2 Timothy 4:1-8

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day: and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.
 - 2 Timothy 4:1-8

Now, having gone through all that Paul has talked about, he comes down to this final word to Timothy. This is his last opportunity to impart to Timothy some wisdom and teaching of utmost importance. To make that point exceedingly clear, Paul formally charges Timothy with the duties that he will have when Paul is no longer in this world. He gives a list of things that Timothy will have to do.

In that list, the very first thing is to "preach the word." Above all else, it is about sharing the Word of God with the world. To Paul, God's Word is the single most important thing to read, learn, study, understand and teach to others. It is in God's Word that we learn who God is, what He wants from us and gives examples of what it looks like to follow Him, as well as what it looks like to fail to follow Him. It teaches us about God's love, His mercy, His justice, His wrath. While we do get some idea about what God is like by looking at the world around us (see Romans 1), that is an incomplete picture.

He mentions being ready in and out of season. In other words, Timothy needs to know God's Word so well, that he is always prepared so that he will never miss an opportunity to preach God's Word. How many times have we had an interaction with someone and then later wondered if that would have been a good time to talk about God? If we are properly prepared, that should be far less common. Preparation helps us to recognize those opportunities when they are right in front of us. Paul does not want Timothy to miss those opportunities, so he should be ready at any moment (see 1 Peter 3).

Paul gives Timothy a short list of the sorts of things he will be expected to do. Every one of these things requires an understanding of scripture in order to carry out each task properly. But, he warns Timothy about the sort of trouble that will come down the road when people just want to hear about things that make them feel good. Does that sound like many people in the Church today? Avoiding churches or preachers who step on their toes by pointing out things that they are doing wrong? Instead, they go and find a church where they can be taught about God's love and patience and kindness and generosity. 

All these are good things and true things about God. But that is not the complete picture. We also need to learn about God's justice, holiness, wrath, jealousy and judgement. By ignoring these things, we start to move further away from God because we don't want our sin pointed out to us. God is a light that shines on our sin and makes it quite visible. That is uncomfortable, so we hide from the light of God's judgement. In turn, we start over-emphasizing His love to the point that we corrupt the idea because we don't seem to understand that true, perfect love cannot exist without perfect justice. We like the love, but not the justice. 

So, we ignore His justice and keep telling ourselves that God just loves us. Without justice, this turns into the idea that God loves everything about us and that He would never send anyone to Hell because that would be a terrible, unloving thing to do. Yet, when you better understand perfect love and perfect justice, you realize that forcing people to be in the presence of a God who is perfectly loving AND perfectly just, when they want no part of the latter, would not be loving at all. 

Paul tells Timothy to be "sober." This does not mean that he shouldn't drink alcohol. Instead, it is about having a clarity of thought and to think carefully about things in order to be discerning. This helps to avoid things like; jumping to conclusions, making overly emotional decisions, getting into quarrels. Given the rest of this last sentence in this line of thought, avoiding being quarrelsome is really good advice. If Timothy is going to go around ministering to people, evangelizing and bringing the Gospel to people, he will be enduring hardship and persecution anyway. There is no need to act in a way that unnecessarily aggravates people.

Paul closes his main message to Timothy by making it clear that he understands his time is just about at an end. He reiterates the fact that he has been a faithful servant of the Gospel of Christ and will soon be taking delivery of his eternal reward. Some may see t his as boasting. I, however, see this as Paul being an example of the fact that all the hardship, the persecution, the stonings, the beatings, the imprisonment and everything else he went through, was worth the reward he is about to receive. Rather than saying "Look at how awesome I have been!" it seems to me that Paul is saying, "Whatever you have to go through, it's worth it!"

Next, we'll take a brief look at Paul's closing of this letter. But, until then, grace, love and peace.