Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but suffer evil along with the glad tidings, according to the power of God;
Paul writes this from prison. He calls a younger fellow worker to stand for Christ at the very moment when standing has become costly. The verse gathers three things into one call: the message, the messenger, and the strength to hold onto both.
The word points back to what Paul has just said about the spirit God gives. It also points to something in Timothy himself.
From 2 Timothy 1:6-8, we gather that Timothy was timid and held back by nature. That is why Paul urged him to stir up the gift he had received. Paul reminded him of the power and love which were his by the Spirit of God. So Timothy was not to be ashamed of the testimony, nor of Paul in his imprisonment. All these instructions were not put on record for the sake of Timothy alone. They are for the help and instruction of every Christian young man from that day to this.
Some read the phrase as a body of truth to be defined. One writer, answering that question directly, says the meaning is far simpler.
Not to be "ashamed of the testimony of the Lord" is the testimony itself — not what it was. He was not to be ashamed of bearing witness to Christ the Lord. Paul was in prison for it; Timothy was not to be ashamed because shame was put on the man who had borne the witness... How many stayed with the blessed Lord when He was taken, or with Paul even when he was?... The testimony reduces itself to its simplest elements — not being ashamed of Christ, set before the world in testimony.
Paul refuses to let Timothy separate loyalty to the message from loyalty to the man carrying it.
Notice too that the man who carries the testimony is identified with the testimony. That is why the apostle adds, "Nor of me his prisoner." Many claim to hold and love the truth, yet they would prefer to stand apart from the people the testimony is entrusted to. As our passage shows, this can never be according to the mind of God. It would have displeased Him just as much if Timothy had been ashamed of Paul as if he had been ashamed of the testimony.
Note whose prisoner Paul calls himself. Human authority held him unjustly, yet he calls himself the Lord's prisoner.
Shame is not tempting when things are going well. It presses hardest when the work looks small and the world looks strong.
When the tide of blessing is at the full there is little or no room for shame. It is very different when few are gathered in and the love of many grows cold, when the world grows harder and more scornful and the saints cower under its insults... The testimony may look like a failure, but it is still the testimony of our Lord. And the suffering witness, held unjustly by human authority, is His prisoner... Grace joined the witness, who may not be perfect, to His testimony, which is perfect... We are not called to suffer or to bear shame for anything but Christ.
The call is not just to avoid shame. It is to stand beside the gospel and take what falls on it. Commentators say the older wording "partaker of the afflictions of the gospel" is better translated another way.
"Suffer evil along with the gospel." The gospel is pictured here almost as a person. Timothy is urged to throw in his lot with it completely, whatever the cost, so that he also carries any reproach that falls on it.
Most of us are glad to share the gospel's blessings and its successes. Sharing its afflictions is a different thing, and Paul attaches a reason why it is possible at all.
This is only possible "according to the power of God." Here, as in Colossians 1:11, power is connected not with what is active but with what is passive — suffering.
This power does not remove the pain. It holds up the person who feels it.
What! Share in afflictions? Yes. Share in being delivered from feeling them? No — share in afflictions that a man really feels, but "according to the power of God!" This does not mean he stops feeling the pressure of sorrow and weakness. Paul had a "thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor. 12). Did he not feel it, do you think? Yes, he felt it daily... The power of God coming in on our side does not lessen the feeling.
- Therefore — the appeal rests on what came just before. God gave power and love by His Spirit, so a timid man could be told to stand.
- Testimony — what you must not be ashamed of is Christ Himself, owned openly before a world that rejects Him.
- Prisoner — the message and the messenger stand or fall together. Being ashamed of the imprisoned servant displeases God as much as being ashamed of the testimony.
- Alongside — Timothy is not asked to admire the gospel but to stand next to it and let its reproach land on him too.
- Power — God's power here is not visible triumph but the strength to feel the pain fully and not let go.
who has saved us, and has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to [his] own purpose and grace, which [was] given to us in Christ Jesus before [the] ages of time,
Paul has just urged Timothy to share in suffering for the gospel by God's power. Instead of a technique for courage, he points back to what God has already done and already planned: a salvation settled in Christ before time began.
Paul mentions God's power in verse 8 and at once traces it to its source.
The mention of God's power leads the Apostle back and upward to the source of all the blessing that was flowing out through the gospel: to God's purpose and grace. That purpose is the unchanging foundation on which God was working. It is also the assurance that no effort of the enemy could stop God from carrying out His thoughts.
The verse names two acts of God, and they are not the same act said twice.
It is plain that the first great object of the gospel is our salvation... Not only has God saved us; we also read that He has "called us to a holy calling." This passage calls it "a holy calling." Scripture also calls it "the heavenly calling" (Hebrews 3:1) and "the upward call" (Philippians 3:14). Salvation sets us free from our sins and from this world under judgment. The calling links us with heaven and with all the spiritual blessings God has purposed for us in the heavenly places in Christ.
Scripture has other names for this calling: heavenly, upward. Here Paul calls it holy, and that fits a letter about decline.
But God "saved us and called us to a holy calling." Here "holy" carries the weight. It suits this letter and the conditions it has in view. The calling was always holy, but now it was urgent to press its "holy" character. It is a calling on high, or upward, as we read in Philippians 3:14. It stands in contrast with the earthly things in which men find their glory, to their shame. It is a heavenly calling, as we see in Hebrews 3:1... But now, as those who bore the Lord's name were sliding into decline, the apostle binds God's salvation together with His holy calling. An evil time is not a time for lowering the standard. It is a time for unveiling it and pressing its importance.
The timing of God's purpose settles the question of merit before anyone can raise it.
These precious words, "His own purpose and grace," stand far above and beyond man's works! No one was there to influence His purpose. No one had ever lived to raise a question about what sort of life would be blessed with His grace. No — it is the grace of God, known and believed, that gives a man's life its right shape.
This does not mean a believer has no good works. It means those works stand on a different footing from salvation.
There are good works in every saint: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10)... Still, God's salvation rests on Christ's work, not ours.
Many read the phrase as a promise about the endless future. Kelly presses it the other way — backwards, before any creature existed.
This, too, was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time began. It is a most weighty and blessed truth. It does not mean only that our security is guaranteed without end. It means that grace was given in Christ Jesus before time began. It was not so with Israel: God called them in time. God's purpose about us Christians was in eternity, before any creature existed... Their blessing was a plan bound up with Christ before the world existed, and before any question of creature responsibility came in... so we are all the more bound to walk, here and now, as He walked.
A gift can be given long before anyone sees it. That gap is what this verse describes, and Darby warns against turning it into a debate about who is chosen.
This is not a question of election here, even if election is involved. The point is that God gave us a place in Christ — the sovereign calling — before the world began, and did not reveal it until Christ came.
- Purpose first. God settled your place in Christ before creation, before any creature could earn or lose anything. He called Israel in time; He formed this calling before time.
- Grace given, not earned. God gave the gift when no one existed to sway Him. So works are ruled out at the root: good works follow salvation, they never pay for it.
- Saved from. Salvation is deliverance — from sins, from judgment, from a doomed world system.
- Called to. The calling adds more: it links you with heaven and everything God purposed for you there.
- Holy, therefore unshakeable. Paul calls it "holy" in a letter about decline. No enemy can shake this foundation, and an evil time is no time to lower the standard.
but has been made manifest now by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings;
Paul wrote this from prison. He points Timothy not to better circumstances but to a plan formed before time. The Saviour's appearing has now brought that plan into the open. The verse makes two claims: Christ abolished death, and He brought life and immortality to light. Both raise the same question — why do believers still die?
The verse looks back to the grace God "gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" (v. 9). One writer marks how different that is from anything Israel knew.
It is not merely security assured without end, but grace given in Christ Jesus before time began. It was not so with Israel: they were called in time. God's purpose about us, Christians, was in eternity before any creature existed.
"Appearing" here is not limited to Christ's birth. One writer lists what else it covers.
This appearance is not only about His birth. It also covers His life, His death at Golgotha, His resurrection, His ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on earth. This is what Paul has in mind in 2 Timothy 1:10.
"Abolished" is a strong word. It is the language of one thing driving out another.
"He abolished death": no stronger word could be used. It means that death has been brought to nothing — entirely ended — set aside. When what is all-powerful comes in, clearly everything in its way must give place. It pushes out what filled the space before. So Christ has displaced, abolished, death.
But funerals have not stopped. One writer draws the line between the fact of dying and death's title.
This Scripture presents our Saviour as having abolished death. Death is pictured here as a person, as sin is in Romans 7. Of course this does not mean that men no longer die as a fact. It means He has annulled the title of death as regards His own. Hebrews 2 declares the same: He took part in flesh and blood, "that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." But He has done more: through the Gospel He has brought to light life and incorruption — the body is in question there, and not the soul only.
The wording matters here. One writer marks which of two words Paul used.
What then has the gospel brought to light? Two things which had been hidden until now — life and incorruptibility. Note, incorruptibility, not immortality (it is the same word as in 1 Corinthians 15:53). There was no doubt about immortality; that had been known before. But the gospel now brings incorruptibility to light, along with life. If we do not see this, we do not see the depth of what was in God's heart.
So the news is not that the dead live on. It is what resurrection opens for them.
Immortality is not the word here. People in Old Testament times already believed that the soul of man survived death and that resurrection lay ahead. Job's words here show it, and the Lord made it plain in His dispute with the Sadducees of His day. One thing was not made known: for the believer, resurrection will mean entry into a new and incorruptible order of things.
Note the phrase: "brought to light." These things were not absent from the older Scriptures; they were dim.
It is not said or meant that either was completely hidden. Enough was suggested for the faith of God's elect to show that resurrection and heaven were in His mind, and not earthly blessing only... The Gospel does not speak of life and incorruptibility as entirely unknown before. On the contrary, it assumes they were partly seen, gleaming here and there through the darkness. Now they stand out in bold relief, the grand theme of gospel testimony, as seen in the person of the Lord Jesus.
Paul wrote this letter as Nero's prisoner. One writer asks why he stayed calm.
When he wrote this second letter to Timothy, he was in Nero's hands; but he was not troubled in the least. Why? Because he had such a full sense of what the grace of God was... He did not think about what Nero could do to him. He was occupied with what was in God's mind before the world began.
The same truth reshapes how a believer faces his own end.
We may die; we do not have to. We may meet it as the providential dealing of an infinitely wise God — not as wrath, not as penalty... It is "to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" — to be "away from the body and at home with the Lord."
- Purpose. God gave the blessing in Christ before time began, before any creature existed.
- Appearing. Christ's whole coming made it visible: His life, death, resurrection and ascension.
- Abolished. Death was not softened but displaced. Christ cancelled its title over His own, though believers still die.
- Incorruptibility. The second gift concerns the body. Old Testament believers already expected survival and resurrection; the incorruptible order it opens was new.
- Light. Old Testament believers saw it glimmering. The gospel now sets it in full daylight — and that is why a prisoner facing execution could write this without fear.
to which *I* have been appointed a herald and apostle and teacher of [the] nations.
Paul writes from a Roman prison, expecting to die, and names the three roles God gave him for the gospel he has just described. It raises three questions: who gives out such work, what the titles mean, and why God's appointment left a man in chains.
The word "for which" points back to the good news of verse 10 — the message that Christ has abolished death and brought life to light. The titles belong to that message. Paul names them at the very moment the message is costing him everything.
No wonder the apostle, imprisoned in Rome for the gospel's sake, and expecting his blood to be poured out soon like a drink offering (2 Tim. 4:6), adds with triumphant thankfulness, "for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher [of the Gentiles]." A few important manuscripts leave out "of the Gentiles." Given the character of this letter, I think that is probably right.
That is why translations differ. The ESV ends the verse at "teacher," while others add "of the Gentiles."
Other translations render the first title "herald." The three are not repetition. Each names a different way of handling the same truth.
Paul was the herald, the apostle, and the teacher of this truth. As the herald he was the one who cried out this message, as an apostle he had authority to bring this message, and as a teacher he explained it in all its details.
Paul does not say he took up this work or trained for it. God placed him in it. That is what makes his letters weigh more than a wise man's opinion.
God has made this gospel known to us in all its fullness through a specially appointed vessel — one who comes to us as Apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. So it reaches us on sufficient authority, through an Apostle who speaks by revelation and inspiration.
That appointment is also the reason no one today should copy the claim. Notice what Paul does not say about his younger co-worker:
We must take note of Paul's appointment here: the Spirit of God required this to be pressed home. It was no mere appointment by men, and it is not meant as a pattern for others to follow. With Timothy, nothing at all is said about his being appointed to anything. We are not even told what gift Timothy had, though Paul tells him to stir it up and to "do the work of an evangelist" (ch. 4:5). But God gave Paul the special responsibility of "laying the foundation," as "a wise master builder" (1 Cor. 3:10)... As Scripture often notes, so here again, God sent Paul to the nations, not to Israel, though his heart longed after his own people (Rom. 10:1).
That commission ran outward, to the nations. One writer weighs what such a task meant for the man who carried it.
Of this good news Paul was a herald, an apostle, and teacher of the nations. In this he was the most honoured man on earth. The grace of the heavenly Christ had subdued his stubborn will. What greater honour could a poor creature receive than to display that grace in the middle of a selfish world, and to light up the dark places of the earth with the knowledge of the salvation and love of a Saviour-God?
The very next verse ties Paul's suffering to this appointment. The chains are not a detour from the commission. They follow from it.
The apostle explains that he had been appointed as the herald and apostle of the gospel — not from man, as he tells the Galatians, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead... His present sufferings came from his imprisonment (v. 8), from the opposition the gospel now met everywhere, and from being deserted by so many professed believers, and perhaps teachers (v. 15). He sees these sufferings as flowing out of the place he held in relation to the gospel.
Writers draw a plain warning from that link between office and cost:
People who reach for some place of official appointment or recognition are not usually the ones most ready to suffer persecution for Christ's sake. Paul had not wanted the place, but he was fully willing to suffer for Christ if it came to that. God put him in a position where he could not escape suffering.
- Appointed to a message. The three titles hang on the gospel of verse 10 — His standing comes from what he carries, not from rank.
- Appointed to three tasks. The herald cries the message out. The apostle carries authority to bring it. The teacher unfolds it in detail.
- Appointed by God. The commission came by revelation, not by human choice, which is why his words still carry authority.
- Appointed to the nations. God sent him to the nations, not to Israel — the highest honour on earth for a man whose stubborn will grace had subdued.
- Appointed to suffer. He could not hold the place God gave him without chains. Anyone craving the title should first weigh the cost.
For which cause also I suffer these things; but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep for that day the deposit I have entrusted to him.
Paul writes as a prisoner, deserted by many who once stood with him. Yet he sounds confident, not bitter. Three questions follow: why does he suffer, what is the "I know" he rests on, and what has he handed to God for safekeeping?
The sufferings behind "these things" were not the fruit of any wrongdoing. One writer lists what the phrase covered and why it left Paul without shame:
It was his faithful testimony that made Paul suffer. No wrongdoing brought him into suffering and reproach. Imprisonment was only one of "these things" that this faithful servant had to suffer. Other sufferings hurt his sensitive heart even more. "These things" included the desertion of those he loved in Asia, where he had worked so long. Since he was suffering for his faithfulness as a servant of Jesus Christ, he can say, "I am not ashamed."
None of this rested on natural strength:
Was Paul then a man of iron constitution, a heart of oak that threw off every blow and wound as if it were never felt? His circumstances were as trying as his health was frail.
Notice that Paul names no teaching here, only a Person:
No tremor of fear or discouragement can pierce the armour of his confidence in the living God. It was not a matter of "what" he had believed, but "Whom." True doctrine is good, but only as it springs from Him who is true. He is the person who is the foundation of all truth, the living Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer and Upholder of all things.
The word Paul uses for "know" carries a particular sense:
"I know whom I have believed," 2 Tim. 1:12 — I have the inward conscious knowledge of who the person is.
Paul's wording sets two things in order:
Notice the order of the words — believing was the first act, and knowing was the result. The knowledge is inward. It is the fruit of faith and of faithfulness. It grows out of walking in rich fellowship through storm or sunshine, winter or summer. It is an acquaintance like that of one friend with another. Where there is faith there is the knowledge of God. When faithfulness follows, that knowledge grows deeper and more precious.
Paul calls what he handed over "my deposit." Kelly spells out how much it covers:
By "my deposit" we should understand all that I as a believer entrust to the safekeeping of God. It covers not only the security but the blessedness of the soul and the body, of the walk and the work. It takes in every question that could be raised about the past, present, or future.
A deposit is a banking word, and one writer follows it through:
It is as though he had deposited with God everything concerning himself. So there could be no doubt about its safety. In fact, who can doubt that in such hands the interest itself will multiply beyond measure?
The deposit runs in both directions:
If on the one hand we have a "deposit" (all our hopes of glory) with Christ, He on the other hand entrusts His servants with a deposit. What then is this good deposit? It cannot be eternal life, or salvation, for the keeping of that belongs to Christ Himself. So it is probably the truth. It is the truth handed to His servants as stewards, for them to keep faithfully while they serve in the prospect of that day.
The verse ends looking forward to "that day":
In the light of "that day" Paul can pass triumphantly through "this day" with all its insults, scorn and shame. We may wonder why the devoted Apostle was allowed to be deserted and opposed even by the saints. We shall not wonder in "that day." Then every wrong will be put right. Then all the shame and suffering and reproach will prove to bring praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Man's power over Paul had a limit:
Man may kill the body and can do no more. Knowing this, the Apostle was sure the Lord could and would keep what he had committed to Him until that day. Until then he could trust the Lord for his own salvation and eternal happiness, and also for the recompense of his service. The enemy could do nothing with such a man, because his hopes and joys were outside the scene through which he moved.
- Cause — Paul's suffering came from faithful service, not wrongdoing. That is why he was not ashamed.
- Person — His confidence rested on Whom, not what: doctrine is good only as it springs from the One who is true.
- Order — Believing came first; knowing followed. That knowledge grows inside, through walking with God in storm and sunshine.
- Deposit — He left with God his soul and body, his walk and his work, every question of past, present and future. In such hands the interest multiplies.
- Day — God holds it all for "that day." Then this day's shame turns to glory, and the enemy proves powerless over the deposit.