Timothy the Disciplined

There are some who have professed to read the character by the handwriting. In the case of Timothy we have a task more difficult still; it is to read the character of one man by the handwriting of another. Nearly all we can gather of the inner life of Timothy is wrapped up within two brief letters addressed to him by Paul. They are really a ministerial charge containing practical advices and cautions to Timothy on his appointment to the pastorate of the Church at Ephesus. Are we entitled to take these advices and cautions as indicating Paul’s sense of Timothy’s weak points.? I think we are. When Paul writes a letter it is always a characteristic letter — characteristic, I mean, of the person or persons written to. When he

writes to the residents in Rome, he exhibits 307

Christ as * the power unto salvation ’ — and why? Because the dweller in that military city was apt to think Christianity a form of weakness. When he writes to the Corinthians, he exhibits Christ as wisdom — and why? Because to the Greek Christianity appeared foolishness. When he writes to the Galatians, he tells them to be not weary in well-doing — and why.? Because they had revealed themselves as fickle. When he writes to Philemon, it is to guide him in a personal affair — an affair in which he had temptation to show harshness. Nay, when he writes to Timothy himself on a physical matter, his advice is professedly dictated by a sense of Timothy’s infirmity — ‘Take a little wine for your stomach’s sake.’ I conclude therefore that, as the physical advice was prompted by Paul’s knowledge of a physical weakness, the mental advice was prompted by his knowledge of a mental weakness; and I feel authorised to use these letters as a biographical mirror in which the secrets of the life are revealed and the heart of the man is spread out before us. Timothy could have started life with the motto, ‘Two worlds are mine. ‘He was born probably at Lystra — a city of Lycaonia. Within him was the blood of two opposite heredities. His mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois were Jewish Christians of the most pious and devoted type. That stream of heredity from the blood of Israel was, however, counteracted by another stream. If his mother was a Jew, his father was a Greek — of what religious persuasion we know not. Timothy was therefore the child of opposite worlds, and it was inevitable that they should strive within him. Israel and Greece were essentially opposed currents. Their difference lay deeper than any religious doctrine; it was constituted by their view of life. The Jew aimed at the repression of nature; the object of the Greek was to give nature full play. The Jew encouraged the sense of obligation; the Greek fostered the thought of spontaneity. The Jew looked upon the universe with awe; the Greek viewed it as a pleasure-ground. The Jew uncovered his head in the presence of Divine mysteries; the Greek made them subjects of daring speculation. It was evident that the main danger to Timothy lay on the Greek side. Where Judaism embraced Christianity it was sternly Christian; where Greece favoured Christianity its affection was apt to be divided. Probably in the mind of the father Christianity had not passed the stage of a mere favourable recognition. The age of ’ many gods ’ was past; but the age of ’ many systems ’ had taken its place, and the father of Timothy in all likelihood leant towards each in turn. It was not altogether a propitious nest for the maturing of a steady wing.

In the home, however, the mother seems to have had her own way. She brought up the child in the faith of Christ and under the influence of her pious example. He seems to have been early put to active service in the cause of Christianity. When Paul on his missionary journey came to Lystra and first saw him, he was exceedingly young; yet he was already talked of as a helper in the work. Paul was greatly struck wth him. He discerned the promise and the potency of a high and useful life which was worth fostering into bloom. He resolved to train him under his own eye. Doubtless he recognised the danger of the counteracting Greek current in his blood and in his home, and thought the removal from his home might modify the action of his blood. Accordingly, he took Timothy with him. He took him as a pupil — one to be trained for higher service. But when next we meet him he is no longer Paul’s pupil; he is his companion. He has not indeed entered into the place of partnership vacated by BatJiabas. It was rather an association of love than of business, and that kind of love which bridges the separation of those divided by a gulf of years. The older man felt himself a protector; the younger clung to his support. Paul realised that he had adopted this youth, become sponsor for him in the eye of heaven. He felt that he was responsible for his eternal welfare — that he had to supply the place which the good mother had filled and which the indifferent father ought to have filled. A flower had been committed to him in the Garden of the Lord; that flower he had to water every morning and nurture every day.

“Was there a possibility that the relation of Paul and Timothy might ever be reversed — that Timothy might become the protector and Paul the recipient? There vi’ould have been, but for one circumstance. It was this — Paul was never able to realise that Timothy was growing older. He insisted on always viewing him as the lad he met in Lystra. On that occasion Timothy was probably about twenty years of age. That was an exceedingly young man to have gained a local reputation among the Christians; and we could have understood Paul saying at that time, ‘Let no man despise thy youth.’ But he says it some fifteen years afterwards — when Timothy must have passed youth’s despicable stage. The words were spoken near the end of Paul’s life. He had gone through most of his crisis-moments. He had been imprisoned in Caesarea. He had made his appeal to Caesar. He had been shipwrecked on his voyage to Rome. He had been acquitted by a Roman tribunal. He had resumed his missionary labours, and, as a final act in them, he had ordained Timothy to the Church of

Ephesus. He had returned to Rome. He had been imprisoned once more — in that dungeon from which he was only to issue through the gate of death. It was from that final captivity that he wrote his pastoral counsels to his friend of long years. And it is then most of all that he seems to forget the years. He sees Timothy, not as he is, but as he was. He ignores the fifteen winters whose storms have swept across his brow and whose chills have furrowed his cheek. He sees him in his home at Lystra in all the freshness of life’s morning. He sees him between two fires — the fire of devotion to his mother and the fire of admiration for his father. He sees the struggle of his young heart between the Jew and the Greek — between the surrender of will and the speculation of intellect. He feels that the same conflict is raging in the world still — nowhere more than at Ephesus, and that the whole current must be breasted by an inexperienced boy. In words which are pathetic in their loss of the sense of time he cries, * Let no man despise thy youth. ’

But have we never seen anything like this outside of the New Testament! Is it not a matter of daily observation! Do we not know that those who have been the guardians of the young find it very hard to realise their adolescence! I knew an elderly woman who always spoke of her brothers as * these boys. ‘There was not one of them under fifty years of age; but she had been as a mother to them in youth and she realised not that their youth was gone. It is always the tendency of love to clothe its object with permanence. It is told of St. John that, when an old man, he stood in the streets of Ephesus and cried, ‘Little children, love one another! ‘Probably the * little children ’ were nearly as old as himself; but they had been brought up as pupils in his Bible-class and he felt to them as a father. His love was too strong to observe the growing shadow on the dial; it saw the objects of its morning in the same perpetual youth as that in which the Christian saw his Christ — unchanged yesterday and to-day and for ever. Paul, too, had an illusion in the streets of Ephesus; he took a man to be a boy.

It was love’s cry for permanence. It was the protest of the heart for the continuance of the morning. It was the desire of the spirit that time should write no wrinkle on the azure brow of that sea of life on which he had sailed long years ago. Timothy, then, stood before the eye of Paul in the garb of a young man. Paul felt that he wanted discipline — that the flower within him must be cultivated. It was not learning he needed; it was pruning. There are men whose temptation comes from their ignorance; the dangers of Timothy came from his knowledge, his culture, his intellectual development. The spirit of Greece was in him, and the spirit of Greece was the spirit of independent thought. Paul dearly loved to think of him as still young; but he felt that his Greek blood made youth a special danger. It was to youth that the seductions of Greece peculiarly appealed. Rome’s muscular vigour spoke to manhood; Judea’s restraining influence spoke to middle age; but Greece with her morning radiance addressed the spirit of youth and found her most powerful votaries in the children of the spring.

Let me now proceed to indicate some of those weak points of Timothy’s youth which Paul by an act of imagination transferred to his riper age. You will find that they will open up to every man a chapter of autobiography and that the weak points of young Timothy are the weak points which are apt to beset the youth of all men. Now, Paul is very emphatic as to the charge which in importance he would place first. It is not the charge which we should expect him to place first. If we were addressing one whom we thought of as a young man and whom we believed to be under special temptation, we should begin by warning him against flagrant sins — against the excesses of the wine-cup, the excesses of the gaming-table, the excesses of human passion. Paul does not start with any of these; he tells Timothy first and foremost to cherish a reverent spirit towards those in authority! Is not this a strange advice to put in the front ground of a young man’s discipline. I do not think so. I think it would be the advice which in actual youth Timothy first needed. What is the root of youth’s dangers? It is the resistance to authority. I do not mean the resistance to any particular authority, but to the principle of authority itself. A young man tends to love the fruit because it is forbidden. The fruit in itself is often distasteful to him. Command young Adam to climb the tree of knowledge, and he will probably refuse; forbid him, and that tree will become an object of desire. Youth oftener goes wrong from a false ideal of manliness than from any love of vice. To be free, to be independent, to do what one likes, to reveal the magnificent example of *I don’t care,’ to be pointed out as a bold, reckless spirit that fears not the face of man — that is the ideal which swims before the eye of youth and draws it into all perils.

When Paul first met Timothy everything in the young man’s blood tempted to the resistance of authority. His youth tempted him, for youth loves to feel itself free. His Greek descent tempted him, for Greece had ever aspired to be free. And, strange to say, it must be added that his Christianity itself tempted him. It sounds curious to hear Paul exhort Timothy to pray for kings. We should have thought the charge would be, ‘Pray for the poor and destitute. ‘But we forget that by the early Christian it was the kings, and not the destitute, who were apt to be neglected. The typical primitive Christian looked down upon his temporal rulers. He held that the humble classes were the privileged classes. What he extended to the rich was at most only a patronage. It was not natural that he should pray first for kings. He was a subject of no king but one — the Lord Jesus. The rulers of the world were in possession of a mock dignity — a dignity which belonged, not to them, but to Him. Why should he pray for their wise governing! Was not their government, whether wise or unwise, an obstacle in the march of the King of kings! Had not he a higher allegiance — the allegiance to another world, to a coming world, to a world before whose blaze of glory all the thrones and principalities and powers of earth must wither away! The kings of the nations might take tribute from his hand; they could get no tribute from his soul.

So in all likelihood thought young Timothy in the days when Paul first met him; and Paul transfers his youth to his riper years. He warns him that he is on a quicksand. He tells him to dismiss his contempt for the higher seats of this world. He tells him that, whether they know it or not, the rulers of earth are God’s ministers. He tells him that, whether they know it or not, they are responsible for the bearing of a great burden. He tells him that, by reason of this burden, they are objects not for anger but for reverent commiseration — that they have more need to be prayed for than the poor and destitute. He bids him pray for them first of all; he bids him teach his people to pray for them. It was a new call to sympathy. Hitherto sympathy has been asked to descend the ladder; it is now asked to go up — to extend its charity to the high places of the earth, to enter into the troubles of those who sit in the upper room.

Let me pass now to a second advice given by Paul to Timothy, or rather to a combination of two advices often supposed to be contradictory. He virtually tells him to avoid two kinds of fast living — the fastness of brain and the fastness of brainlessness. On the one hand he is very anxious that as a pastor he should avoid matters of intellectual speculation. On the other he is equally solicitous that he should not fritter away intellect altogether by living for trivialities and frivolities — ‘Flee youthful desires! ’ he says. I have said that these two dangers seem opposite — the one is over-thought, the other is thoughtlessness. We think of the former as a slow and quiet life, of the latter as a life of fastness. The truth is, they are both fast, and may be both equally fast. What do we mean by fastness? Simply that too many sensations are being crowded together in a small space and in a short time. Physically speaking, it matters not what the sensation be. You may be a student living far from the works and ways of men, dwelling in seclusion and solitude, abstaining from the whole round of worldly pleasure, never seen at fancy fete or fashionable ball, and yet you may be living as fast a life as if you were spending your days in a whirl of gaiety.

It is the number and the rapidity of your sensations, and not their moral character, that determine the rate at which you are travelling.

Now, it is more than likely that Timothy in his young days was under both of these temptations. Does it seem to us that both could not exist in the same mind — that the one would serve as a counteraction to the other. We forget that this is the very thing which makes their existence in one mind possible. Who, according to the Jewish Scriptures, is the man most taken up with the frivolities of life.? Of all people, it is Solomon — the profound student, the deep scholar, the speculative thinker, the man who filled the world with the fame of his wisdom! I used to wonder at the incongruous combination. I see now that it is true to human nature. The typical Solomon is ever the most in danger of becoming frivolous. He needs a reaction. His mind has been on the wing round the stars; it will by and by be on the wing round the candle. He has been revolving the problems of eternity; he will before long revolve in the dance of the hour. It is the very cry for a counteracting in-

31 fluence that drives him from fervour to frivolity.

You will observe where Paul places frivolity; it is in the ‘desires.’ I do not suppose he was in the least afraid of Timothy’s outward morals; I am quite sure he had no cause to be. But Paul did not think this a sufficient ground of safety. If he had been told of Timothy’s external purity, he would still have cried, * Flee youthful desires! ‘The frivolous man was to Paul the man who desired frivolous things. The fast man in moral life was he whose heart was crowded with images of vanity and with forms of sensual mould. The contact which Paul feared for Timothy was an inward contact. He dreaded no company for a man like the company of his own unregenerate heart; there was his place of temptation, there was his scene of danger. The frivolities of life were in each man’s soul, and to cherish these in the soul was already to yield to temptation.

I will mention one other advice of Paul to Timothy — more directly pastoral than those preceding, yet dictated like these by the apostle’s memory of the pupil’s youth. He tells him to be a workman ’ rightly dividing the word of truth. ‘The great temptation of young ministers is to view the word of truth in a single aspect. Paul says it ought to be ‘divided’ — given out in portions according to the needs of the recipient. The youthful pastor is apt to address perpetually one class. One such pastor has a philosophic cast; another is evangelical; a third is purely practical — so we often sum up the special qualities of the preacher. Paul would say that each of the three was in fault through not ‘dividing’ the word of truth. He would say that one man should combine them all. He will probably have in his congregation representatives of all. The philosopher will be there — studying the mysteries of being. The evangelical will be there — inquiring the way of salvation. The moralist will be there — seeking the path of duty. Paul would say, ‘Divide the word of truth — speak to each in turn. ‘To him the pastoral life is a sacrificial life in which a man ought to put himself in sympathy with the limits of his congregation — to conceive his subject, not as it appears to him but as it must appear to different modes of mind. He must empty himself of his own predilections — must think with the thoughts of others. He must see deeply with the student, simply with the children, practically with the workers and toilers. He must give to each, not his own favourite portion, but the portion to which each is suited. He must not descant on Dives and Lazarus at the bedside of an invalid, nor expound the case of the ten virgins to a penitent seeking rest. He must be appropriate — which literally means, he must give to every one his own. That is the right ’ dividing ’ of the word of truth. Now, Paul may have observed in Timothy’s youth a tendency to this one-sidedness. There was everything to favour its existence. The Greek blood within him made for it in one direction; the Jewish blood within him made for it in another. The spirit of youth itself favoured it. Youth is ever apt to be one-sided, and therefore inappropriate. Young people tend to say the thing unsuited to a particular occasion, and they do so simply because they are one-sided. The cure for them, the cure for Timothy, the cure for all of us, is Christianity — the power to stand in the place of another. That is what makes the religion of Christ differ alike from the Gentile and the Jew; it can incorporate itself in the sympathies of both. It can divide a portion of the soul between either combatant, and therefore can beat with the heart of each. The imitation of Christ is the imitation of one who emptied himself, who clothed himself in the likeness of others, who strove to live in the experience of those beneath him. Only in the effort to follow this life can man avoid the partialities of the Gentile and the Jew.

There is one little point to which I should like to direct attention. Did you ever ask yourself why it is that before administering this discipline to Timothy Paul himself assumes such a humble attitude .-’ Instead of opening with a tone of authority, he begins his letter by telling Timothy what a miserable creature he himself had been — a blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurer of men, a man who for his present position was entirely indebted to the mercy of God. And can you fail to see why Paul begins by taking the lowest room? It was in accordance with his own sublime exhortation, * If a man beovertaken in a fault, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. ‘He means, in other words, * Do not address him from a lordly height; let him see that you too have tripped in your day. ‘That is what Paul wanted Timothy to see. He did not wish the pupil to look upon him as a demi-god. He knew that the basis of all teaching is sympathy, and that sympathy demands a common experience. He comes to Timothy, not in his latest robes, but in his original rags. He speaks to him, not from the top of the ladder, but from its base. He pleads with him, not as one who was born to angelic purity and has never breathed the air of evil, but as one who has known corruption, who has felt temptation, who has touched sin, who has learned the pain of struggle, and who even now is unable to ascribe his salvation to any merit of his own. The discipline from such a man has strength, but no sting.

LORD, when I go to discipline my brother-man, let me remember his environment! Let me remember Timothy’s youth, and that the passions of youth are strong! Let me remember his Greek blood that cries for novelty in every form — that flies to-day on the wings of fancy, to-morrow on the pinions of pleasure! Let me remember his Pagan influences, and how many voices in the Garden urge him to climb the tree! Let me remember, above all, my own youth, my own heredity, my own first surroundings I When I visit my erring brother, let me put on my garment of yesterday! Let me not go to him wearing that best robe which Thou hast brought forth for me, and displaying that bright ring which claims me as Thy child! Let me fold Thy fair garment and lay it by; let me take off Thy bright ring and put it aside! Bring me the mean attire of my morning! Bring me the squalid garb in which first I met Thee! Bring me the tattered rags in which of old I stood before Thy door! I will go to my brother, clothed in the likeness of sinful flesh. I will go to him with ringless hands, with shoeless feet, with prideless gait. I will go to him and say, * I come to thee from thine own valley — from humiliation kindred to thine. I too have been among the swine. I too have been a child of the famine. I too have been content to feed on the husks for a time. By no merit of mine am I saved; while I was yet afar off my Father saw me. Receive thy hope from me, thy comfort from me, thine example from me! Learn from my rags thy possible riches! See in my meanness thy possible majesty! Behold in my lowliness thy possible ladder! Read in my corruption thy possible crown! So, on the stepping-stones of my dead self, may’st thou rise to higher things.’