2 Timothy 1:2

Ver. 2. To Timothy, [my] beloved child. I cannot but regard it as a very frivolous question, to ask here, with some commentators, why the apostle should have addressed Timothy as his beloved (ἀγαπητῷ), and not, as in the first epistle, his true (γνησίῳ) child? and whether his doing so did not bespeak a somewhat diminished confidence now in respect to Timothy? (Mack, Alford.) Why should an apostle, any more than another person, be expected, if he has once employed a particular epithet on an endeared friend, to confine himself ever afterwards to the same? For anything we know, it might be the very reason why Paul did not use true here, that he was conscious of having used it in the former epistle; for love itself, when fervent, instinctively shrinks from formal repetitions. And did not Timothy now need to be greeted with an endearing rather than a confidential epithet, separated as he was unwillingly, and at such a crisis, from his spiritual father? The tears shed by the youthful disciple at that separation, which were still fresh in the remembrance of the apostle's heart (2 Timothy 1:4), would alone prompt the latter to select a term that would be expressive of tenderness and affection. If there are certain things in the epistle (as Alford alleges) which seem to indicate a “somewhat saddened reminding, rather than one of rising hope and confidence,” toward Timothy, the designation of beloved child, so appropriate in the circumstances, is assuredly not one of them; and the attempt to turn it to such account belongs to fancy, not to exposition. Grace, mercy, peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord. The same form of salutation as at 1 Timothy 1:2, which see, with reference especially to the inclusion of mercy, a peculiarity of these two epistles.