An Unshaken Reliance

Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. A.V.

Unto which Gospel I was appointed, as herald, and apostle, and teacher; on which account I am actually suffering these things; but I am not ashamed of zt, for I know Him whom I have trusted, Ae I am sure that He is able to guard my deposit against that Tue Apostle has been encouraging his beloved son. 2 Tim. i. He has called on him to live out his commission to II, 12. labour and to suffer for the Lord, and to remember the wonderful endowment which came to him with that commission, the ‘ grace-gift’ which was in him, nothing less the Master living in the man by the Spirit’s power. He has pointed him back to the primal purpose of sovereign love, ‘before eternal times, ’and then onward to the ‘life and immortality’ which the Gospel has ‘brought out into the light.’

Now his thought returns for a moment upon A Soliloquy. himself, and Timothy listens to his leader’s soliloquy, for such almost it is, about his own commission and his own reliance.

‘Unto that Gospel,’ so as to carry its message and unfold its blessings, ‘he was appointed ’ — on that well-remembered day, so long ago yet so intensely present

2 Tim. i.
II, 12.

Not
ashamed,

Repose in a Person. still, when ‘THE Lord met him in the way.’ Yes, in these last scenes of apparent uttermost defeat he is as sure as ever of that fact; he knows himself to be the King’s own messenger, ‘herald, apostle, teacher.’ True, the enemy has him apparently in a hopeless grasp. But he is the King’s undoubted servant, now as much as ever, and he has only to think upon his King to feel misgiving and despondency vanish at the thought. Nay, his very sufferings are an occasion for an even triumphant reliance. For they are due altogether to the Gospel, and the Gospel is nothing less than the infinitely trustworthy Jesus CHRIST revealed.

‘On which account,’ for the reason that he is the apostle of the Lamb whom the world hates, ‘he suffers these things;’ the dungeon, the abandonment, the unjust doom, the awful solitude. He suffers, but he is ‘not ashamed of it’; the seeming wreck is not a real one; what looks like a huge miscalculation, enough to turn to utter disgrace the foresight of the man who embarked his all upon it, is not so by any means. That ‘shame’ which, as the reader knows, is the frequent synonym in Scripture for disappointment is absent from this sufferer’s case altogether. And why? Because he ‘knows Him whom he has trusted.’

In that one consideration, so simple, so entirely adequate and embracing, lies the whole secret of the indescribable quietness and certainty which breathes throughout this dying Letter, even when the writer drops the tears of human grief upon it. He finds his secret of reassurance in no complex reasonings. He

An Unshaken Reliance

certainly does not find it in the aspect of circum- 2 Tim. i. stances. He takes a clear and steady review of the II, 12. whole field of seeming disaster, and then says, with a grave tranquillity, ‘I am not at all disappointed.’ And the reason is — a Person.

‘I know Him.’ This he certainly did. Historically, he knew Him. This nameless but known Person was, ‘according to the flesh,’ Paul’s rather senior Contemporary; a ‘brother’ of His, one James (Gal. i. 19), and many others of His personal followers, had been Paul’s intimates. And he knew Him spiritually. Long before this he had sacrificed everything (Phil. iii. 8, 9) ‘to know Him,’ to find Him the actual Friend of his pilgrimage and Inhabitant of his heart. His desire had been achieved; he knew Him, deeply and dearly indeed, as his Lord, Life, Way, and End. He knew Him as the perfect and absolutely satisfying Object of his worship and his love. He knew Him as the Bearer of his sins and as the Conqueror of his death. He was filled all through his being with ‘the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.’ And so — what else could he do? — he had ‘trusted Him.’ He had given himself over to Him, to be saved, ruled, kept, and guided; and he knew that this act of trust had been met by the all-faithful Lord. And if it was so, then all was well, and well for ever.

The sufferer elaborates no fine drawn theory of his He is able. own safety. It lies just in this: ‘HE 1s ABLE to guard my deposit, to guard myself and my all, always, all along. Through life He will guard it, through death, and ‘unto that day,’ that unnamed

2 Tim. i.
£1, 12,
day when at length he will see his Guardian face to
face.

O unfathomable simplicity, O immoveable ‘reason of the hope’ (1 Pet. iii. 15)! Behold faith in action. We perceive that it is a reliance, absolute and open-eyed, upon a Person infinitely trustworthy and infinitely willing to be trusted. And that Person is ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever’ (Heb. xiii. 8). Reader and friend, He is the same for me, for thee, as He was for the apostolic martyr.