What does it mean to endure hardship (2 Timothy 4:5)?

Here therefore, as in 2 Timothy 2:1, the charge is emphatically personal. To be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus has its own weighty place. But more is needed for a workman and leader in a day of general and dangerous declension, when intoxicating influences were as rife as they were various: "But thou, be sober in all things." Vigilance (γρηγορεῖν) is not the thought as in the Authorized Version, nor yet a sound mind (σωφρονισμός), however nearly allied, but sobriety of judgment. The Greek answers fully to the English usage, and from the primary sense of drinking no wine comes to the ready metaphor of being sober, or wary, in all things. Timothy was to stand clear of that which might excite or stupefy, in contrast with those drifting into a mass carried away from the truth into fables.

Further, he is called to "suffer evils",* or hardships, and this in the most general way. In 2 Timothy 1:8, it was to suffer evil "with the gospel", a favourite personification of the apostle, who was not ashamed of it, and would have the faithful servant identified with its afflictions here below. 2 Timothy 2:3 presents the different thought of Timothy's taking his part in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, without expressing or understanding any special comrade. Here all idea of "sharing" is left out. Readiness to endure ills in his place and service is what the apostle claims. Paul did not lay a burden on his young colleague which himself had not long and fully borne. It is but fellowship with the Master's sufferings here below: only these, without of course speaking of the unique sorrows of atonement, went far deeper than those of His servants, which differences such as have experienced most would most freely own.

The servant of the Lord, on the other hand, is to keep steadily on with his ministry. He is to "watch" or rather "be sober" in all things: the word used means, "that sober clearness of mind resulting from exemption from false influences — not muddled with the influence of what intoxicates." A very important word this for all of us, for there is nothing that so intoxicates the mind and muddles the perceptions as the false modernistic teaching to which we have just alluded. Further he is to be prepared to suffer, for he cannot expect to be popular, either with the purveyors of fables who stand in the pulpit or with the consumers of fables who sit in the pew. Timothy was to do the work of an evangelist and so fill up the full measure of his ministry.

How watchful God's servant must be: he must watch "in all things," for the enemy is watchful for any occasion to mar the testimony rendered to Christ. Afflictions are not sent to turn us aside, but to be endured. Timothy was not only to hand on the truths that he had learned from Paul, but he was to do evangelical work as well; thus making full proof of the special ministry that had been entrusted to him, and for which the gift of Christ had fitted him. God's Gospel is to be preached until the end; and if a servant of God cannot call himself an Evangelist, he can, according to the measure of his gift, do the work of an evangelist, and make full proof of his ministry, whatever the state of things in the church.

It is the constant tendency of the soul to get occupied with evil, and to sink down under the thought that it is greater than good. To do so is to suppose that it is greater than God! It is a great thing to count upon Him: to feel that He is over all, and would fill our hearts with the strength of His grace that is in Christ Jesus. In no Epistle do we find such varied power of evil recognized as in Second Timothy, and yet in no Epistle is boldness and courage more pressed upon the servant, in the midst of it all, than in it. "Be strong in the grace that is In Christ Jesus." "Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of the Lord." "Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel." "Hold fast the form of sound words." "Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." "Watch thou In all things, endure afflictions." "Make full proof of thy ministry," etc., etc.

The Apostle proceeds to insist upon some necessary personal qualifications for the work to which Timothy was called: "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that laboureth must be first Partaker of the fruits." vv. 3-6. Every servant of the Lord should ponder, and ponder again and again in the presence of God, these grave and weighty words — words which will never lose their solemn force as long as labourers are found in the Lord's work. First then the servant must know how to endure hardness,* for such must be expected by every "good soldier of Jesus Christ." None knew this better than he who penned these words, who, after recounting his persecutions and dangers, adds, "In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." 2 Cor. 11:27. If therefore he exhorted Timothy to take his share in suffering, he had himself trodden the path, and thus does but encourage him to follow in the same steps. And where is the servant, it may be inquired, who does not need this admonition? To shun the cross is a common temptation, and it is only when we are under the power of the constraining love of Christ, with a single eye to His glory, that we are impelled to a joyful identification with the sorrows and sufferings of His interests here upon the earth.

But I would desire to notice a peculiar class of trials which do not so much outwardly appear, but which strikingly exhibit the servant of the Lord. They are marked by the apostle as "the afflictions of the gospel" — and while including outward trial, are by no means confined to it. It is as one having nearly arrived at the end of his course that the apostle mentions to Timothy — like-minded indeed with the apostle, but apparently failing in that endurance for the elect's sake which so marked Paul's service. "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God." It is probably "suffer evil with the gospel" — Jesus when personally present suffered evil — the gospel when preached drew out the same evil. — Paul the preacher, suffered for preaching it — and now he calls on Timothy to be a fellow-sufferer with the Lord, His gospel, and Himself. Many turned back and walked not with the Lord when they heard His hard sayings, and a grievous trial it was to the apostle to find all in Asia turned away from him, and himself imprisoned and unable to visit them. How likely then was the heart of the comparatively young soldier to faint, and to grow dispirited, not from the attacks of open enemies, but from the desertion, suspicion, and lukewarmness even of friends.

How assiduously did the apostle seek to give to Timothy confidence in the same power, even a resurrection-Lord, which had sustained and carried him through. The shame of supporting a cause abandoned by so many and with its prime mover in prison was very great. Hard indeed to bear the scorn of being embarked in that which to man's eye was a tottering cause, and nothing but the consciousness in the soul of the apostle, that God was not looking for any sufficiency in him, but supplying to him all-sufficiency in all things, could have given him such a bounding spring as to make him rise above all apparent failure and disappointment. The confusion and disorder at Corinth, the turning to another gospel at Galatia, the danger of apostasy among the Hebrews, were all sources of trial, unheeded, unknown, and incapable of being felt by man as man, but wearing the mind, so as to make him very consciously to know, what it was to hate his life in this world. One thing too which tended to lead the servant in conformity with his Master, was that he stood alone. Timothy was like-minded, yet he could hardly sympathise with the apostle, who saw before his eyes, that his departure would indeed be the occasion for grievous wolves to enter in. All appeared to be sustained by the energy of the Spirit in this chosen vessel, and whilst he is exhorting Timothy to stedfastness, the repeated charge, "thou therefore endure hardness," "watch thou in all things, endure afflictions," "be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might," shows that he hesitated to expect that ability of Timothy to endure which had so characterised his own service in the church. It was the full consciousness that he did not go to the warfare at his own charges, that the Master Whom he served was no austere Master, that sustained the soul of the apostle. He might summarily and authoritatively have settled every question, but this would not have been to have served others for the Lord's sake.

Timothy's mettle was being tested, but the Apostle's call to him was that he should now partake of the afflictions of the Gospel. We are all glad to partake of the blessings of the Gospel, and many of us are glad to have a share in the work of the Gospel so that we may partake of its successes, and finally of the rewards in the coming kingdom for faithful service in it, but to partake of its afflictions is another matter. This is only possible "according to the power of God." Here as in Colossians 1:11, power is connected not with that which is active but with that which is passive — suffering.

"Suffer evil along with the gospel." The gospel is in a way personified, and Timothy is urged to cast in his lot with it fully and entirely, at whatever cost, that the reproaches which might fall upon it might also be borne by him (compare Rom. 15:3); and the significant words are added, to encourage him in this course, "according to the power of God," the power which God bestows upon His servants to sustain them in the presence of the adversary, and to maintain His truth in the face of all danger; for no human energy, no steadfastness of purpose, nothing short of divine power, will avail in the conflicts of service in the gospel.

Here too, but without any such prominency, Timothy is exhorted to take his share in suffering hardship, but not "with me" as many understand besides the Revised Version. Really it narrows and spoils the force. The Greek warrants only the general thought of sharing ill with his comrades, Paul or any other. It is left purposely large. This association is lost by the false reading of the Received Text, followed by the Authorized Version, as already alluded to. Not personal emphasis but general share is the thought rather than with Paul in particular. Nor does the particular passage in 2 Timothy 1:8 warrant "with me," but expressly "with the gospel" which is personified by the great apostle. There is the difference however that our verse does not express with whom he was called to share affliction, nor should we supply it. The construction evidently differs from that in the preceding chapter, and the sense is best left in the vague of the original.

The Christian is also a laborer, a husbandman. He must labor first in order to enjoy fully the fruit of his labor. And that requires patience. He urges Timothy to consider what he tells him, with the assurance that the Lord would give him understanding in all things. These are the practical conditions for all who are engaging in service--enduring hardship, self-denial, unentangled, separated from the world and its ways, fighting lawfully and laboring first to be partaker of the fruits.