Remember Jesus Christ

April 3, 2011

Background Scripture: 2 Timothy 2
Lesson Passage: 2 Timothy 2:8 – 19

In this passage of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he emphasizes that it’s all about Jesus. The good news is all about Jesus. Salvation is all about Jesus. Being a Christian is all about Jesus. The faithful servant must always remember above all else that anything that is done that’s worthwhile is made so because the focus of it is Jesus. The message of the gospel is simple. Jesus, the anointed son of God and descendant of King David, died for the sins of the world and was raised from the dead by the power of God on the third day. The fallout from preaching that message can be anything but simple. Those who declare such a message can quickly find themselves on the hit list of evil spirits who have power to harm them and make their lives almost unbearable. But even this suffering will at times be interwoven into the fabric used by God to save those who hear and respond to the preached gospel. The means that leads from the preaching of the gospel to salvation of the listener can be diverse and complex but the end, which is obtaining salvation, is all within God’s divine plan. As a faithful servant of God who understood spiritual warfare, Timothy was encouraged to endure the hardship that resulted from this spiritual work as a soldier would endure hardship on the battlefield of war. We have many choices to make. Hopefully, our choices will be influenced by our understanding of God’s response to those choices. When we choose to die to the world in Christ, we embrace God’s promise to raise us from the dead to live eternally in His presence. If we choose to serve God in a way that leads to suffering on our part, God will cause us to be rulers along side Jesus. If we choose to deny Jesus, he will also deny us before his Father. If we choose to not have faith or not trust the gospel message, the gospel message still stands firm and true because it stands on Jesus who lives eternally. Christians should be reminded of these things. The Christian’s duty is to live the life God calls us into rather than attempting to define ourselves based on theological thoughts or theories. Theological arguments do not serve to edify or build up when there is only bickering about the meaning of certain words rather than striving to live the Christian life. The faithful servant of God should work diligently to prepare himself through the careful study of the word of God so that the presentation of God’s word is approved by God because it is presented in the light of truth such that it provokes faith in the hearer. Many do not study or properly prepare to present the word of God and therefore they teach error to their hearers. This was true at the time Paul wrote this letter to Timothy during the first century A.D. and it is certainly true today. Those who do not diligently study the scriptures to be properly prepared to teach often take passages of the scriptures out of context because they do not understand the whole message of the bible. We can all be assured that God knows who is saved and who is not. Those who are saved should strive to live the life that God has called us to and that is the walk of a follower of Jesus Christ. In all that we do, let us remember that Christianity, salvation, and eternal life are all about Jesus Christ.

Robert C. Hudson
March 28, 2011