I have never done an official exegesis of scripture as an assignment. I took a class once but was so confused that I decided to drop it. Now, I'm taking a class on Paul's Epistles from ENMU, and have a paper due at the end of the semester. So without further adieu, here is my exegetical work. There are still a few things that I am working on, but I would love to know your thoughts about it.
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The Roman Empire
stands as an icon for an enduring kingdom lasting roughly around 1500 years,
depending which dates you use to give it definition. As with anything that
lasts for 1500 years, the Roman Empire went through a myriad of transitions in
religious, political and economic standing. With the birth, death and
resurrection of Christ and the sending out of the Apostles, the whole world
would eventually be flipped on its edge. In the midst of all of this slow
upheaval, a famous Jew turned Christian was born. Saul of Tarsus was the
quintessential Jew. As translated in the English Standard Version, Philippians
3:4-6, the now converted Paul writes, “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to
put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the
people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to
the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic
righteousness, faultless.” His conversion was miraculous. Quite literally God
knocked him off his ass, blinded him and called him to quit persecuting
Christians and instead become one of the leading voices for Christianity of all
time. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:1-3, “…you have heard of the stewardship of
God’s grace which was given to me for you; that by revelation there was made
known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.” (NASB) The revelation
that Paul received was so incredibly dramatic and explosive, that the world has
not been the same since. When Paul was converted in approximately 33-36 AD,
Tiberius was Emperor of Rome. After approximately twenty years serving as an
apostle, Rome gets a new Emperor by the name of Nero. Nero is infamous for his
persecution of Christians. He is known for burning people alive and using them
as human torches in his gardens. (Secrets of the Dead: The Great
Fire of Rome, 2002) This is the time period where we find
Paul in prison in Rome in 2 Timothy. Paul is facing imminent death after having
been imprisoned in house arrest for years. (Ronconi, 2014) Paul is experiencing
high emotions that are driving him to tie up any loose ends. He, like anyone
facing death, does not want to be alone and is longing for companionship
especially in the face of so many people who have abandoned him in his time of
need. While he is having legitimate human concerns, he is also trying to do
everything he can to prepare and encourage his protégé to continue the work of
the ministry especially in the face of the current persecution of Christians.
Now that we
understand the historical background for where we find Paul’s words to Timothy
in 2 Timothy 4:1-5, let’s look at the words Paul writes,
“In the
presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead,
and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the
message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince,
rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is
coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching
ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,
and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for
you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out
your ministry fully.” (NRSV)
There is no doubt
that Paul advises Timothy about how to handle ministry situations in this
passage. However, if we limit this pericope to a strictly teacher-student
relationship we miss the humanity found within. In this pericope, we find Paul
facing imminent death. In those intensely emotional moments people wax
nostalgic; analyzing the significant moments in their own lives in order to
give to those that remain bits of wisdom to guide them in future decisions. In
Paul’s personal journey, he experienced the greatest of extremes of the depths
of Jewish legalism of which by his own words he fulfilled to the highest degree
in contrast with the heights of his instantaneous euphoric grace encounter with
Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul is
emotionally summarizing that incredible expanse with such intense passion, that
when he writes to Timothy he longs for the whole world to be able to experience
that same grace encounter. In 2 Timothy
4:1-5, if we limit this exegesis to what is written, we miss Paul's humanity.
We cannot fully exegete this text without experiencing Paul as a real human
being with a wide variety of emotions that are being expressed in words which
are pregnant with meaning. There is more than meets the eye in 2 Timothy 4:1-5.
I propose that in this pericope, we see Paul instruct Timothy on the importance
of teaching grace in a world that is hostile to that very message, from the
worldview of one who was intimately familiar with the traps of legalism and yet
knows the life transforming power of a grace that is scandalous just as well.
Having studied
this portion in a variety of translations, I find there are some unique
differences in how certain parts are portrayed. In 2 Timothy 4:2, the NASB
translates the verse as “reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and
instruction.” Other versions translate it as ‘correct, rebuke and encourage’ or
‘challenge, warn, and urge your people’ while another version says ‘reprove,
rebuke, and exhort.’ A few translations take these three words and turn them
into full sentences. The Living Bible translates it as, “Correct and rebuke
your people when they need it, encourage them to do right, and all the time be
feeding them patiently with God’s Word.” The Amplified Bible translates it as,
“And convince them, rebuking and correcting, warning and urging and encouraging
them, being unflagging and inexhaustible in patience and teaching.” In one of
the more recent and poetic translations of 2 Timothy , The Mirror Bible
translates it as, “value every individual in your audience highly; esteem
people’s authentic identity passionately; teach tirelessly!” I find this
incredibly intriguing. I don’t believe this translation is merely poetic
license, but rather the translator is tapping into a deeper level of what Paul
is trying to communicate. For instance, Francois
du Toit translates 2 Timothy 3:1 in the Mirror Bible as, “Know also that there
will be days where the extremities of people’s fallen mindsets will be very
obvious; where the gulf between heavenly grace-thinking and earthly
legalism-thinking will be most pronounced.” If Paul is consumed, convinced and
completely arrested with the mentality of grace, then Paul is saying more here
than meets the eye. In a legalistic mindset that is preoccupied with right and
wrong, when you read the words ‘reprove, rebuke, exhort’ it can quickly lead to
a mentality where you feel the permission to be the local sheriff, arresting
everyone for doing something wrong. I don’t believe that Paul is encouraging
Timothy to be the local fault finder. That is incredibly unproductive. Paul
knows that the Holy Spirit is the one who will do the convicting. Paul is all
too familiar with the Holy Spirit’s power to transform lives; his own life is
the result of that very work. So certainly Paul cannot be telling Timothy to be
a busy body who is on the lookout for every single mistake that people make. On
the contrary, I believe that Paul is speaking to him about two things. First,
Paul is instructing Timothy generically about the church as a whole and specifically
how to help guard them against false theologies like Gnosticism and Jewish
legalists. Second, Paul urges Timothy to see people through the eyes of grace. It
is in this second level that I believe the Mirror Bible’s translation of 2
Timothy 4:2 exposes Paul’s highest intention. Grace is what enables you to “value
every individual in your audience highly; esteem people’s authentic identity
passionately; teach tirelessly” because instead of being a fault finder you are
seeing people as God sees them. You are consumed with the revelation that Jesus
died for the person sitting in front of you, and how much love he has for each
one. I think the more conservative translations miss this aspect and are more
concerned with the legalistic adherence to sound doctrine than trusting in the
work of grace through the Holy Spirit to accomplish the mysterious work that
happens in each human heart.
Another passage
that is interesting is in verse 2 Timothy 4:4, which is translated in the NRSV
as, “and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
However the Mirror Bible, translates it as, “In their pursuit they would
exchange the truth for man-made fictions and fables as their source of
reference!” Since we’ve already seen a
connection between this pericope and previous passages from Chapter 3, I
believe we can look again to Chapter 3:8 to see Paul outline exactly what he
believes those ‘man-made fictions and fables’ are specifically in verse 8 Paul
writes,
“These guys, with their deadly
legalistic Jewish agendas, seem to be on par with the two Egyptian magicians,
Jannes and Jambres, who tried their best tricks to compete with Moses! The
supernatural is not proof of faith! These people oppose truth (of grace); their
minds are fully engaged in selling their religious self-help programs, and they
stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what God believes about them.”
So the question is when Paul talks
in Chapter 4:3-4 about people not wanting to hear sound doctrine but preferring
to listen to things that will tickle their ears, what is this other theology
that people wanted to hear. I think there are multiple answers to that
question. The Roman Empire was a beautiful mix of a variety of religions. There
were Greeks who still believed in Greek mythology, there were Romans who still
believed in Roman mythology, there were Jews who still believed in the Old
Covenant, there were new Christian coverts from all three who had grown up in
one way of thinking but were being convinced of something totally new. As
Christianity unfolded as a new religion, tensions between Jews and Christians
were high. Particularly because converts were not all Jewish, but many came
from pagan religions. The Jerusalem Council was the first group of Apostles,
who were employed to deal with issues such as eating kosher and circumcision.
For both Jews and Jewish converts, all they had ever known was the law. The
importance of the law to Jewish people cannot be spoken of lightly. This
presents a great tension for Gentile Christians however. They see no reason to
first become Jewish to then convert to Christianity. In Acts 10, Peter has a
famous vision where a sheet drops before his eyes and he begins to see a
variety of clean and unclean animals in movie like fashion, be discussed by the
Lord. The purpose of this vision is the Lord is telling Peter, “What God has
cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” The question of considerable debate is
whether the Lord is using an analogy or is being literal in this passage. Many
believe that it is literal and the Lord is telling Peter that all dietary
restrictions are no longer valid. One commentator says, “When the Mosaic Law
was instituted to Israel, certain meats were then forbidden for the Jews (Israel
only -Leviticus 10:10, 11:4-7; Deuteronomy 14:7-8). This command was again
changed when Jesus was crucified. The laws restriction came to its end as a
requirement for believers and all meat was again allowed, as it is clean. In
this new dispensation, after the cross, all meats are allowed for food, there
is no prohibition of clean or unclean because we are no longer under the Law of
Moses, that made these distinctions but are under a new covenant (Acts 11:8-9;
Romans 14:14), but under the law of Christ.” (Are we allowed to eat meat?,
2009)
Other people believe that it is only symbolic and that God is using an analogy
to prepare Peter, an ardent Jew who would never have been found in the company
of a Gentile, because to do so would be vile, to see Cornelius, thus leaving
all the kosher laws still very much intact. “Thus, the subject matter of Acts
10 has nothing to do with clean and unclean meats. God simply used the vision
of unclean animals to emphasize a point to Peter—that when God has spiritually
cleansed a Gentile, he is not to be deemed common or unclean.” (Are God's
Laws of Clean and Unclean Meats Upheld Under the New Covenant, 2009) Nevertheless, the
point in 2 Timothy Chapter 4 is that there are tensions between the Gospel
truth and other theologies or doctrines, which Paul deems as dangerous. Those
doctrines could be the “deadly legalistic Jewish agendas” or “earthly
legalism-thinking” they could be the more sensual permissions that those from a
Greek or Roman background might have found appealing. I personally believe that
Paul is being vague on purpose in order to cover anything that would oppose the
knowledge of God. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul urged the church in Corinth to “demolish
arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of
God, taking every thought captive, to make it obedient to Christ.” I believe that Paul is telling Timothy, that
the church in Ephesus will need to be prepared to do the same thing.
Finally, there is
a brief sentence in the Message version that expresses an emotion that is lost
in other translations. In the translation The Message, Eugene Peterson
translates the 2 Timothy 4:5 as, “keep the Message alive.” In all the other
translations, this pericope ends with a seemingly bland exhortation for Timothy
to keep doing his job. Certainly in light of all that Paul is facing, he is not
wasting a single word of instruction, so this sentence cannot be as simple as
it looks. I wonder if in the emotion of facing your own imminent death and
seeing how treacherous Nero is towards Christians in this time frame, combined
with Paul’s own reports of friends abandoning him in his time of need, if Paul
is experiencing even the most minute of fears that the message of the Cross
will not continue and will die with him. I wonder if thoughts are crossing his
mind, as to whether his death will be in vain. I believe that hidden in the
depths of Paul’s humanity is an incredibly complex set of beliefs and emotions
that is saying much more to Timothy than “keep preaching.” I think Paul is
saying, “I know that God has a plan, but I also know that he has used me to do
something pretty significant. I have suffered a lot for it and am gladly and
willingly will lay my life down because I believe that the Gospel message is
worth it. However, this dying makes me realize that I will no longer have
influence on how things happen, and that frightens me a bit. The seeming loss
of control is a bit stressful and I realize that I am leaving all of this in
your hands in a super difficult time. While I believe that you are fully
convinced of the Gospel just as I am, which is why I call you my son, I hope
and pray that you will continue the work of spreading the Gospel and not
abandon it in the face of persecution like others have. If you were to abandon
the work, what would that mean of my life’s work? Will all my suffering be for
nothing? Will future generations not know the beauty of the Gospel? So by all
means, Timothy, keep the Message alive.”
In summary, I
believe that what we experience in 2 Timothy 4:1-5, is the emotional and very
natural human expressions of a man who is facing death as he writes to his
protégé. I believe we see Paul dance with even the minutest of fears and the
lack of control, combined with heartache at what may come Timothy’s way in the
future. I believe Paul encourages Timothy to ‘be rooted and grounded in love’
(Eph. 3:17) though using different language with Timothy than he did when
writing the whole Church in Ephesus. This instruction enables Timothy to deal
with heresy, controversy, and skewed thinking while responding to each person
with the fullness of grace and love. I see throughout this small pericope 3
distinct places where Paul urges Timothy to view his circumstances through the
eyes of grace. It is very similar to what Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth;
(love) “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures
all things… But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of
these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:7,13 ESV)
