"2 Timothy 1: Be Not Ashamed, and Two Men Who Weren't"

The oven clock has been an hour off since Sunday. Nobody's reset it, and by Tuesday night I'd stopped seeing it as wrong. I glance, take one away and move on, the way you step over the same loose board in the hall.

Second Timothy 1 is eighteen verses, and Paul asks Timothy for three things in them. Stir up the gift, don't be ashamed, keep what you were given. I quoted verse 6 in the post on 1 Timothy 4 two weeks ago and said what I had to say about the verb, so I'm leaving the verb alone and looking at what stands around it. I'm also skipping verses 9 and 10 almost entirely. They're the middle of the chapter and I'd only be restating them.

Is verse 7 a comfort or the reason for an order?

This is the verse people lift out of the chapter and carry around on its own.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

It opens with "For," and the next verse opens with "Be not thou therefore ashamed." So verse 7 is a reason, and what it holds up is an order. Paul isn't handing Timothy a pillow. He says what God gave and what he didn't, and then he asks for something that costs: to be "partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God." The power in that sentence belongs to God. Timothy is asked to share in the afflictions, and the power comes from somewhere else.

The verse says "us," and Paul is writing from a chain (he calls himself "his prisoner" in verse 8), so he's putting himself under the same sentence as Timothy. It also tells us nothing about what Timothy felt. Plenty of people read "Timothy was timid" into verses 7 and 8, and he may have been, but the chapter never says so and both verses are instructions.

What the verse does give is a short list of what God hands out. John keeps love in the same territory: "There is no fear in love" (1 John 4:18). The English chapter also uses "sound" twice, once for a mind here and once for words in verse 13.

Who in this chapter is ashamed, and who isn't?

The word turns up three times, in three different mouths. Verse 8 is the order to Timothy, verse 12 is Paul about himself and verse 16 is Paul about someone else.

In verse 12 he says "I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed." The reason he gives is a person, where he could have given a doctrine. He goes on, "and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." What he committed isn't named. It could be the gospel he was entrusted with or it could be his own life, and the sentence doesn't pick.

Between those two comes the bleak verse, and it's worth reading before the good one.

This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes. (2 Timothy 1:15)

Those two names show up nowhere else in the chapter, and Paul doesn't say what either man did. He says they turned away and he moves on to the other kind of name.

The "all" in that verse is worth a second look. Acts 19:10 says that for two years "all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks." Paul's account of what became of that is "all they which are in Asia be turned away from me." I wouldn't count heads on either sentence. It's a man in a chain describing how things look from where he's sitting, and the very next verse names someone who is plainly an exception. Whatever happened in Asia, it didn't happen to everyone.

The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. (2 Timothy 1:16-17)

The mercy is asked for the house, and verse 18 asks it for the man himself, "that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day." Paul greets "the household of Onesiphorus" again in 4:19. We're told he came more than once ("oft refreshed me") and that in Rome he looked before he found, with "very diligently" sitting right between the two verbs.

Verse 18 closes with Ephesus, and Paul gives no particulars of what Onesiphorus did there because "thou knowest very well." In 1 Timothy 1:3 Paul had asked Timothy to "abide still at Ephesus," so it's likely the man who gets the order in verse 8 had seen somebody keep it up close.

So the chapter answers "be not ashamed" with two examples and no argument. One is the writer. The other is a man who went looking for him.

Who handed Timothy what, in verses 5 and 6?

Verse 6 gets the attention and verse 5, which comes right ahead of it, gets less.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5)

Lois and Eunice are named only in this verse, and Acts 16:1 says Timothy's mother "was a Jewess, and believed" and his father was a Greek, and gives neither woman a name. So everything we know about them comes from one clause, and the clause says only that the faith "dwelt first" in them and that Paul is sure it's in Timothy "also."

Verse 6 then gives a second route, since the gift is "in thee by the putting on of my hands." Faith, through a household. A gift, through an apostle's hands. Paul puts them side by side without ranking them.

Paul also says "remembrance" three times before he's through verse 6. He has "remembrance of thee" in his prayers in verse 3, he calls the faith to "remembrance" in verse 5, and in verse 6 he puts Timothy "in remembrance" of the gift. It reads like a man whose letter is mostly memory.

Second Timothy 3:14-15 comes back to the household, saying that "from a child" Timothy had known the holy scriptures. Verse 13 of our chapter names the other teacher, since the form of sound words is something Timothy "hast heard of me."

What is the difference between "keep" and "hold fast"?

Paul uses "keep" twice in this chapter and "hold fast" once, all three within verses 12 to 14.

Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. (2 Timothy 1:13-14)

In verse 12, God is the one who keeps: "he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him." In verse 14 Timothy is told to keep what was "committed unto thee," and he does it "by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us." The same English word, "committed," runs through both verses, handed in one direction and then the other. Paul hands something to God, and something was handed to Timothy. In verse 12 the holding is God's. In verse 14 Timothy does the keeping, but he has help he doesn't produce himself.

The first letter ends on the same verb: "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust" (1 Timothy 6:20). I went through that chapter last Friday and didn't touch that verb. What this chapter adds is the means. The keeping is done by the Holy Ghost that dwells in "us," and the pronoun has gone from "thee" to "us" in the middle of the sentence, so Paul counts himself in on it.

The chapter never lists the "sound words." It tells us two things about them. They came by hearing, "of me," and they're to be held "in faith and love," so whatever else the phrase covers, Paul put faith and love in the same breath with it and I'd do the same. John's promise that the Comforter "shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance" (John 14:26) lines up with Paul's habit of remembrance in the opening verses. That line-up is mine and not the chapter's.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were Lois and Eunice?

Timothy's grandmother and mother, according to 2 Timothy 1:5, and that verse is the only place they're named. Paul says their faith "dwelt first" in them and that he's persuaded it's in Timothy also. Acts 16:1 describes Timothy's mother as a believing Jewess without giving her name, so the name Eunice comes from this one clause and nowhere else.

What is the gift Timothy is told to stir up?

The chapter doesn't name it and tells us only how it came, "by the putting on of my hands." The fourth article of faith lists "Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost" among the first principles and ordinances, which is a reasonable thing to set beside verse 6. The verse doesn't say whether Paul means the Holy Ghost, some other gift or an office.

Does verse 7 mean a believer shouldn't ever feel afraid?

I don't read it that way, because the verse says what kind of spirit God gave and what kind he didn't, and the very next verse is an order. The Lord told Oliver Cowdery "Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not" (D&C 6:36), which is an instruction too. Feeling afraid and letting fear decide are different things, and neither verse tells you how to feel.

Is it "form" or "pattern" of sound words in verse 13?

In the Church's text it's "form." Verse 13 doesn't define it. Elsewhere the letters talk about "sound doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:10, and Titus 2:1 says "the things which become sound doctrine"), so Paul seems to mean the teaching he had given Timothy. That comes from other verses and this one doesn't spell it out.

Where I'm leaving it

Paul names two men who turned away and one who didn't, and he gives his own reason in three words, "I know whom."

The Tacoma is at a quarter tank and I'd like to be at my desk in Lehi by eight. The pay-at-pump screen at the station by the on-ramp has been dim since Monday, so I'll go inside and pay the clerk.

— D.