Remember Jesus Christ Risen From the Dead
2 Timothy 2:8-3:9
What shall I remember this Easter, that both the UConn women and the Ohio State women died before the final event? What shall I hope for on Easter, that the UConn men will win it all? What a travesty on the Easter tradition!
Paul’s charge to his beloved child Timothy to remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead is not anticipating an annual Easter which began to be observed roughly a century later. Rather, it is about a whole way of faithful living, imitating Paul, teaching his gospel, patiently enduring evil, correcting truth-swervers with gentleness in hope of their salvation (2:22-26). Thus, he will be a worker whom God approves.
While Paul’s teaching in this passage has broad application to leaders and teachers down to this day, readers/listeners of the passage will see/hear alternations between good and bad teachers and leaders. The passage is situational. Something is going on in the church then and there that has continuing relevance for the church of the living God today. In that situation, Paul named men who swerved from the truth saying that the resurrection had already happened. That kind of “last days” persons will disrupt and destroy the family of God (3:1-5) There is a vast difference between those who remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead in anticipation of his appearing (4:8) and those who say the resurrection has already happened. Their eschatology is wrong.
That big scholarly word eschatology simply spells out in English the Greek word for last/eschatais (3:1). Scholars speak of a “realized” eschatology experienced at faith and baptism wherein one dies with Christ, is buried together with Him, and is raised up to live in newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12-13). There was also an “over-realized” eschatology coming into the church that said the last times things have all already happened at baptism.
Paul puts it this way. Teachers who had swerved from the truth were creeping into households (house churches) and capturing people, particularly some women, to follow their family-wrecking life. Timothy, however, by following Paul’s teachings and conduct and continuing in the sacred writings taught by those godly women, his mother and grandmother, must be a competent worker. That work, it seems to me, is what Timothy is instructed to do in Paul’s first letter to him.
—Tom Yoakum