was suffering (1:12) was prison (2:9), and he wasn’t suffering it because he was a preacher of the gospel, but because he was a teacher of the Gentiles (v.11). The Jews hated the Gentiles so got him imprisoned. But Paul wasn’t “ashamed” of being in prison (1:12), so Timothy shouldn’t be either (1:8).

Paul committed (1:12) his spirit to the Lord (cf.Ps.31:5) and his soul (cf.IPe.4:19), except we don’t commit our souls to Him “in well doing.” That’s good works, that’s how the Jews were saved, not us (1:9). The psalmist said he wouldn’t be ashamed if God delivered him (Ps.25:2), but God had already delivered Paul, so he was already not ashamed (1:12). He committed his soul to the Lord “against that day,” the day of his impending death.

Summary:

We know the spiritual gifts had begun to fade away by the time Paul wrote this epistle for he left a man behind “sick” (IITim.4:20) instead of healing him. So Paul tells Timothy to “stir up” his gift that was fading.

His gift had to do with the “tears” (1:4) that came naturally to him as a timid man. It was the gift of apostle (Eph.4:8-11), a gift that we know made Paul bold, for once it faded this bold apostle had to ask for prayer that he might be bold (Eph.6:18,19). Paul was “the” apostle of the Gentiles (Rom.11:13) but Barnabas was an apostle (Acts 14:14) as was Silvanus and Timothy (ITh.1:1; 2:6).

I pause to add that when I say that Paul’s gift of apostle faded, he was still our apostle, just as when the gifts of pastor and teacher faded we still had pastors and teachers (Eph.4:8-11). We just didn’t have men with those gifts. And we still don’t, but we still have Paul as our apostle.

How’d Paul expect Timothy to stir up his gift? With God’s Word, just as God stirred up Cyrus (Ezra 1:1,2) by predicting his name and the fact that he’d rebuild Israel’s temple a hundred years earlier (Isa.44:28).Once king, Cyrus figured that meant Israel’s God was God and he should do what He predicted he’d do. So Paul expected Timothy to use the Word to stir up the boldness his departed gift took.

Remember, the “profit” of the gifts (ICor.12:7) was replaced with the profit of the Word (IITim.3:16). So if you want boldness, you too have to look to the word to “stir” it up (II Peter 1:12,13; 3:1,2).

Why did Paul have to say God hasn’t given us the spirit of fear (1:7)? Who would think He did? Some might, for we know that He gave the suffering that caused the spirit of fear (Phil.1:29). Suffering for the Lord is a gift, a privilege (Acts 5:40,41), something that comes along with the gift of being able to serve Him. But the fear that often goes along with suffering is not a gift from God (Phil.1:27-29), it was a gift from Satan, who doesn’t want us to be bold.

It is called “the spirit” of fear because a spirit can take you over completely (cf.Mt.17:15), and fear can do that too. To counter this, God gave the spirit “of power” (1:7). How do we get that? Well, in time past God pointed to the Red Sea as an example of His power (Job 26:12; Isa.50:2). If you knew your God could part the Red Sea, wouldn’t it have given you a spirit of power if you lived back then?

In the New Testament, God points to the resurrection of Christ to exemplify His power (Rom.1:3,4). If you know your God can raise the dead, it should give you the spirit of power! The Red Sea miracle can’t give us the spirit of power, for we know God’s not saving His people from death like that in this age. But the resurrection of Christ can, for we know God plans to raise us in power as well (ICor.6:14; 15:43). His resurrection should give us the same spirit of power it gave the apostles. They forsook the Lord in fear when He was arrested, but preached boldly at Pentecost after He rose from the dead.

But to not be ashamed to testify for the Lord you’ll also need the motivation of the spirit “of love” (1:7). You have to love people to testify to them! The problem is, most people are unlovable. So you need the spirit of love Christ showed when He died for the unlovable (Rom.5:6,10).

You’re also going to need the spirit of “a sound mind” to testify to people. Wisdom makes a mind sound (Pr.2:7; 3:21; 8:14), and the wisdom that comes from being sound in God’s word makes a man not “ashamed” (Ps.119:80). Of course! People fear to testify for fear they’ll be asked a question they can’t answer, and wisdom and knowledge can dispel this fear. The gifts of wisdom and knowledge used to dispel it (ICor.12:8), but now “sound doctrine” does (Tit.1:9), “the form of sound words” we learn from Paul (IITim.1:13).

Sound doctrine will make you unashamed of “the testimony of our Lord” through Paul, that Christ died for all (ITim.2: 5,6) and that we are not under the law (Gal.5:3). We should also not be ashamed of Paul. Onesiphorus wasn’t (IITim.1: 16), but Timothy was, for he feared dying as he had.

Summary:

Paul was on death row (IITim.4:6) yet after his introduction in this epistle his opening words are “I thank God” (1:3). Is that how you’d open an epistle if you were facing imminent death? This shows that even in the direst of straits you can always find something for which to be thankful. After a horrendous two-week storm, Paul thanked God for food (Acts 27:14-35). And despite Paul’s dire situation on death row, he thanked God for Timothy. He was especially thankful for him since all in Asia had just left him! (1:15).

This marks a dispensational difference. In the psalmist’s dire situation, he encouraged himself with memories of the miracles the Lord had done for his people in the past (Ps.77:2-11). But by the time Paul wrote this epistle, God had ceased delivering His people as He did when He broke Paul out of jail miraculously (Acts 16:26). So Paul didn’t comfort himself with memories of that, but with memories of Timothy instead. You too should comfort yourself with God’s sufficient grace and with His people, just as Paul did!

Paul also thanked God he’d served God from his forefathers, a comforting thought when facing death. The only other time “forefather” is found in Scripture is a verse that shows that Paul came from a long line of forefathers that didn’t obey God (Jer.11:10), and Paul used to be standing in that long line (Acts 23:6). I believe Paul mentions this because he hoped to start a new line of men who would serve God in obedience to His Word instead of in defiance of it, starting with Timothy, his son in the faith, whom he later told to have sons of his own (IITim.2:1).

Paul thanked God that he had served Him from his forefathers with “a pure conscience” (1:3), another thing that can comfort you as you face death. But this means Paul had a pure conscience when killing Christians (Acts 23:1) because he believed he was doing the right thing. This means it is not enough to serve God with a pure conscience, you also need the pure Word of God (Ps.119:140). A conscience is only as good as the truth it is enforcing. Paul thought he “ought” to kill God’s people (Acts 26:9cf. John 16:2).It’s vital to know the Word of God.

But Paul knew the Word (Acts 22:3)! He just didn’t know it rightly divided. Persecuting the Lord and His followers was right according to the law, for He had claimed He was God (John 19:7). If a man claimed he was God in Daniel’s day, Jews would have been right to execute him, for according to Daniel’s timetable in Daniel 9, it was not time for Messiah to appear. But when the Lord appeared when Daniel said He would, His execution was wrong dispensationally. So it’s not enough to have a pure conscience, or even a conscience illuminated by the Word. It has to be illuminated by the rightly divided Word!

Paul “greatly” desired to see Timothy (1:4 cf. 4:9,21), “mindful” of his tears rather than of his own. If the great apostle Paul longed for fellowship (cf.Phil.1:8) and had others pray that he might have it (Rom.15:30-32), you should seek it too. Of course, while Paul rejoiced in all fellowship, to fill him with joy, you had to obey him, as Timothy did (1:4; Phil.2:19-22) and as others did (Phil.2:2).

“Feign” (1:5) means to pretend (cf. Lu.20:20). The word “faith” though means faithfulness (cf.Rom.3:3). God is always looking for unfeigned faithfulness (ITim.1:5), and Timothy’s faithfulness was legit, unlike Phygellus and Hermogones (IITim.1:15). They were probably faithful, but “feignedly,” not with their “whole heart” (cf. Jer.3:10).

Timothy’s faith started when his mom and grandmother taught him the Scriptures (1:5 cf. IITim.3:15). Perhaps the reason David mentions his mom a couple of times (Ps.86:10; 116:16) is because she taught him the Scriptures.

It is interesting that Paul said he had to be “persuaded” that the faith that first dwelt in Timothy’s mother and grandmother now dwelt in him. I’m sure Timothy’s natural timidity made Paul wonder if he could be someone God could use, but Timothy’s faithfulness eventually persuaded him. Would Paul be persuaded by your faithfulness?