Remember Jesus Christ raised from among [the] dead, of [the] seed of David, according to my glad tidings,
Paul packs his whole charge to Timothy into one word: remember. And what Timothy must hold in mind is not a doctrine but a Person — David's descendant, raised from the dead, at the heart of the message Paul calls his own.
The call is to keep a Person in view, not just to store away an event. One writer shows what hangs on the exact wording.
Verse 8 should read, "Remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David raised from the dead." We are to remember Him as the risen One. It is not enough to remember only that He is risen, important as that is. Because He is of the seed of David, He holds the legal title to God's throne on the earth, and in due time He will bring in all the blessing promised with that throne. But as the One raised from the dead, He opens far wider fields of blessing to us. If we keep Him in view as the risen One, that will guard us against countless twistings of the truth of the gospel.
Paul could have described Christ by His link with the church. Instead he uses the title that ties Him to everything God had promised: "the offspring of David," which older translations render "of the seed of David."
He does not speak of Jesus Christ only in His link with the church. He says "of the seed of David" — the One who fulfils the promises, the One the prophecies point to. Even when we view Him like that, He was raised from the dead. Resurrection is the shape and character of the lowest blessings Jesus gives. Much more is He risen to exalt God in the highest.
Set the two descriptions side by side. Together they carry the whole message: a promise kept, and power displayed.
The truth of the gospel falls into two parts... the fulfilment of the promises, and the power of God in resurrection. These are the two pivots of the truth. First, God is faithful to His promises, shown above all in His dealings with the Jews. Second, God is mighty to bring in something entirely new by His creative, life-giving power, shown in the resurrection. That resurrection also set God's seal on the Person and work of Christ.
"My gospel" marks the trust God gave to Paul. Commentators differ over the order of the two descriptions; in this reading the risen Christ comes first, and stands closest to that phrase.
"Jesus Christ raised from the dead" is the leading thought, and it is tied most closely to the words "according to my gospel." God entrusted Paul with the gospel of the glory of Christ, "who is the image of God." That gospel announced that Jesus Christ, the Christ who had been here and was crucified, had been raised from the dead. It announced that He is glorified as man at the right hand of God, with the glory of God shining in His face. The words "of the seed of David" tell us that Christ was true man, and show what He was on earth when He was presented to the Jews.
If royal descent could have won an easier path for anyone, it would have won it for Him. It did not.
If anyone had a right to honour and glory on earth, it was the Son of David. Yet in Paul's gospel He passes through death into resurrection. That is the only shape blessing can take, since the world and man are what they are. Nothing could be said more strongly... Paul's gospel insists on the great fact of resurrection from among the dead — even for the Messiah. And this alone is true of Him as Messiah now: He is risen, but not reigning. Still less is the Christian reigning yet.
This letter describes a scene of breakdown. Against it, one sentence stands as solid ground.
In 2 Timothy, by solemn contrast, all is in ruins. "The pillar and ground of the truth" seems to have fallen, so far as it was placed in the hands of man. Yet one thing rises out of the ruin, like a great headland standing in an angry sea that beats its waves at the foot of it in vain. It is "Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, raised from the dead." This is the unwavering testimony of everyone who bears His name and turns away from the wrong of pushing Him out of the centre where God has put Him.
- Remember Him — hold a living Person before the soul, not just a fact filed away about Him.
- Promise kept — David's offspring is true man. He fulfils everything God had pledged, and holds legal title to the throne on earth.
- Power shown — "raised from the dead" is the second pivot. Here God brings in something entirely new, and sets His seal on the Person and work of Christ.
- Message entrusted — "my gospel" is the good news God gave Paul to carry: the crucified Christ, now raised and glorified as man.
- Pattern set — royal rights did not spare Him from death. He is risen, but not yet reigning; neither is the believer. All around may lie in ruins, but the centre still stands.
in which I suffer even unto bonds as an evil-doer but the word of God is not bound.
Paul writes from a Roman prison. He is chained and filed with common criminals, though he is the messenger of the gospel. The verse sets two facts side by side: a bound man and an unbound word. The second fact carries the whole argument.
Paul is not suffering bad luck. He suffers for the gospel he carried. One writer shows how badly the world misread him.
He carried the precious message of the gospel, the ministry of reconciliation. As an ambassador for Christ, he urged everyone to be reconciled to God, as though God were pleading through him. Yet people not only refused his message. They looked on him as someone disturbing the world's peace. In the end he was shut up in prison as a criminal!
The same holds for every servant of the Lord:
A servant of the Lord may seek to serve Him alone and hold to His Word despite all opposition. Wherever that happens, the enemy lines up all his forces against that man.
Paul wears a criminal's label. It does not shake him.
He suffered as though he were an evildoer — the same word used for the criminals crucified with Jesus — and he suffered even to the point of chains. Still, he was not ashamed. His opponents were never more hostile. He knew them, and he named them. Was he discouraged? Not at all. He was never more confident. The word of God is not bound.
One writer turns this into a rule of the Christian path:
The one who is most right before God must be content to suffer most before men. We saw the apostle doing this, even to the point of chains.
Paul does not dwell on his own condition. One writer points to what settled his mind, and to a scene in Acts that matches it.
The apostle lost sight of himself so completely, in his concern for the interests of God in the gospel, that he found his comfort in this: if he was in captivity, the word of God could not be confined. Acts shows the same contrast again and again. In chapter 12 Herod puts James, the brother of John, to death, and "he proceeded to arrest Peter also." But this very activity of the enemy brought God in. Peter is set free, Herod is struck down, and then comes the telling statement: "But the word of God increased and multiplied." When the enemy acts proudly, God steps in and shows that He is above him.
Rome could lock up the man. It could not lock up the message, because the message never depended on him in the first place.
The adversaries might bind him, the messenger of the word of God. But the word of God itself they could not bind. It was in the hand of the Holy Spirit, and He could raise up messengers to carry it wherever and however He chose.
Rome's plan backfired.
But the truth is worth suffering for, and the Word of God is not bound, however hard people work to hold it back or destroy it. In Rome people counted Paul the chief spokesman of the Word of God. So they no doubt supposed that by confining him they would also confine the truth he proclaimed. But it went out even from his prison. It converted prisoners, and even soldiers. It spread in every direction, and worked as well as if people had welcomed it. So it proves to be enough by itself, without the servant's support. In fact it is itself the support of the servant.
The chains did not stop the message. They set it in front of a whole new audience.
Suffering wrongfully, even to the point of chains as a criminal, did not stop blessing. "The word of God is not bound." On the contrary, such circumstances draw fresh attention. A whole new class of people have their attention drawn to God's revelation. The name of the Lord comes before magistrates, court officials, soldiers, sailors, governors, and perhaps even kings. It may be the world's shame that it happens this way, but rejection is the path of the Christian, and the true glory of the church, until Jesus reigns.
Later generations have taken these words up as their own. When Reformation preachers were silenced by imperial order, one of them saw the ban backfire in exactly Paul's way:
Our opponents thought they had succeeded brilliantly when the preachers were silenced by imperial ban, but they do not see that more is done by our public confession than perhaps ten preachers could have accomplished. Truly Christ is not silent at the Diet. The word of God is not bound. No — if it is forbidden in the pulpits, it will be heard in the palaces of kings.
The same sentence has been read as the story of the Bible reaching new languages:
Translations have multiplied quickly. Missionaries all over the world gain a foothold and learn the language. Then they build a grammar and translate portions of Scripture for those whose salvation they seek. "The word of God is not bound."
- Cause — Paul suffers for the gospel he would not drop. Opposition follows the servant who serves the Lord alone.
- Chains — He carries the same label as the criminals crucified beside Jesus. He is neither ashamed nor discouraged.
- Unbound — Paul's comfort was simple: they could chain the man, not the message. It rests in the Holy Spirit's hand and supports the servant.
- Reach — The prison became a doorway. Soldiers, officials and rulers heard the name of the Lord.
- Result — The pattern still runs. The same word keeps crossing into new languages today.
For this cause I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that *they* also may obtain the salvation which [is] in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
Paul writes this from prison, and his "therefore" opens the reason he stays under the suffering. The reason is not about himself: he endures for other people, and for what they will gain.
The chain on Paul's wrist stopped his travelling, but it did not stop the message, and his imprisonment even opened doors that freedom had not.
No persecution on the part of the world can stop the blessing reaching God's elect. The world may bind the preacher: it cannot bind the word of God. In fact, the hostility of the world that bound Paul only became an opportunity. It brought the gospel before the great ones of the earth. It also let him write the prison letters that unfold our calling so wonderfully.
Paul says he suffers so that others may be saved. That is language we expect from Christ, not from a man. One writer marks both the likeness and its limit — the propitiation, the sacrifice for sins that Christ alone made.
In this suffering and blessed apostle's mind, the troubles of gospel service take on a high and unusual character. It is sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and in Paul's case to a very remarkable degree. He uses the kind of words we would use of Christ Himself as regards His love. No one else could take part in the propitiation. But in devotedness, and in suffering for love and for righteousness, we have the privilege of suffering with Him.
If God has already chosen people, why work to reach them? One writer answers with Daniel, a prophet who knew from Scripture how long God had fixed Jerusalem's ruin to last.
Daniel was no fatalist. He knew from the books that the years God had fixed for the ruin of Jerusalem were nearly over. Even so, he did not rule out the use of means or human effort... The same is always true of those who hold the truth of God's election and predestination in a sober, thankful way. Instead of paralysing the nerve of earnest effort, those blessed truths are meant to stir up spiritual energy. In meekness and faith they enable believers to pray and work, sure that their efforts will not be wasted. For God, who appointed the blessing, just as certainly appointed the means for reaching it.
The certainty of the outcome and the cost of getting there sit side by side.
It is not that the salvation of the elect is uncertain: the Lord Jesus will surely guard that according to all His gracious power and the unfailing purposes of God. But as another apostle says, "If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?" It is indeed with difficulty that the elect are saved, though saved they certainly will be; but as it needs all the resources of divine grace, so it calls for all the love of Christ in hard-working service.
The salvation Paul suffers for has an address. Paul puts it in a Person, not in a church group or a system.
No material order, no visible organization, no outward system, however correct and scriptural, can bring this about for us. Of course it is very important that the order of our gatherings follows Scripture. But when we put that in the place of faith, very serious loss follows. Hardly anything could be worse than to say that salvation is in the church.
Salvation and glory are joined here but not identical, and the difference is worth seeing.
Paul endured all his hardships and troubles not only for Christ, but for those who belonged to Christ, God's elect. He did it so that his testimony would carry them the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. They will receive it in its fullest sense when they enter the eternal glory with Christ. The salvation is not exactly the eternal glory, but it leads us into it. Christ will change our lowly bodies and make them like His own body. Then we will have been saved from everything we have faced in this world, where all is against God and against all who are His.
Paul is not describing a rank no one else can hold.
The grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit enabled him to suffer everything that came on him through his testimony, for the sake of the elect... Never forget that the same path is open to every servant of the Lord. Smaller vessels than the apostle may still have the same desires, aims and goals, in the exact measure that the affections of Christ fill their hearts.
Yet few walk it. One writer names what it takes inside a person.
How few would dare to say these words as their own experience, from that day to this! Still, we may earnestly desire it in our measure. But it supposes a believer who has not only a good conscience and a heart burning in love, but who is thoroughly self-judged, with Christ dwelling in his heart by faith.
- Bound man, free word — prison stopped Paul's travels, not his message. Opposition even carried the gospel to rulers and gave us his prison letters.
- Shared suffering, not shared sacrifice — believers may suffer for love as Christ did. But no one shares the propitiation He alone made.
- Chosen, still sought — election does not cancel effort. God appointed the blessing and the means alike, so His certainty fuels our work.
- Christ, not a system — this salvation sits in Christ Jesus. Put a church system in the place of faith and the loss is serious.
- Salvation now, glory then — salvation is not the eternal glory itself. It is the road into it, complete when Christ makes our bodies like His own.
The word [is] faithful; for if we have died together with [him], we shall also live together;
Paul hands Timothy a settled saying to lean on when the cost of service feels too high. Two questions sit at its heart. What kind of death is meant, and when does life with Christ begin?
The opening words can be read in more than one way.
The exact meaning of "It is a faithful saying," or, literally, "faithful is the word," is not seen at once. It may be a solemn declaration that the sentences which follow are true. Or it might mean that these truths were already current among the saints. The Apostle then takes them up and applies them to the matter in hand. To Timothy, at such a moment, they would carry great force. He was at least tempted to shrink from the cross that came with his service. Nothing could meet that moment better than this truth: if we have died with Christ, we shall also live with Him.
Paul leaves out a phrase he adds to other such sayings. That omission shows who this one is for.
He does not add about this word "worthy of all acceptation"; for it is a saying for saints rather than for sinners as such. But the saying is faithful beyond doubt: "if we died together with Him, we shall also live together." Every Christian has died with Christ. It is the very truth which every baptized soul confesses in his baptism, even if he were unable to speak. And it is lack of faith, not lack of speech, which makes it untrue of anyone. The "if" clause is the decisive one. Yet no Christian should shrink from it, and no true Christian can. For it was Christ who, having suffered everything, gave everything freely.
The "if" is not a test the reader might fail. It points back to something finished at the cross.
Christ has been through death for us, and that death was our death. It carried the weight of our sins — a death of wrath and curse, to deliver the children of wrath. Dying in our place like this, we who believe in Him have died — are dead — with Him. It is not an individual experience; it is not experience at all. It is a fact, true even apart from our faith in it. Yet our faith in it counts for much in the character of our Christianity.
Commentators differ over where the weight falls.
This is true of all believers by their position: all have died in Christ and live in Him. But the meaning here is the practical showing of it in self-denial and suffering with Him.
Taking the place of death changes what threats can do to a servant of Christ.
Being joined with Christ in His death meant that they accepted the place of death in this world. So with Timothy, and with us all. If we take the place of being dead, no persecutions, no dangers could turn us aside from the path of service. It will also encourage us always to count ourselves dead. And it reminds us that our living together with Him is the divine consequence of being joined with Him in death.
Believers do live now by Christ's life, yet the promise in this verse looks forward.
And "if we died with Him," which no believer can dispute now, "we shall also live with Him." Paul here assures us of the bright and blessed future. It is just as true that we live now because He lives, or, as Scripture puts it elsewhere, Christ lives in us. But here the living with Him remains before us as a hope. Here and now we are to carry about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 4:10); by and by it will be nothing but living with Him.
This order — death first, life after — is what steadies a servant who may lose everything.
The faithful saying encourages us to remember Jesus Christ and to follow the Apostle's example in accepting the path of suffering and toil: "If we have died together with Him, we shall also live together." We may be called to "endure all things", even death. Let us not forget that we can afford to let go of the present life, because of the great truth that, having died with Christ, we shall indeed live with Him.
- Faithful — Paul gives this saying to believers under pressure, not to outsiders as a gospel appeal. It may already have been a truth passing among Christians.
- Died — the "if" states a fact, not a condition. Christ's death was our death. Every believer confesses it in baptism, whether or not we feel it.
- Accepted — that fact is meant to show itself in self-denial, so no danger can push a servant off the path of service.
- Carried — meanwhile we carry the dying of Jesus in the body. Life with Him is still hope, not yet sight.
- Released — because life with Him is certain, we can let the present life go, even to death itself.
if we endure, we shall also reign together; if we deny, *he* also will deny us;
Paul sets two futures side by side. Endurance now leads to reigning with Christ later. Denial has its own answer.
The verb Paul uses is not the ordinary word for suffering, and one writer traces the difference carefully:
This is hardly a question of suffering with Christ, or for Christ. In fact, it is not the usual word for suffering, as it is in Romans 8:17. It means to endure, or, as someone has put it well, "to go through suffering patiently." So it must include suffering with Christ, since every Christian does this. The measure of it will depend on his faithfulness to Christ and on his walking in the Spirit. It may also include suffering for Christ.
It is easy to read the verse as a trade: pain now, a throne later. One commentator answers that:
Our reigning with Christ does not depend in any way on our present suffering. Rather, suffering here is the appointed path for those who will share Christ's kingdom with Him.
Some claim that believers reign already. One writer answers by pointing to where Christ Himself now sits:
There need be no question here: it is suffering now, not reigning with Him yet. Some ancient copies read Revelation 5 or Revelation 20 as if the saints reign now. That is plainly wrong — wrong morally as well as in doctrine. We shall reign with Christ, but even He still sits on the Father's throne. He is waiting to receive His own throne, and we must wait much more... Until then we are to endure, not to reign. When He appears, we shall appear with Him. When He reigns, we shall reign with Him.
This suffering comes from being tied to a Person the world still refuses. One writer points to the men who stood by David while he was rejected:
We must not forget that He is the rejected Christ, still rejected by the world, and we are called to share in His rejection. The reigning day has not come, but it is coming... Those 400 followers of David shared his fortunes while he was rejected, and then shared his glory when he was raised up. In the same way we are called to share our Lord's rejection now, and His glory later.
Peter denied his Master, and grace restored him. That case shapes the second half of the verse:
Denying the Lord is far from impossible for a servant of His. Scripture shows it happening in one of the most honoured of them, who had thought that for him, of all men, it was impossible; yet Peter was about to do it... Still, the all-overcoming, all-forgiving grace of Christ rose above it and wiped it out... But where denial is a course of life, as here ("if we shall deny", not merely if we should deny in a single act), the result is what it ought to be: God must defend His injured majesty. "He also will deny us." God would stop being God if He put up with the dishonour of His Son.
Another writer defines the denial itself, and explains why Paul says "we":
To deny Christ means, not a sudden fall into temptation, like Peter's, but a total and absolute denial. Whatever profession was made before, it shows there had never been any reality in the soul. We can understand the word "we" when we remember that the Spirit of God always takes us up on the ground of our profession. So the question is not whether a believer can finally deny Christ. The teaching is that an absolute denial of Him is the unmistakable evidence that the soul had never been converted... Those who deny Christ will also be denied; that is, they will be finally and entirely rejected.
- Share His lot — Christ is still rejected by the world. We share that rejection now, as David's 400 men shared his, and we share His glory later.
- Endure — the word means more than "suffer". It means "to go through suffering patiently". Every Christian carries some of this, and the measure depends on faithfulness and walking in the Spirit.
- Path, not price — suffering does not buy the kingdom. It is the appointed road for those who will be with Christ in it.
- Not yet — Christ still sits on the Father's throne and waits for His own. So do we. Until He appears, our part is to endure, not to reign.
- Denial — the warning targets a settled course of life, not a single fall. Grace restored Peter after his denial. A total denial shows the soul was never converted.
if we are unfaithful, *he* abides faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
This verse ends a short saying that Paul set before Timothy. It closes not with what we do, but with what God is. It raises two hard questions. What failure does Paul mean? And how can God stay faithful when we do not?
The last clause is not a loose add-on. The word "for" makes it the ground of everything said before.
There is a closing sentence of great weight: "if we are unfaithful, He abides faithful." And this is for the most convincing and glorious of reasons: "for He cannot deny Himself." At first hearing, reading "for" may seem to spoil the ease and flow of the sentence. But good and ancient manuscripts require it. On reflection it adds a great deal to its force. It is not a separate remark added to confirm what goes before. The ground or proof of His abiding faithfulness lies in the blessed fact of His unchanging truth.
The denial in view is a settled path, not a moment of weakness.
There is a solemn warning here. The denial in this verse is no isolated fall, however shameful, as in the case of the Apostle Peter. It is the continued course of those who deny the glory and work of the Son, whatever profession they make. He will deny such people. As it has been truly said, "God would cease to be God, if He accepted the dishonour of His Son." Amid all the unfaithfulness of the professing Christian world to Christ, "He abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself."
Peter is the test case. His story shows what grace does with a single act of denial.
No doubt this was only a passing act, however shameful and terrible, and however often he repeated it, each time making it worse. Yet the all-overcoming, all-forgiving grace of Christ rose above it and wiped it out. It even turned it into profit never forgotten and fruitful blessing.
Commentators differ over the middle phrase, which older translations render "if we believe not". Some read it as unbelief in the full sense: a soul that never had faith at all. Even so, they find comfort in the second half of the verse.
The question is not whether a believer can finally deny Christ. The teaching is rather that an absolute denial of Him is the unmistakable evidence that the soul had never been converted. … Then comes the solemn addition, "If we believe not." Some have argued that this means being unfaithful as Christians. It does not. It means being positively without faith, and we see no reason for departing from the usual meaning of the word. "He abides faithful" — not to us, but to Himself and to His word — "He cannot deny Himself." Whatever our wavering and changeableness, He must always act in line with His own nature, His holiness, and His truth. In this — in His unchangeableness — lies the eternal security of all who, through grace, have been led to put their trust in Him.
Others apply it to believers whose trust is thin. They draw comfort from it, not despair.
Still we must never forget this. His trustworthiness does not depend in the least on the worth, or otherwise, of our trust. "If we believe not — are unfaithful — yet He abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). So it is a happy truth that those who are weak in faith, and so do not trust Him fully, still find Him wholly true. Nothing does more to strengthen and increase our trust in the Lord.
Because His faithfulness is to Himself, His plans move forward whether or not we keep pace with them.
If we do not believe, the Lord will still carry out all the purposes of His heart, all the thoughts of His love; for He cannot deny Himself. He does not depend in any way on our faithfulness or service. Yet He may be pleased to give us the privilege of being His servants, of working in His vineyard.
This verse speaks into a scene of ruin. It tells faith where to look.
But, in the face of all this, God abides faithful. He cannot deny Himself. Here is the resource and the resting-place of faith. Faith is not blind to human failure; but it fixes its gaze on divine faithfulness. It confesses the ruin of man; but it counts on the resources of God.
The same faithfulness opens the way back after failure.
For Him to deny Himself would be impossible. But if He abides faithful, He is also "faithful and just to forgive" when His failing people confess their sins to Him, whether on their own behalf or on behalf of others.
- Faithful to Himself. The word "for" carries the weight: His faithfulness rests on His own unchanging truth, not on ours.
- Faithful in warning. A settled course of denying Christ has its answer. God would cease to be God if He accepted the dishonour of His Son.
- Faithful after a fall. Peter's denial was an act, not a course, and grace rose above it and turned it into lasting blessing.
- Faithful to His purposes. He does not depend on our faithfulness or service. Every thought of His love still arrives.
- Faithful as our resting-place. Faith owns the ruin, counts on God, and comes back by confession to the One who is faithful and just to forgive.