I think it's safe to say that most people in our world fear death. But did you know that the Bible teaches death is actually an entrance into life?
So how can that be true? Alistair Begg explores the answer today on Truth for Life. We're studying in 2 Timothy chapter 2, looking at verses 11 through 13. Now, those of us who've been following along know that this second chapter of 2 Timothy began with Paul reassuring Timothy of the resources that were his. That's the significance of the phrase, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The resources, then, make possible the fulfillment of his responsibility, and particularly to make sure that he entrusts to faithful men this message that God had given to Paul, Paul had given to Timothy. Timothy was to give to others, and those others were to give to others still, thereby underscoring for us Paul's great concern that the message of the gospel would be both proclaimed and preserved in the generations to come. And Paul has provided three very straightforward pictures in order to illustrate his point. First of all, in verse 3 and 4, the soldier, then in verse 5, the athlete, and then in verse 6, the farmer.
And there's going to be three more to follow. Later on in our studies we will notice that he is reminding us of the place of the workman, of the vessel, and of the servant. And right in the middle of all of that, he does what I've been known to do, and that is, he quotes a hymn—at least, I take it to be a hymn or a credo statement. And these three verses that are before us are the last of five statements that you find in the pastoral epistles—that is, in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—that are introduced by the phrase, ho logos pistos—logos being the word and pistos being that which is trustworthy or reliable.
And you can look for them on your own. I'll tell you that the first of them you can find in the fifteenth verse of chapter 1 of 1 Timothy, and then you can track the rest on your own. But in each case, Paul is introducing a matter that is of supreme significance, a matter that may actually be quite hard to be believed. All he's doing, by this means, is providing it with emphasis, a sort of, Hey, make sure you don't miss this. Get a hold of this.
Pay attention to this. And here in these verses, you have four pithy statements, or epigrams, and we'll consider each of them in turn. I think that's the most straightforward way to go. First of all, then, if we have died with him, we will also live with him. The him, of course, here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
And we might safely understand this in two ways. First of all, in terms of the believer's death to sin through our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. What the Bible teaches is that when we come to Jesus in repentance and faith and we enter into the benefits of all that he has provided for us, the death that he died, we have essentially died with him, and the resurrected life, which is now his, is ours to share, because we are placed into Christ. Hence Paul's statement, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old is gone, the new has come. And so, when Paul says here in Timothy, if we died with him, we will also rise with him, he's making the point that when a person is baptized, as we baptize here people, and they come down into the water, and then they go down under the water, and they come back up in the water, we always say to the people, what is being portrayed here is not being performed here. In other words, that this expression of dying and rising again is emblematic of what God has done in the life of this individual—that their gateway into life that is truly life has been through the passageway of death, dying with Christ to sin and rising with Christ to newness of life. And Paul reinforces this in Colossians, making sure that the believer understands that they are now dead to the condemning and the governing power of sin. Dead to the condemning and the governing power of sin. We no longer live under sin's condemnation.
Romans 8.1. We no longer have to be governed by sin. That is no longer the controlling influence in our lives if we are in Christ. It doesn't mean that we're free from sin—we're clearly not—but we are not slaves to sin any longer because we died with him, and so we will live with him.
That's the first sense. The second sense is not in relationship to our union with Christ in that moment of conversion, but rather our ongoing relationship with Christ, whereby because we've been made new, the things that once really appealed to us, the stuff that really drove us, the dimensions of our world that gave us significance, while not obliterated, no longer have the same appeal. If we were very proud of our religious background, we have now come to realize that it's not our religious background that has brought us into faith with Jesus, but rather it is by his grace. If we were very proud of our academics or our prowess in the world or whatever it might be, we've begun to say with Paul, the things that I once considered as significant and as giving me identity, I actually don't regard them in the same way anymore. They're not insignificant. You still have been successful.
You still are academically strong. But when you lie in your bed at night, you don't appeal to these things. They no longer drive you, as they once did, if you are in Christ, no longer controlled by the pleasures, by the prophets, and the honors of our world. Now, what Paul is saying here is simply an affirmation of what Jesus says when he speaks to his followers. You remember in Matthew 10, Jesus, with a crowd around him, says, Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
It's a strange paradox, isn't it? This whole notion that we must die in order to live, that death is the entrance into life. Well, we leave it there.
You can consider it further on your own. If we died with him, we will live with him. And then, if we endure, we will also reign with him. What Paul does here in just a phrase is reinforce what he has provided for us in the opening paragraph of the second chapter. Hence the pictures of the soldier and the athlete and the farmer.
They drive home for us this notion of endurance. And what Paul makes clear to Timothy and to all who are his readers is that the Christian life is not just a series of hundred-yard sprints engaged intermittently. But the Christian life is, if you like, a cross-country run that starts and never ends, until finally we breast the tape and are welcomed into the kingdom of God.
But along the way, it's a long obedience in the same direction. That's why Jesus is so clear when he speaks to his disciples, and he tells them, This isn't going to be a walk in the park. He says, If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and then come and follow me. And when he says, Take up your cross, he's not talking about giving up chocolate for Lent. He's talking about come and die to yourself on a daily basis. The writer of the Hebrews drives it home with great and consummate skill when he says to the people who are on the receiving end of his letter, Take care, brothers or brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart. Okay? So that's the first thing.
Take care. You've got to get up in the morning and say, I've got to make sure that I don't have in me an evil, unbelieving heart. The Christian is not somebody who gets up in the morning and goes, I'm so thankful that I don't have to be concerned about having an evil, unbelieving heart. Because if we know ourselves at all, we know that we actually do have evil, unbelieving hearts. We're tempted to doubt the truth of God's Word.
We have a propensity towards that which pleases ourselves. We are drawn to that which is offending against his law, and so on. So he says, You better see to it, make sure that you take care of this so that you don't fall away from the living God.
All right? So he's not saying there's no possibility of you falling away from the living God. He says, You better make sure that you don't fall away from the living God. And then he says, And furthermore, you better exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, so that we have a relationship and a responsibility to one another to watch out for one another—husbands to wives, parents to children, brothers and sisters with one another, brothers and sisters within the framework of the church. You see, we don't simply come together in a morning like this and in a service like this simply to sing and to listen to the Bible. We actually come together in order to exhort and to encourage one another. We may do so by our songs, we may do so by our response to the Word, but even in having a cup of coffee together and asking about one another's well-being, we may be surprised at the inroads that we have to each other's lives in simply saying, How is it going?
Because someone says, Well, not so good. So then we say, Well, let's make sure, the two of us together, that we're not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, because, he says, verse 14, we have come to share in Christ. We have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence to the end.
All right? So it's not saying that we keep ourselves by our hanging on by our fingernails. We are kept grounded in the work of Christ, having died with him. But the mechanism whereby that means of grace flows to us and through us is just exactly as has been said. We have come to share in Christ if… if… If we died, we will live. If we endure, we will reign. Thirdly, if we deny him, he will also deny us.
Again, Paul is simply reaffirming what we find in the Gospels in the record of the Lord Jesus himself. Jesus, who was a compassionate and kind and loving shepherd, the most loving man and clearest of teachers who ever lived, when he addressed his disciples, in Matthew chapter 10—and you needn't turn to it, but I'm reading or referring to the section that begins with verse 26—three times he says to his disciples, I don't want you to have fear. I don't want you to be afraid of those who come to persecute you.
That's number one. Secondly, I don't want you to be afraid of those who can kill the body. That's not as significant as the one who can destroy both the soul and the body in hell. And thirdly, I don't want you to be afraid of all the things that surround you and constrain you and constrict you, because I want you to know that you're of more value than many sparrows. Then, having said that, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. He says, Now listen, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. And do you get what he's saying there? He says, You might be tempted to think that the real issue of your life would be if someone were to take your physical life from you.
You see, there's a far greater and more dramatic prospect than that, and that is of dying not only physically but dying spiritually and eternally and being cast down into hell. And so, in light of that, he says, Make sure you get this. You acknowledge me, I will acknowledge you before my Father. You deny me, I will deny you before my Father. It's solemn, isn't it? Calvin says, This doctrine has more need of being meditated upon than of being explained. For the words of Christ are perfectly clear.
And I think they are. If we die, we live. If we endure, we reign.
If we deny him, he will deny us. And fourthly and finally, if we're faithless, he remains faithful. Now, I take it that the way in which these epigrams come to us is in two twos, and that the first two are parallel, and I take it, therefore, that the second two are parallel.
In other words, that they're not saying two separate things. If we've died, we will live. If we endure, we will reign.
They tie in with each other. And therefore, I believe that the second two are saying the same thing. If we deny him, he will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. You, of course, are immediately saying, Well, how can that possibly be? Surely, what we're having here at the end is just a little bit of encouragement. And that, of course, is the way in which it is understood by many.
You're sensible people. You have to decide for yourself how you think this plays out. It's pretty obvious that God is a faithful God. We can be confident, as James tells us, that he doesn't shift and change like shifting shadows. And so it may be that what Paul is doing is distinguishing between the denial of apostasy, which is to deny him, to deny that his blood is a sacrificial offering for sin, to deny that he is the Son of God, to deny that he is the person he claimed to be, to deny him in every aspect, which would be apostasy, and to be faithless in the way that all of us are inevitably faithless. So if that is accurate, then we derive the encouragement from the fact that although we have not apostasized, although we are actually faithless, we can be encouraged by the fact that God is faithful.
Okay? Now, that would be true. My question is, is that what he's actually saying here?
And I don't think so. Because that would be to draw the sting out of it. It takes something away from the deny the deny and then goes, Yeah, but don't really worry about it. Instead of it being parallel—if we die, we live, if we endure, we reign, if we deny, he denies, if we're faithless, he remains faithful. Faithful to what? Faithful to not only his promises but also his warnings. To the warning that has just preceded it. If you deny me, I'll deny you.
He has to be true to himself. God's faithfulness explains not only his threads but also his promises. And so what is underscored here, I think, is that here in this final statement, you have the truth which makes sure the condemnation of the unbeliever and the salvation of the believer. It is because God is faithful that sin must be punished.
It is because God is faithful that he has punished sin in the person of his Son, thereby bringing forward into time the judgment of the last day so that those who die with him may live now with him, live then with him, so that we may then endure this Christian experience, some delights and joys and often challenges and difficulties, in order that one day we will reign with him. However, if we turn our back on him, if we deny him, there is no possibility that he will stand before his Father and say anything other than, I never knew these people. That's the staggering thing about the parables of Jesus. Depart from me.
I never knew who you were. It's dreadful, isn't it? It's strikingly, chillingly dreadful. And it runs absolutely counter to the increasingly prevailing notion in our culture that if there is a God, and if he is a good God, he's not going to do any of that stuff. Because he just won't. So we have a God in our own making who's like a benevolent grandfather who refuses to engage in any of the follow-through to the warnings that he's given to his grandchildren. But God is not like that. God is always himself. God is always himself. Therefore, his promises may be trusted, and his warnings may be responded to. And it is this same God who has stepped over that invisible boundary that exists between himself and ourselves in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, calling out, as it were, You do not need to face this judgment. I have sent my Son in order that he might die in your place. If you will die with him, you will live with him.
If you will endure, you will reign with him. There are four ifs here in these three verses. If, if, if, if—makes you think of Rudyard Kipling, doesn't it?
Or maybe. It made me think this week as I was studying of a sermon I heard many years ago by an elderly man, and with great aplomb he announced his text. And he said, My text this evening is a very large door swinging on a very small hinge.
Well, I was excited. I don't know what that meant, but it certainly got my attention. And the hinge was if, and the door was, We confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And he said, Here is this great door of forgiveness that opens if, if—these ifs need to be paid attention to—if we die, dying to our sin, to our self, to our secrecy, we will live. That's why the Bible always is essentially bringing us to a crossroads, always bringing us to a decision time.
I wonder if you decided these issues for yourself. Would you be able to say today, Yes, I do remember, as somebody had been reading basic Christianity with me, I remember I was a rebellious kind of character, and they said, Why don't we read basic Christianity together? And I can remember very clearly the night that it suddenly dawned on me in a way that I'd never understood before. And I went home, and I knelt down by my bed, and A, I admitted that I was a sinner, and B, I believed from my heart of hearts that Jesus had died to be the Savior I need, and C, I came to him like a child would come, asking him to be all that I needed him to be. Have you gone through the ABC of that? Have you admitted that you are a sinner? Can you point to a day when you believed in your heart of hearts that Jesus is a very Savior that you need? Have you come to him? Come to him.
When you get married, you come together. Coming to Christ is very similar. Do you take this sinner, says the Father? Jesus says, I do. And then he says, To you and to me. And how about you, sinner? Do you take this Savior?
And we say, I do. Then if we died with him, we will live. If we endure, we will reign. We are learning about the crossroads of faith from Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. The Apostle Paul gave his protege Timothy clear instructions about demonstrating love and humility in the body of Christ, and to supplement that theme in our study in 2 Timothy, we want to recommend to you a book titled, Honor Loving Your Church by Building One Another Up. It's a book that unpacks what it truly means to honor God rightly, honor one another selflessly, and honor our leaders even when they're imperfect, or we disagree with them. Now this is a quick book to read, but it's challenging, particularly for those of us who have been in the church for a long time. The book calls us to do some self-examination to see if we are indeed honoring God and others from a place of genuine humility.
Do we really reflect the love of Christ by lifting others up? Each chapter in this book ends with questions for further reflection. If you'd like to use this book for a Bible study group or with your church's membership class, there are additional discussion questions for each chapter in the back of the book to help you apply what you've learned. Ask for your copy of the book, Honor, today when you donate to the Ministry of Truth for Life online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. We're glad you've joined us today. What does a healthy church look like? Tomorrow we'll consider the key responsibilities of the pastor and learn how we can support him in his role. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
