2 Timothy 1

Timothy

Timothy, my beloved child. 2 Timothy 1:2.

Timothy was the youngest and best-loved of St. Paul's fellow-workers. He was to St. Paul what St. John was to Jesus the disciple whom he loved, the man after his own heart. To the childless apostle, Timothy took the place of a son. Of no other of his followers does St. Paul speak in terms of such affection and trust; no other of his disciples so completely understood his mind and heart.

Timothy is one of the few men in the Bible whose early history we know. We can learn something about his home and about his childhood and boyhood. He was born at either Derbe or Lystra in Asia Minor, about the time that Christ was crucified. His father was a Gentile, but his mother, Eunice, was a Jewess. To their boy they gave a name which means “honored of God,” and Timothy grew up faithful to his name not only honored of God but honoring Him.

Timothy's father died when the boy was very young, and the child received his early training from his mother and from the old grandmother, Lois, who lived with them.

Now Lois and Eunice were very good women and they were anxious, above all things, that their boy should grow up wise and good. The training of every Jewish boy for the first five years of his life lay, and still lies, in his mother's hands. It is from her that he first learns to know and to reverence God's commandments. As soon as he begins to speak his training starts, and the first words he is taught to repeat are “ Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” These words he learns when he is only three years old. Then he is taught some of the shorter psalms and, most interesting of all, his birthday text. This is a verse of scripture which either begins or ends with, or else contains, the letters of his own name. You can imagine how proud the little Jewish boy is when he can repeat his birthday text.

Lois and Eunice must have taken particular pains with Timothy because in the letter which he writes to him thirty years later St. Paul specially remarks upon his early training and his knowledge of Scripture. As Timothy's father was a Gentile it is likely that he did not go to school so early as did most Jewish boys and that it was from Eunice that he heard the familiar Old Testament stories which you all know and love. He would learn, too, of the promised Messiah; but one story he would not hear the story of how the Messiah had come in deed and in truth, had come as a little babe to a stable in Bethlehem; of how He had lived a life of love and sacrifice and had died at last upon a cross. That story he was to learn from the lips of Paul when he was fifteen years old.

Timothy was sensitive, conscientious, affectionate, and sympathetic. He drank in earnestly all that he could learn at his mother's knee; and he learned so well that when he met Paul it was just an easy step from his early knowledge of God to the fuller knowledge in Christ Jesus.

Boys and girls, there is never any religion like the religion you learn at your mother's knee; there are never any prayers quite like the simple prayers she teaches you to lisp almost before you can speak. That religion and these prayers will go with you all your days. And if you, like Timothy, are eager to learn, eager to obey, they will be the best preparation for all that life holds for you.

When Timothy was fifteen something happened that was to change the whole course of his life. Two missionaries Paul and Barnabas came to Lystra. They spoke of one, Jesus of Nazareth, whom God had sent to be the Savior of the world. They told how He had been put to death by the Jews and how He had risen again from the dead. They also healed a man who had been a cripple from his birth, and when, in consequence, the crowd would have worshipped them as gods, they restrained them, saying that they were only men like themselves. Then hostile Jews came from two other towns and turned the people against the missionaries. Paul they stoned, and afterwards they dragged him outside the city and left him for dead. But the apostle was only bruised and stunned. Presently he arose and was able to walk back into the city, which he left the following day for the neighboring town of Derbe.

It must have been during this visit of St. Paul to Lystra that Timothy made the great resolve the resolve to become a follower of Jesus. How do we know this? From two things. In writing to the Corinthians Paul speaks of Timothy as his “beloved and faithful child in the Lord,” a title which he applies only to those whom he had been the means of leading to the faith which is in Christ Jesus. And then in the sixteenth chapter of Acts we are told that when St. Paul returned to Lystra seven years later Timothy was already a Christian “well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.” So we know that Timothy must have been converted some time previously, that is, on the occasion of St. Paul's first visit.

Timothy had listened to Paul's stirring words; he had seen how the apostle was willing, not only to speak, but to suffer for the Master whom he loved. His chivalrous young soul went out to the apostle, and there and then he opened his heart to the message he brought. Perhaps Timothy helped to restore Paul when he was left for dead outside the city gates. Perhaps he took him home to his mother's house and cared for him that night and saw him on his way in the morning. Of one thing we may be sure he would put Paul at the top of his list of heroes; he would consider him more than worthy to be placed alongside of Gideon and Samson and Daniel. And many a time in the years that passed before they met again, he would think of him and imitate him, and try to prove worthy of him.

Perhaps the other Christians in Lystra looked down on Timothy when he was baptized. They may have thought of him as only a boy. They may have said, “Oh, it's only young Timothy.” But “young Timothy” was destined to become Paul's greatest convert and one of the foremost apostles of the Early Church.

Seven years pass away before we again get a glimpse of Timothy, but in these seven years he has not been idle. He has been working diligently in the Christian communities at Lystra and the neighboring city of Iconium, and he has been earning for himself golden opinions among the Christians in these places.

At the end of the seven years St. Paul, on his second missionary journey, came again to Lystra. He had just parted with his fellow-worker Barnabas, and was in need of somebody to fill his place. When he met Timothy, now a young man of twenty-two, his heart went out to him and he had a strong desire to take him with him. And Timothy consented to accompany him.

Now, Timothy has sometimes been accused of lacking courage, and I want you just to think for a moment how unjust this accusation is. Timothy had till now lived a sheltered life. He had been brought up by women, without a father's bracing influence. His mother was all in all to him and he to her. So far as we know, he had never been more than twenty or thirty miles from home. And yet, when St. Paul called him to a life of hardship and danger, when he called him to go far away into unknown regions and among strange people, he obeyed without hesitation. And you must remember that to be a missionary in those days was a very different thing from what it is now. Think of the difficulties of travelling which made the distances ten times as long as they are today. Think of the dangers by land and by sea. Timothy must have known that very probably he would never see his mother or his home again. Do you think, then, that he was a man lacking in courage? Assuredly no. Timid he may have been, sensitive he certainly was. But timidity and sensitiveness do not spell cowardice. On the contrary, it is those who are afraid and who yet go forward in spite of their fears who are the greatest heroes.

Timothy was ordained by the laying on of hands of the elders at Lystra and then he said farewell to his old home and set out with Paul. At first they travelled in Asia Minor, but at length they came to Troas on the coast of the AEgean Sea, whence they crossed into Europe. Together they visited the towns of Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, and Corinth. Timothy ' s thorough knowledge of Scripture stood him in good stead with the Jewish converts and he soon became noted as an evangelist. Later the missionaries returned to Asia Minor, and except when Timothy was sent on a mission into Macedonia, we may think of him as mostly at the side of Paul until the latter visited Jerusalem for the last time and was made prisoner.

When St. Paul was taken as a prisoner to Rome, Timothy followed him. He visited him in prison, and it is interesting to note that the epistles to the Philippians and the Colossians and to Philemon, which were sent by St. Paul from Rome, are written in the joint names of Paul and Timothy.

Some time after St. Paul was released from prison the two apostles were together at Ephesus, and St. Paul left Timothy in charge of the church there when he himself returned to Europe. Now Ephesus was a very wicked place. It was the center of worship of the great heathen goddess Diana, and contained a gorgeous temple built in her honor. Timothy had to work amidst tremendous difficulties and it was to encourage and fortify him in his work that St. Paul wrote the two Epistles to Timothy.

The Second Epistle was written when St. Paul was imprisoned for the second time at Rome. It closes with an urgent request that Timothy should come to him. The aged apostle knew that his doom was sealed, that the end was not very far off, and he longed above all things to have his “beloved son” with him at the last. Whether Timothy reached Rome in time we do not know, and what happened to him after he was bereft of his faithful friend the Bible does not tell us.

Tradition says that he became Bishop of Ephesus and that he was stoned to death by the Ephesian mob for protesting against the wickedness of their heathen worship.

In the church of San Paolo at Borne there is a gorgeous tomb which is said to contain the bones of St. Paul. Close beside it is another tomb, more modest in its pretensions, which bears the name of Timothy. Here, according to legend, the bones of the great apostle and his faithful disciple rest side by side. We should like to think that this is the case, but whether or not, of one thing we are certain. The two who loved each other so truly on earth are united forever in the presence of the Master they both loved and served Paul, and Timothy, his “beloved child.”