Conditions of Service

Rekindle the Gift!
2Timothy 1.1-7
PAUL FOR EVERYONE THE PASTORAL LETTERS


1Paul, an apostle of King Jesus by God’s will, according to the promise of life in King Jesus; 2to Timothy, my dear child. Grace, mercy and peace from God the father and King Jesus our Lord.

3I serve God with a clear conscience, as my forebears did, and I am grateful to him that I remember you all the time, as I pray for you night and day. 4I remember how you cried when I left, and I’m longing to see you and be filled with joy. 5I have in my mind a clear picture of your sincere faith – the faith which first came to live in Lois your grandmother and Eunice your mother, and which, I am confident, lives in you as well.

6That’s why I now want to remind you that God gave you a gift when I laid my hands on you, and that you must bring it back into a blazing fire! 7After all, the spirit given to us by God isn’t a fearful spirit; it’s a spirit of power, love and prudence.


There was snow outside, and the living room was cold when I came downstairs. I don’t know why I’d woken up early, but I now shivered as I huddled on the sofa and waited for one of my parents to follow me downstairs. (I can’t have been more than about seven or eight, I suppose.) Before long my father appeared, and began to work on the fireplace. He twisted some newspaper, laid some fresh sticks, placed coal around the edge, and then, kneeling down, blew very gently at the base of the fire. He didn’t need to use a match. He’d seen that the coal in the very bottom of the fireplace was still glowing, still just alight. As he blew, I watched in amazement at what seemed like magic. The coal glowed brighter and brighter, and then suddenly the newspaper burst into flame. Within a minute the sticks were alight, the fire was going, and the room began to warm up.

A small childhood memory of the days before central heating. But I’m reminded of it when I hear Paul urging his young friend to rekindle God’s gift, to bring it back into a blazing fire. Something is glowing there, deep down inside Timothy, and he must blow gently on it to bring it back into flame.

We want to know, of course, what this ‘gift’ was. Was it a special kind of speech? Prophetic utterance, perhaps, or tongues? Was it the ability to interpret scripture and teach God’s word with power? Was it the authority and ability to lead a congregation? I suspect, putting two and two together, that it was some combination of the latter two. The first letter warned Timothy not to let other people look down on him because he was young (1 Timothy 4.12). Paul urges the Corinthians not to regard Timothy as junior and inferior (1 Corinthians 16.10–11). Now he tells him that the spirit which is at work within him, God’s spirit given to equip him for service, is not a spirit of fearfulness or timidity, but a spirit of power, love and prudence. If Timothy is to be true to his calling he must learn to act with all three of these qualities.

First, power. People are suspicious of power, quite rightly. We’ve all heard the famous saying that ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Power can be bad for those who exercise it, as much, if not more, as for those over whom it is exercised. And yet power is inevitable and necessary within human relationships. Someone has to make decisions. Someone has to protect the weak and vulnerable. Someone has to regulate the common life of a complex society. Someone has to give other people a sense of direction. This is just as true in the church as it is in the world around. We are not solitary individuals living out our lives in detached isolation. Anarchy doesn’t enable people to flourish either as humans or as Christians. The New Testament insists that God intends human authorities to bring order and harmony to the world.

This is just as true of the church as it is of society as a whole. God gives some people gifts to be used for the benefit of all; among these is the power to make things happen within the life of the church. This power is mysterious. It isn’t simply a matter of holding a particular office on the one hand, or of having a forceful personality on the other; by themselves, both of those can become dangerous. It’s a matter of having the ability to do and say things which change situations, to give a lead which others find that they want to follow, to speak words of wisdom which prove compelling, and to bring healing and hope where it’s most needed.

Timothy, clearly, has been given gifts in this direction. Precisely because he appears not to have a particularly forceful personality, he needs to be encouraged to use these gifts without being afraid. As he does so, he must also act with love. Power divorced from love quickly becomes destructive, if not even demonic. Love without power can degenerate into wishy-washy sentimentality. But when the person who is exercising power is known and perceived to be someone whose whole direction of life is generous, self-giving love, people are naturally more inclined to follow the lead they give, and obey their instructions. The power of the gospel itself flows from the fact that God gave his own son for our sake, thereby establishing a claim on our answering love and loyalty. Ministers of the gospel must discover that same power and love in their own work.

The spirit who pours out this love and power also gives Christian leaders prudence. They must be able to think clearly and shrewdly about what needs to be done and how best to do it. This must naturally begin with their own lives, where they learn moderation and self-discipline; but it will also apply to their ordering of life in the community of God’s people. We do not, alas, need very much experience of common life in Christian circles to see how easily self-promotion, jealousy, petty rivalries and so on can spring up. Leaders at every level urgently need prudence, as well as power and love, so that they may be able to look back without regret at decisions taken and attitudes adopted in their personal life as well as in their leading of the church.

This still doesn’t tell us what gifts Timothy had been given, which he is now to stir up and rekindle. But it strongly suggests that they had to do with leading the young church, giving it wise teaching and direction.

Paul can urge him to do this with confidence because he knows that Timothy is securely rooted in the faith itself. They had worked closely together (we see another account of this in Philippians 2.19–24), and Paul knows that his faith is deep-rooted, going back to some of the earliest influences on his life, the witness and example of his mother and grandmother. Lois and Eunice must have become Christians very early on, since Timothy himself was already a Christian by the time Paul met him on his second missionary journey (Acts 16.1). What’s more, Paul and Timothy had had a close personal and working relationship, like a father with a son (in a world where sons were often apprenticed to their fathers, working alongside them and learning by watching as much as by listening). So close had they been that, when the time came for Paul to move on, Timothy had been moved to tears. As we read verse 4 we can feel how much that had affected Paul as well.

But of course the deepest roots of all that Paul is beginning to say lie in God: God’s will, God’s promise (verse 1), God’s grace, mercy and peace (verse 2), God’s gift of colleagues and friends (verse 3). Paul never acts or writes simply out of personal whim. His life is rooted in grateful prayer, standing in the millennia-old tradition of Jewish prayer to the one true God. It is out of that prayer that he writes to Timothy. This letter is not simply a comment on what God has done and is doing; it is designed to be, itself, a part of that work. May it be so for us, too.


Taken from Paul for Everyone The Pastoral Letters by Tom Wright