Summary:

“Strive for masteries” is a metaphor for boxing. The only other time the phrase is used, Paul speaks about running in a race and then says “I therefore so run” (I Cor. 9:24-26), then talks about someone who strives for the mastery and says, “so fight I” (ICor.9:25,26). See how he defines it as fighting? We know he meant boxing because he said he didn’t fight as one that beat the air (v.26), an allusion to shadow boxing.

These passages speak of boxing with two different opponents. The Corinthian passage is about boxing with their physical bodies (v.27), something the Corinthians struggled with (ICor.6:13). Paul wrote this to a church because this is a struggle all Christians must deal with. When Paul says he beat his body into subjection (ICor.9:27), a word that means he made his body his servant (cf.Jer.34:16).

But once you learn to beat your body into submission, you are ready for another boxing opponent. When Paul talked to Timothy about striving for the mastery, he was talking to a pastor, so he was talking about boxing an opponent only pastors and those involved in the work of the ministry would face, the defense of the truth of the gospel (Phil.1:7,27,30). You’ll notice that Paul spoke to the Corinthians about striving for the “mastery” singular, but to Timothy about “masteries” plural. That’s because you have only one body to subject, but many false teachers and doctrines to fight.

At the Isthmian games that were held in Corinth, athletes competed for “corruptible” crowns (ICor.9:25). It is said they were given olive leaf crowns. But we strive for the mastery for “incorruptible” crowns (ICor.9:25). In the context, this crown refers to reigning with Christ (IITim.2:12). “We shall judge angels” (ICor.6:3), though we may not wear literal crowns. Adam had dominion over the world, so he was king of the world, but he wore no crown that we know of. When the Jews were good they were kings of the world, but they wore no literal crowns. But when they “sinned,” we read that “the crown is fallen from our heads” (Lam.5:16). Similarly, our crowns will be symbolic of our right to rule and reign with Christ.

In the Isthmian games, “one receiveth the prize” (ICor.9:24), but “every one” can receive a prize when we strive for the mastery (IITim.4:7,8). Paul is drawing a contrast, not a comparison! If there was only one prize, Paul would get it!

But we must strive “lawfully” (IITim.2:5). Since we are not under the law (Rom.6:14,15), it must mean striving according to some other law. The Jews had the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law (Rom.2:17-20), but we have the form of truth in Paul’s epistles (IITim.1:13). These are the rules by which we must strive lawfully.

Paul uses another metaphor when he speaks of the “husbandman” or farmer (IITim.2:6). This is speaking of pastors and others who do the work of the ministry by planting and watering the seed of the Word (ICor.3:6). Men in the ministry must partake of the “fruit” that results from their labor, i.e., the financial fruit (ICor.9:7,11). Paul didn’t want Timothy to think that eternal rewards could be his only rewards. And he must “first” be partaker of this fruit. It’s only right, but too often people give God what is left, not what is right. What’s left after all the other demands on their money. God says His work should come “first.”

Paul told Timothy to “consider” these metaphors because when he spoke to the Corinthian “babes” (ICor.3:1), he explained the metaphors. But in speaking to a “man of God” like Timothy (ITim.6:11), he didn’t explain the metaphors, he expected Timothy could meditate on them and understand the point, as we’ve done in this message. Paul would also like us to understand that if the Isthmian athletes trained and abstained from rich foods and put all that effort into their games, shouldn’t we put that much effort and more into striving for the mastery?

Summary:

You’d think that the ability to wield a sword would make you a good soldier, but Paul says it is your ability to endure hardness. So it is not your ability to wield the sword of the Spirit that makes you a good soldier of Christ, it is your ability to endure the hardships that life and Satan send us. We’re all soldiers of Christ, the only question is if we are “good” soldiers. The same is true for being “ambassadors for Christ” (IICor.5:20). We all represent the Lord, the only question is, how well.

To be a good soldier, you first have to know your leader’s objective. Ours is to help “all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (II Tim. 2:4). Just as it is sometimes hard to give birth (Gen. 35:16), some-times it’s hard to give birth to a new believer, but we have to endure that hardness. It’s hard because pride makes people think they don’t need a Savior, and pride can harden a heart (Dan.5:20). Pride hardened Pharaoh’s heart when he refused to believe the God of his slaves was greater than his god (Ex. 8:32), and pride will harden a Muslim or Buddhist from believing your God is greater than his.

Jewish hearts can be just as hard as Egyptian hearts (Isa.6:6), and today they don’t want to admit the God of the Gentiles is where they have to look to be saved. Pride in their heritage causes them to kick against the pricks of con-science, as it did for Saul, and that’s “hard” for them (Acts 9:5), but it is hardness we must endure to reach them. And it can get frustrating, especially since many never believe. But God says we can declare victory as good soldiers if we present the gospel either way (IICor.2:14,15).

When it comes to leading believers to a knowledge of the truth, we must sometimes endure the hardness of those who don’t even want to hear it (cf. Jer. 19:15). You also have to be able to endure the hardness of “hard questions” (cf. IIChr.9:1) by being able to answer them. Even if you can answer their questions, you sometimes have to endure the “hardness” of heart the Lord ran into (Mark 3:1-5). Theirs was caused by pride in their law over the sabbath, and we have to endure that kind of hardness from 7^th Day Adventists and Baptists and others who cling to the Law if we want to bring them to a knowledge of the truth. We some-times even have to endure the hardness of those that speak against us (Acts 19:9), but love “endureth all things” (I Cor. 13;4-7). The Lord loved people enough to endure the cross for them (Heb.12:3), can’t you endure a little hardness?

A good soldier also can’t get entangled in the affairs of this life (IITim.2:4). He’s talking primarily about politics and government. The Greek word for “warreth” is used in IPeter 2:11, where resisting the government (v.13) wars against your soul. The word for “affairs” is pragmateiais, from which we get pragmatism, which are things “pertaining to business, specially civil or government business.” The first time “affair” is used is about affairs of state (IChron.26:32), as it is in Daniel 2:49.

“Entangle” is also used in connection with governmental things (Mt.22:15-17; II Pe.2:10,20). The reason Paul has to warn us about this is because it has always been easy for God’s people to get entangled in these things (cf.Pr.24:21). But politics are not your fight. God told Israel not to fight the Edomites (Num.20:14-22) because they were just passing through, their home was not Israel’s home (Deut.2:2-5). Well, this world is not our home, we are just passing through. It is undispensational to try to fix the government, for God has a plan to do that at the 2^nd Coming of Christ, a plan that won’t even begin until our dispensation ends.

We must avoid all entanglements of life, for we are doing the great work of edifying the Body of Christ with a knowledge of the truth, and we dare not come down from that to lesser causes (Cf. Neh.6:2-4).

Summary:

Paul tells Timothy to “be strong” (2:1) because so many hadn’t been (1:15). Moses told Joshua to be strong in the law (De.11:8), but Paul told Timothy to be strong in grace. If Joshua was strong in the law, Israel would conquer their enemies (Lev.26:3-7). But Paul tells Timothy to be strong in grace because we’re not in the business of conquering God’s enemies in the dispensation of grace.

The Canaanites were the seed of the fallen angels in Genesis 6 and so had to be exterminated (Deut. 20:16). You have to be strong in the law to believe God when He said to kill even women and children. But we’re told to be strong in grace because God expects us to save His enemies, not kill them.

That’s why Paul told Timothy to be strong “in the grace that is in Christ” (2:1). What did the grace that is in Christ do to an enemy named Saul? Saved him! (ITim.1:13,14). The grace that is in Christ saves, it doesn’t kill, and that’s the grace we’re to be strong in.

Do you know what God says about conquering our enemies under grace? He says they’re more likely to conquer us (Rom.8:36,37). But if you can lead them to Christ, you are “more than conquerors” of God’s enemies. The Lord could have conquered Saul, but all He would have gotten out of that was a dead enemy. When He instead saved him, He more than conquered him, He got an apostle to spread grace to the world. Of course, you have to be strong in grace to send missionaries to Muslim countries where they are killing Christians, but that’s what Things To Come Mission is doing! And what we must do if they start killing us “all the day long” in this country.

In the context, we must also be strong in grace to believers who depart from the faith (1:15). Timothy was sickly (ITim.5:23), so he needed to be strong in the grace that is sufficient when we are sick (IICor.12:7-9). Since there is a natural tendency to let grace turn into lasciviousness (cf.Jude 4), we must be strong in the grace that teaches us to deny ungodliness (Tit.2:11,12). We don’t want to presume on God’s grace as the Jews did. They received grace through animal sacrifices, but God had to tell them to stop bringing them while keep sinning (Jer.7:9,10,21-23). God originally told them to obey and only gave them the sacrifices system as a safety net in case they sinned, but they were using the safety net as a hammock to lounge in sin. We dare not lounge in sin and presume on the grace God gave us through the blood of Christ. Christ died for us to deliver us from sin, not to sin (Jer.7:9,10 cf. Gal.1:3,4).

We must also be strong in the grace of giving (IICor.8:1-7). Then tell others to be strong in grace (IITim.4:2). You have to be strong in grace to remind someone in the hospital of IICorinthians 12:7-9.

Catholic theologians use II Timothy 2:2 to say that what we have “heard” in oral traditions should be passed on to men as well as what we read in Paul’s epistles (cf. IIThes.2:15). But even oral traditions dating back to Christ can be wrong in no time (John 21:21-23). The only reason Timothy passed on the traditions he heard is because he knew he heard them from Paul (IITim.3:14).

When Paul committed the grace message to Timothy, that’s a strong word in Scripture. Any time the Bible isn’t talking about committing a sin, a commitment in God’s Word is a serious thing. Joseph’s master committed all that he had to him (Gen.39:4-8). The psalmist committed his spirit to God (Ps.31:5). The Lord committed Himself to the Father to judge our sins on Him (IPet.2:21-23). So when God committed the message to Paul (ICor.9:17; IICor.5:19; Gal. 2:7; ITim.1:11; Tit.1:3) who committed it to Timothy (IITim.2:2), I have to conclude it is just as serious a thing.

Don’t choose not to get involved in the ministry thinking you can’t be “faithful” (IITim.2:2). Moses killed a man and ran from God for forty years but God called him faithful (Heb.3:5). Sarah laughed when God told her she’d have a son in her old age, but God called her faithful (Heb.11:11). Being faithful doesn’t mean you never fall, it means you never quit, you never give up!

Summary:

Paul told Timothy to “charge the rich” in a dispensationally different way that the Lord charged them (Mark 10:17-21) when He was preparing them for the Tribulation when the beast will issue his mark and God’s people won’t be able to buy food without it. In that day, the rich will have to help the poor survive. But we’ll be raptured before the Tribulation, so God’s instructions to the rich today are different.

They must be warned not to be “highminded,” which is the opposite of “lowliness of mind” (Phil.2:3), esteeming others to be better than you. Riches make the rich think they got what they got because they are better than others (Dan. 4:30). Nebuchadnezzer knew better (Dan.2:37), but riches and power lift a man with pride. Even believers! (Deut.6:10-12; Hos.13:6).

Even under grace, God prospers us (ICor.16:2). And it is interdispensationally true that the good of a man’s labor is something “God giveth him,” along with the “power” to eat it (Eccl.5:18,19). You couldn’t eat the food you buy with the money you earn without the teeth and digestive system God gives you. God gave you life (Acts 17:25). You may draw your own breath, but only with lungs God gave you.

The rich should also be charged not to “trust in uncertain riches” (Pr.27:4) but in “the living God.” Timothy was in Ephesus, where they worshipped a dead god, Diana. She was making her worshippers wealthy (Acts 19:25), but those riches proved uncertain when Paul destroyed their industry. The living God may not make you rich, but He “giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” The rich can’t enjoy what they have, not as you can, because they are subject to the bondage of death (Heb.2:15), whereas you don’t fear death. But you can richly enjoy what little you have because you know where you’ll be spending eternity.

“Do good” is what we should all do (ITim.6:18), but the Lord could “do good” in a way only He could (Acts 10:38), and the rich can do good in a way only they can financially. Women are similarly uniquely able to do certain “good works” (6:18 cf. 5:10) and so should do them, as the rich should do the works they are uniquely able to do (Tit. 2:14)

“Ready” to distribute (6:18) means prepared and inclined to, meaning the rich shouldn’t lock up all their riches in long term investments, but have some available to help others. “Distribute” is always used for giving to the poor, while “communicate” is always used for helping the ministry. The rich should help with both, as we all should.

Giving to others might seem like loss to the rich, but Paul calls it a good work, and good works are “profit,” not loss (Tit.3:8). Because in giving, the rich are “laying up in store for themselves a good foundation” (ITim.6:19).They should store up riches in heaven. Investing in eternity lays up “a good foundation against the time to come” in eternity. If believers are to “edify” one another, that must mean in life you’re building a building. But the building of your life is just the foundation of your eternal building. Good works don’t help you obtain eternal life, they just help you “lay hold” on the eternal life you already have. Pastors do this by the good work of fighting the good fight (6:12), the rich do it by giving. If they don’t, it probably means they have laid hold on this life instead of their eternal life.

Finally, Timothy is told to keep that which was committed to him (6:20). Paul doesn’t say what it was, but we know from comparing Scripture that it was the gospel of grace first committed to Paul (ITim.1:11) and the form of sound words God gave Paul (IITim.1:13,14), the grace message.

Paul warned of “profane and vain babblings,” words his enemies used of him. They said he was babbling “vain” things when he taught the resurrection (Acts 17:18; ICor. 15:14,17. These were “oppositions of science falsely so-called” based on the science of physiology (ICor. 15:35). Paul answered with the science of agriculture (36-38).

Timothy silenced these babblings, but by the time Paul wrote IITimothy the “profane and vain babblings” (IITim. 2:16-18) had misplaced the resurrection instead of denying it. This “overthrew the faith of some” (cf. ITim.6:21).

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!