“Endure suffering along with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” That isn’t necessarily the message we want to hear. Suffering is never an option we readily choose for ourselves. Yet, in our suffering we can grow. From our mistakes, we can learn. In our weakness, we can see the power of Christ at work.
Paul cautions us not to forget Jesus’ resurrection. “Always remember that Jesus Christ, a descendant of King David, was raised from the dead. This is the Good News I preach.” In other words, remember that Jesus was a man and Jesus is God. That can be a hard concept for us to wrap our heads around, but it is the basis for our faith.
Continue reading “2 Timothy 2:1-13 – Remember Jesus”
Today we have Paul’s final instructions to Timothy, but let’s read them as if they are to us today. What do we see? We see action. As followers of Christ we need to:
Let’s pray. Father we come to you eager to obey and follow you. We a sk that you fill us with your compassion so we are ready to do your work in this world, to share what you have so generously given us, to make a difference to those around us. Thank you for your provision. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’m not sure what version of the Bible you read from, and if you follow the link above it takes you to New Living Translation, one of my favorites. In fact, it’s the version in my study Bible. So, today, as I was reading from my Bible, I noticed a very distinct difference in how this passage begins. In my Bible it says, “Christians who are slaves…” where in the NLT version on Biblegateway.com (source of the link above) it says “All slaves”. Interesting. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but from a context perspective, it is my understanding that in the times Paul is writing, there was a huge gap between slaves and their masters. However, if a slave and master were both Christians, they became spiritual equals, or as we might say, brothers and sisters in Christ. To me, it is then that the rest of the verse makes sense.
