Our
final word will be very simple, but I trust vital. I ask
you to look again at the Letters to Timothy, with special
reference to four very brief series, or groups, of
fragments.
Here is
the first series:
1 Tim.
1:11: "...the gospel... which was committed to my
trust."
1 Tim.
1:18: "This charge I commit unto thee, my child
Timothy..."
1 Tim.
6:20: "O Timothy, guard that which is
committed unto thee..."
2 Tim.
1:12: "...I know Him Whom I have
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard that
which I have committed unto Him against that day."
(You will see that the margin gives the alternative:
"He is able to guard that which He hath committed
unto me".)
Now the
second series:
1 Tim.
1:18: "This charge I commit unto thee... that...
thou mayest war the good warfare."
2 Tim.
2:3-4: "Suffer hardship with me, as a good
soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth
himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please
Him Who enrolled him as a soldier."
The
third series:
2 Tim.
2:5: "And if also a man contend in the games, he
is not crowned, except he have contended lawfully."
The
fourth series:
2 Tim.
2:15: "Give diligence to present thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
handling aright the word of truth."
I wonder
what impression those passages make upon you. Hearing
them, reading them, putting them together, what is the
conclusion to which you come? What do they say to you?
Surely they ought to leave one very definite impression
upon us: namely, that THE CHRISTIAN IS A VERY
RESPONSIBLE PERSON. Every one of those passages, and
indeed, the much more lying behind them and in these
letters, does really say very, very clearly and very
strongly: We are in a position of tremendous
responsibility. The Christian is, in the Word of God,
looked upon as being a very responsible person.
When the
Lord Jesus and His apostles appealed to people to come
along and follow, to be saved, to become Christians, it
was never just for their own pleasure, just that they
might have a good time. The appeal was never to the
pleasure-instinct in people, to the desire for a good
time. They never, never made their appeal on that ground
at all - that if you are saved, if you become a
Christian, you are going to embark upon an endless
joy-ride, a whole life of pleasure and gratification.
Whatever there may be of good and enjoyment and profit to
follow, the appeal of Christ, the appeal of His apostles,
the appeal of the Scriptures, is always to people who
mean business more than pleasure, who really are prepared
to take serious responsibility for the interests of their
Lord, and, if needs be, to allow themselves to be
involved in trouble or suffering for His sake. They are
the people He wants.
The Christian As Trustee
Here,
then, we have this many-sided picture of the Christian as
in responsibility. Let us take up some of the titles or
metaphors used, which give the Divine conception of the
Christian, very simply. In the first series, 1 Tim. 1:11:
"According to the gospel of the glory of the
blessed God, which was committed to my trust"; 1:18:
"This charge I commit unto thee, my child
Timothy...": 6:20: "O Timothy, guard that which
is committed unto thee..." What is this conception
of the Christian? The Christian is called to be, has the
privilege of being, a trustee for God, a custodian of an
infinitely precious deposit, committed to his trust.
'Timothy, you are in trust; Timothy, you are a trustee;
Timothy, here is something precious put into your
custodianship, given you of God to watch over, to guard
for Him.' Paul calls it 'the gospel of the blessed God,
which was committed to his trust', and he is passing it
on. He has kept it intact, he has guarded it, he has
preserved it: it has lost nothing; but he is about to go.
'Timothy, I pass it on to you, I hand it on to you in the
Lord's Name. Timothy, guard it. It is for you to see that
this Gospel, this wonderful Gospel, suffers no loss by
any kind of carelessness, unwatchfulness, indifference,
slothfulness, preoccupation or diversion, persecution or
suffering, or anything else. Let there come to it nothing
to spoil it, no tarnish, no rust, no injury. Timothy,
guard it - do not let it suffer loss.' That is the Divine
conception of the Christian.
What I
want to urge upon you is just this. If you would claim to
be a Christian, to belong to the Lord, I would that you
would recognize this: that you are put in trust with the
Gospel, that you are a trustee of "the gospel of the
blessed God", that there rests upon you this solemn
obligation to see that it does not suffer in any way
through you, because of you, that on no account does it
suffer, but that it is preserved in its pristine glory
and in its entirety; and that you at the end do what Paul
was able to do - pass it on intact, so that there will be
those who come after you who will, in their turn, take it
up from you and carry it on. Does that sound very simple,
very elementary? Paul put his heart into this. 'O
Timothy, my child Timothy - this charge, this CHARGE
I commit to thee. Guard the deposit, take care of the
great trust.' Will you believe, whether you are the
youngest Christian or the oldest, or somewhere between,
that you are a custodian of the interests of your Lord,
and that those great interests can suffer because of you,
if you do not take your responsibility seriously?
But that
is a very elevating thing - it is a very strengthening
thing to realize that, is it not? To feel that God has
committed to me His interests, that I stand in this
world, not just to be a Christian and try to live a
Christian life, but as a responsible trustee of the very
interests of God! Whether we like it or not, it is so. If
you are a Christian, this great trust, this great Gospel,
is suffering or being preserved by you; it is being let
down or it is being upheld, whether you like it or not.
But why not do what Paul was seeking to get Timothy to
do? Realize this, face this, and take it up, as a solemn
responsibility before God: 'I am a man with a charge, put
in trust, a trustee.'
The Christian As Warrior
The next
series of fragments begins with the 18th verse of chapter
one of the first letter: "War the good
warfare..."; followed by these so familiar words in
the second letter, second chapter: "...a good
soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth
himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please
Him Who enrolled him as a soldier."
(a) On Active Service
There
are three ideas bound up with those words. Firstly, of
course, the conception of the Christian as a warrior, and
of the Christian life and Christian service as a warfare.
Perhaps we hardly need to be reminded of that. It may be
that you are a really war-scarred warrior: you have been
in the fight and the battle has left its marks on you.
You know it quite well. And yet it needs to be said -
perhaps firstly to those who have newly donned the
armour, who have newly come to the Lord. Understand that
you have been enrolled in a spiritual army! That is what
it says: you have been enrolled in a spiritual army, and
your life-business is WAR. You are going to find
that out sooner or later, whether you like it or not; but
there is the fact. And that is a very responsible
position. One, by failure in this warfare, may let down
many and affect the whole campaign.
But,
although the older ones may know it so well, and feel
that you do not need to be reminded, are you sure that
you do not? I think I know something about the warfare
from experience; and yet, and yet - there is this subtle
fact, that very often, when we are in a situation, and
things are going on, we begin to blame people and
circumstances, and get all worked up, and look for
scapegoats, forgetting the reality of this thing - Why,
the Devil is after something! Here the battle is on,
there is no doubt about it; the air is thick with
conflict; and we get our eyes on people and things. We
are defeated, we are just beaten, rendered casualties,
put out of the fight - simply because we lose sight of
the fact, the abiding fact, that we are in a spiritual
warfare, and that behind 'things' there are other,
spiritual, forces.
We all
need to be reminded. It is no small thing, you know, when
we are really in a situation like that, and things are
getting worked up to a fine pitch and stress, when
someone comes along and says, 'Look here, the enemy is in
this; he is trying to get you, he knows something or
other, he is on your track; let us have some prayer about
it'; and we get to prayer, and the whole thing goes.
Sometimes just to remind one another of the fact is a
tremendous deliverance: we find that it IS a
fact. We have been attributing the situation to things
and people, and there is all the time something much
deeper than that behind it. We need to be reminded
continually that we are in a warfare - for we are.
That is
the first thing here - this conception of the Christian
life - and we must get hold of it and settle it. And,
although I don't like saying it, I don't think we are
ever going to be out of this warfare here!
(b) With Undivided Interests
The
second thing that is in these statements is that, if we
are going to wage triumphant spiritual warfare, we must
be ALTOGETHER in it. "No soldier on active
service" (for that is the literal wording)
"entangleth himself with the affairs of this
life." He must be DISENTANGLED. One of
the enemy's most successful tactics is to get us all tied
up, tangled up with all kinds of conflicting things, or
with some other interests, dividing us in our life and in
our strength and in our application. Now this that Paul
says to Timothy here does not mean, 'Look here, you must
not go into business - you must come out of business, and
be all on spiritual work.' It does not mean that you have
got to leave everything else and come and be a full-time
worker, or full-time soldier - it does not mean that at
all. It is entirely possible - and, though difficult,
this is what the Apostle and what the Lord would say to
most of us - it is altogether possible for you to pursue
your daily employment, and do it conscientiously and
thoroughly, as you should, leaving nothing for reproach,
while yet at the same time, whether in it, through it, or
over it, your supreme interests are spiritual. The really
governing things in your life are the Lord's things.
The
warfare, then, may be in the daily business. But if you
get all churned up and obsessed, you are put out of the
war, out of the fight. Inwardly in our hearts there has
got to be a disentangled spirit. Now that could be
enlarged upon very much. The Apostle is saying: You must
not have two dominating interests in life; you can only
have one. You must not be a divided person who has, on
the one side, interests in the things of the Lord, on the
other side, interests in the world. That is no good; you
will not be a good soldier if you are like that. If you
have to be in this world, and do its work, and follow
your profession, your dominating concern must be the
interests of the Lord, and in that part of your life you
must be disentangled. In a word, one thing over all must
predominate; there must be no dividedness of heart or
mind. "This one thing I do...", said the
Apostle.
(c) Alongside Of Others
And the
third factor or feature in these fragments is something
which is not observable in our translation. You notice it
says: "Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of
Christ Jesus..." There are other translations of
that clause, such as: "Take your share in suffering
hardship..." Neither of them, perhaps, gives the
exact sense of the original. This is one of the occasions
when Paul uses one of his favourite compounds. You know
that Paul was tremendously fond of compound words, and
one of his favourite kinds of compound was a whole series
of words with the prefix 'syn' to them. 'Syn'
means 'together', and what he is saying here is this:
'Look here, Timothy, we are all in it. You are not alone
in this; this is a collective matter, this is a corporate
matter. This is something which, if it only related to
you, might not be very important; you might not think it
important enough to be seriously considered. But look
here, Timothy, we are together - you must not let me
down.'
This
fact of the collective or corporate aspect of the
conflict is a big thing, is it not? We are fighting
alongside of one another and for one another; the battle
is a common battle, and we must not let one another down.
If someone else is having a bit of hardship, we must come
and share the hardship with them; and if we are having a
bit of hardship, they must come and share it with us. It
is a tremendous factor in victory, to keep together in
it. So it is the 'togetherness' of the battle and the
warfare that is quite definitely thought of by the
Apostle here.
The Christian As Athlete
Our next
'group' consists of just this fragment: "If a man
contend in the games, he is not crowned except he have
contended lawfully." Here, hidden behind the English
translation, is a Greek word - athleo - from which
we get our English words 'athlete' and 'athletic'. The
Greek word means to compete in, or take part in, the
public games or contests. The Christian is compared to a
Greek athlete. Now that sounds like sport, but it is not!
For the word is a very strong word, implying one who
engages in a contest for the mastery. That is making a
business of things, is it not? We, as Christians, are
called to engage seriously in a contest, at the end of
which there is a prize, which it is possible for us to
lose. That is the conception. Of course, there is a very
large background of the Greek games to this word of
Paul's; he knew all about it. The Greek athlete was
called upon to spend ten whole months in rigorous
preparatory discipline and training before he was allowed
to enter the contests. And the rules for training were
stringent. He must shun many things; he must observe
certain regulations; he must discipline himself and put
aside all his own preferences and his own likes. He must
recognize that this thing is so serious that, should he
break one of the regulations of his training, he is
disqualified, he is not allowed to enter.
Well,
here is a contest, here is an engagement, which calls
upon us to be very watchful, and to be in many directions
self-denying. But don't mix this up with your salvation -
you can never be saved by good works! To be a Christian
you don't have to give up this and give up that, and do
all sorts of things that you don't naturally like doing!
This is not IN ORDER TO BE a Christian;
but when you ARE a Christian, here is a vocation,
here is a responsibility. Paul said: "I buffet my
body... lest... after that I have preached to others, I
myself should be rejected" (1 Cor. 9:27), and he is
thinking of this very thing - this business on hand, this
great responsibility into which he is called, this great
contest. 'I must see to it that my body, my fleshly
appetites, don't get the upper hand; I must keep a strong
hand upon myself; I must learn the disciplined life.' To
most people that word 'discipline' is a most hated word.
Yes, but this is not just discipline for its own sake -
it is because of what is involved. And we can lose so
much - young Christians, you can lose so much, and you
can be disqualified from the great calling with which you
are called, and from obtaining the great prize, the real
prize, which is set before you, if you do not learn the
disciplined life. Keep under your body. A Christian ought
to be a very disciplined person, with a life well ordered
and regulated - nothing loose or flippant or careless. We
ought to be people girded on a great business.
The Christian As Craftsman
And
finally, the second chapter of the second letter, and the
so well-known 15th verse: "Give diligence to present
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to
be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth." The
translation that we have in our Authorized Version, "STUDY
to show thyself approved unto God... rightly dividing
the word...", has given rise to a good deal of
misunderstanding. Many have thought that this is a
picture of the student in his study, taking the Word of
God and cutting it up and putting it into all
kinds of different watertight compartments and
dispensational sections. A whole school of
dispensationalism and ultra-dispensationalism has been
built upon this word, and it is all wrong. We shall be
led astray if we get that idea.
This has
nothing to do with the study and with the book. The
Revised Version has improved upon the translation:
"Give diligence to show thyself approved unto God, a
workman that needeth not to be ashamed..." It is
true that your work is with the Word of God, but the
picture here is not of a student, but of a craftsman, and
what lies behind the Greek here is the stonemason. The
stonemason has the specification before him of the stones
that are to be cut and fitted into a building; and in the
specification, or the blueprint, there are all the lines
where the cuts are to be made, very finely, so that, when
these stones are put together, they exactly fit, they
belong to one another. It is the craftsman's job. With
all the mass-production and the machine-made things of
today, I think there are few things better than to see a
real craftsman at work: really to find a craftsman, an
old-fashioned craftsman, with his genuine hand-work, that
is not the work of a machine.
Paul is
talking about the craftsman. And he says, 'Now you have
got the specification given to you in the Word of God.
Don't toy with it, don't play with it, don't be careless
about it. See to it that the truths of the Word of God
are faithfully observed, that you handle the Word of God
absolutely honestly.' In his second Corinthian letter you
remember the Apostle used this phrase: "Not...
handling the word of God deceitfully" (2 Cor.
4:2). What does that mean? Making it mean what it
does not mean, for our own convenience - because it suits
us so to interpret it! But "no... scripture is of
private interpretation" (2 Peter 1:20). Our
attitude must be: The Word of God says THIS; we
cannot get round it. Don't try to get round it, don't try
to make it mean something that it does not mean, and
certainly don't be superior to it and think that you know
better than what it says. Be absolutely honest with the
Word of God. The Word of God says that; the blueprint,
the pattern, the specification gives that as the precise
line of things: then take it. Don't think that you can
improve upon it; don't be careless about it. Take note of
it.
The
Spirit, the Holy Spirit, gave the Word. Here, to Timothy,
the Apostle says so: "All Scripture given by
inspiration of God is profitable for..." this and
that and that. The Spirit gave the Word. We must be
adjusted by the Holy Spirit to the Word that He has
given! That is 'rightly dividing', or, as literally the
word is, 'cutting straight lines' with, the Word of God.
Just be honest with it! Just let it mean to you what it
really does mean, and don't try to get round it.
"All Scripture is given by inspiration", by the
Holy Spirit. Paul was not saying things just out of his
own predilection, his own preferences, his likes and
dislikes: he was speaking what has become Scripture.
Don't get round it. Be honest. You don't stand to lose
anything; you stand to gain the blessing of God. Yes, we
must be adjusted to the Word of God: neither less than
the Word, nor more.
We have
been considering some figures, metaphors, similes, of the
Christian. They are very clear, very simple; but I come
back again to where I commenced. Put together, they do
show that a Christian is a very responsible person, or is
to be so regarded; one who must say to himself or
herself, 'I am not in something that is just optional -
my pleasure, my life; not something that does not matter
very much - as though I could say, "I am saved, I
shall get to Heaven all right!"' Oh, no! There is
more than getting to Heaven, there is more than just
being saved. There are great interests of the Lord to be
served, and these are the people required for them.
So -
'Give diligence, take your share of the hardship as a
good soldier, guard your trust, keep the rules, learn
discipline.' "For thus shall be richly supplied unto
you the entrance into the eternal kingdom..." (2
Peter 1:11). And so we, the successors of Paul in the
battle and in the work, may be able to say, as he said:
"I have fought the good fight... I have
kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me,
but also to all them that have loved His appearing" (2
Tim. 4:7-8). We are in the same fight, the same contest,
the same calling.