2 Timothy 1:8-14
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
October 5, 2025
Paul and Timothy had to be fighting off discouragement and even despair. For the churches under their care were struggling to survive. Members were defecting to other ways of life and those who stayed were drifting away from the truth of the gospel.
Both Paul, now a life-term prison inmate, and Timothy, his mentee waiting in the wings, knew Paul’s days on earth were numbered; and both likely wondered whether Timothy was ready to take the helm. Ultimately, their hope lay only in God’s promises. Would God come through and see them through the challenges ahead?
They could believe He would just to the extent they knew God’s heart and could trust Him to be faithful.
Paul did believe God would come through because, he says, “I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard…what I have entrusted to him”. While Paul didn’t always know God’s mind (God’s plan being so often mysterious), Paul did know God’s heart and that gave him confidence before an uncertain future.
There was Paul, locked up for good in a Roman jail. No doubt, for want of water and personal grooming opportunities, he stank to high heaven; and looked a dirty mess; and his disgraceful appearance likely reinforced the prejudice of many that the incarcerated are as bad on the inside as they look on the outside. Thus, many “good” people were ashamed to be associated with him. No wonder then that he feels compelled to urge Timothy not to be like that. In fact, he urges Timothy not to shy away from his own reputational or physical suffering, for suffering is just what it costs to be committed to the cause of Christ’s “gospel”, which literally means “good news”.
And what is Christ’s good news? That anyone can be “saved” from judgment and “called” into holiness, because the possibility is offered “not according to our works but according to [God’s] own purpose and grace”. It’s a gratuitous gift given “before the ages began”. In other words, people can, no thanks to themselves, be pardoned for redemption and empowered for transformation, just because God decided to make it happen independent of any human accomplishment. It came about as an entirely divine accomplishment in the “appearing” of the Savior Jesus who died and rose for them in public demonstration in history of the grace God “purposed” in the mysterious mists of eternity. That unmerited kindness was conceived by God before time began, which means before we even existed, let alone were able to do anything to earn anything. Therefore, this salvation was all God’s doing, ahead of our believing and reforming our conduct. It all happened by God’s unwarranted choice to be better to us than we had any right to expect.
God’s choice, made apart from any reason from us to make it, put into play a mercy that “abolished death” and “brought life and immortality to light”. Obviously, it hasn’t eradicated death for, as Paul said elsewhere, death is “the last enemy to be destroyed”. The Greek word translated here as “abolished” is katargeo, a verb whose basic meaning is to “render powerless”. Yes, our process of dying can still be terrible, and our death can still cause others deep grief; but, for those who’ve already entered the “abundant” life through following Jesus on earth, death becomes a gateway into the immortality of everlasting life in heaven – and that abolishes death’s worst fearsomeness and its tyranny over our mind.
All this is such good news that Paul refers to it as God’s “good treasure” and sees it as the duty of every believer to pass on the riches of this grace to others.
God entrusts His good treasure to our stewardship. We fulfill that responsibility as we, committed to the “standard of sound doctrine”, “guard” it by filtering nothing out of it and allowing nothing false to infiltrate it; and as we, with “faith and love”, give our “testimony” about it, and so become “heralds” like Paul in our own way as we share with those whose hearts and ears are open how the good treasure has enriched our lives.
We can easily imagine timid, self-doubting Timothy feeling daunted by this assignment, and we might feel the same. But we can take confidence from the source Paul tells Timothy he could: “the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” We can rely on God to make us trustworthy, effective stewards of this good treasure if we, like Paul, come to “know the one in whom [we] have put our trust” and realize He “is able to guard” what we “have entrusted to Him”.
We cannot hope to guard and pass on the good treasure well on our own; but we can act in collaboration with God, in trust that He will supplement our modest contribution with His extraordinary one. We therefore can have confidence because, while He puts the work in our hands, He doesn’t take His hands off of us or the work we do. As we take responsibility to serve the good treasure, God infuses our modest but dutiful efforts with His grace and spiritual power!
If we come to know how good God’s heart is, we can, even when we can’t figure out what God has on His mind in allowing the horrific things He lets happen, overcome the discouragement and despair that would otherwise do us in.
So much in life makes no sense. So much seems to serve no good purpose. But in the mystery of Christ’s appearing on that cross and suffering out of love for everyone, we can see how God puts His heart on the line for us and is willing to go through more hell than we ever could, out of nothing but His gracious concern for us.
In exercising our stewardship of the good treasure of the gospel, we may suffer. But Christ’s presence and His continuing to suffer in our suffering now, as He suffered long ago on the cross, comforts us and fortifies us to keep on keeping on to demonstrate His grace to others.
In his book, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering, Randy Alcorn tells of Ethel Herr, a woman who, like Paul and Timothy, was willing to suffer for the good treasure entrusted to her stewardship. Two months after a painful double mastectomy, doctors discovered the cancer had spread throughout her body. Hearing that, a friend blurted out, “How do you feel about God now?”
Herr said that reflecting on that question led to her getting clear about God’s faithfulness and love. At the time of her crisis, she said, “God has been preparing me for this moment. He has undergirded me in ways I’ve never known before. He has made Himself increasingly real and precious to me. He has given me joy…even amidst the tears. He has taught me that…He will…never leave me for a moment…God is good, no matter the diagnosis or the prognosis or the uncertainty of having neither. The key to knowing that God is good is just knowing God.”
May we better and better know the God in whom we have put our trust, that we might love Him and our neighbors more and more, even in the uncertainty and pain of living!
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