Biblical Frameworks: Book by Book

2 Timothy will be released in 2009.


Monday, 10 November 2008
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2 Timothy is possibly the very last letter that the great apostle Paul ever wrote. We come to the end of the thrilling life of a man who had served Jesus with all his heart, mind, soul and strength. What would be his final instruction to the ...church? As he got ready to die, what did he want to say in order to build up the expanding multinational Church of Jesus the Messiah?


It may be regarded as the dying counsels of the most eminent of the apostles to one who has just entered on the ministerial life… We feel that, having little time to express his wishes, he will select topics that lie nearest his heart, and that he deems most important. There is no more interesting position in which we can be placed, than when we sit down at such a man’s feet, and listen to his parting counsels. To a young minister of the gospel, therefore, this epistle is invaluable; to any and every Christian, it cannot fail to be a matter of interest to listen to the last words of the great apostle of the Gentiles…


In our day we see the desperate need for Bible teachers in every local church. We have seen the terrible devastation brought on the Church by false teachers, self-serving personalities, status-seeking careerists and men who do little more than declare their own religious opinions from the pulpit. In this final letter from Paul we how his greatest concern for the health and growth of the future Church was self-sacrificial Bible teachers who were determined to speak only as God has spoken.


In the first letter to Timothy Paul instructed Timothy in all the basics of being a faithful minister in a local church. In this second letter he sets two alternatives before Timothy. He could be a barren, compromised, unfaithful minister who would be ashamed at the appearing of Jesus…. Or he could be a fruitful and faithful minister who would be received with great joy by Jesus on that final day.


It is a vital challenge. Having been united to Jesus in His death and resurrection, what kind of life and ministry will we have? How can we fulfil our duty in the way that Paul himself did? If we are saved from hell but live a life of fruitless compromise, how will we face Jesus when He appears? Just what did He save us for?


It is clear that this letter was written when Paul was a prisoner – see 1:8, 16. Was this during the time of his imprisonment at Caesarea? Was it during his imprisonment at Rome? Was he released from prison in Rome and then subsequently re-arrested? It is our view that this letter was written by Paul during a second imprisonment in Rome and we provide the following reasons for this view.



1. In Paul’s letters to the Philippians and Philemon he was confident of being released – Philippians. 2:24; Philemon verse 22. Here he expected to be executed – 2 Timothy 4:6.


2. In chapter 4:16 he refers to an earlier trial. “The most natural interpretation is to suppose that he had one hearing, and had been discharged, and that the imprisonment of which he speaks in this epistle was a second one.” This is also implied in 4:17 – “I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.”


3. In 4:20 he seems to speak of a recent journey he made, leaving Erastus at Corinth and Trophimus at Troas. It is clear from Acts 26-27 that he did not stop at either Corinth or Troas on the way to his first imprisonment in Rome. It was 5 years before his first journey to Rome that he had been at Corinth, and would he really need to tell Timothy about Erastus and Trophimus after such a long interval?


4. In 2 Timothy 4:13 Paul requests a cloak, books and parchments from Troas. This seems to indicate that he had recently been there and had left them in his unexpected departure. Again, we would have to ask, if he was still in his initial imprisonment, did he not need these things in the intervening five years? He had spent two years in Caesarea and could easily have sent for these things.


5. In the letters from his first imprisonment he speaks of certain people being with him, but in this letter they are spoken of as absent. In Colossians 1:1 Timothy was with him. In Colossians 4:10 Mark was with him. Now Paul asks for both Timothy and Mark to come to him (2 Timothy 4:10). In Colossians 4:14 Demas was with him, but now (2 Timothy 4:10) Demas has betrayed the gospel and gone to Thessalonica. These facts seem to indicate a change in circumstances since the earlier prison letters.


So, if Paul was in Rome in a second imprisonment , where was Timothy?


It seems clear that he was Ephesus. In 2 Timothy 4:19 Paul asks him to greet the household of Onesiphorus, and 1:18 indicates he was an Ephesian. In 4:13 Paul wants Timothy to visit Troas on the way to Rome, and 2 Cor. 2:12 & Acts 20:5 seem to indicate that Troas lay between Rome and Ephesus. Paul warns Timothy about Alexander (2 Timothy 4:14), and we know Alexander was an Ephesian (1 Timothy 1:20; Acts 19:33). Finally, in 2 Timothy 4:9 he asks Timothy to come, then adds (verse 12) that he had sent Tychicus to Ephesus. In Titus 3:12 we see that Paul did not like to leave a place without a leader, so it helps us to see that Tychicus was replacing Timothy


Paul BlackhamRead More

2 Corinthians will be released in early 2009.


Monday, 10 November 2008
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Key Truth: In all the sufferings of life, the God who raises the dead will comfort those who trust Jesus.


Jesus is the model for Christian leadership.


Jesus shows all His under-shepherds how to be a leader. He told us that the key to ...leadership and authority is service. Whoever wants to be first must be the slave of everybody else [Matthew 20:27].


Christian leadership is as big an issue today as it has ever been. If the shepherds are adopting the lifestyles and assumptions of the surrounding pagan world, then Christ’s sheep will not be led into the green pastures they so desperately need.


If 1 Corinthians was all about the community life of the local church, then 2 Corinthians is all about the ministers in local churches. What kind of leaders does the church really need?


For this reason, we will begin by reminding ourselves how the apostles were confronted with this issue by Jesus in Matthew 20:20-28.


The mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favour of him.

"What is it you want?" He asked.

She said, "Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom."

"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said to them. "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?"

"We can," they answered.

Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father."

When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."


Notice that Jesus begins by asking Mrs Zebedee and her sons what they really want. This is the profound question that we will be faced with as we study 2 Corinthians. Do we really want to be famous and well-liked? Do we really want to have financial security? Do we really want sexual excitement? Do we want intense spiritual experiences?... or do we really want to know true fellowship with Jesus?


Well, Mrs Zebedee is pretty blunt: she wants her sons to be the top of Jesus’ government in His kingdom. Jesus’ reply is very deep. He explains that such leadership in His kingdom only comes through great suffering and self-sacrifice. The surrounding world thinks of authority and leadership as a personal privilege to get power over others. Jesus’ kingdom is the very opposite. In His kingdom authority and leadership come as we place ourselves under others, being their servant, placing their needs ahead of our own. “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve…”.


Jesus is the model for Christian leadership.


“Second Corinthians is a letter stained with Paul’s blood, sweat and tears”.


Paul had poured his heart and soul into the church at Corinth. As we read this letter we may be shocked or even troubled by how much Paul is driven to share his own life and ministry. He reveals his deepest secrets and opens his whole biography for public inspection. Why does he do this?


Paul is almost ‘on trial’ throughout this letter. It is clear that outsiders had infiltrated the Corinthians church, probably Jewish teachers who were opposed to the true gospel of Jesus, and they were undermining the character and message of Paul. Now we know that if it were only Paul’s personal reputation that was at stake, he cared nothing for that. However, Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ, personally commissioned by Jesus to take His gospel to the nations of the world. If Paul’s life and ministry were rejected by the churches then the gospel of Jesus would be undermined.


Then just as now, we cannot reject Jesus’ apostles without rejecting Jesus as well.


The church at Corinth had absorbed the values of the self-centred values of the world so that Paul’s imitation of Jesus Christ was a problem for them.


If we knew nothing of the city of Corinth we could almost deduce many of its characteristics from 1 Corinthians, for the weaknesses of a church are so often reflections of the society in which it is located. We see the culture’s competitiveness in the church’s party spirit, its intellectualism in the quest for wisdom and knowledge, its licentiousness in the problems of sexual morality, its paganism in the questions related to idolatry, its desire for display in the exaltation of the more showy spiritual gifts, and its emphasis on incorporeal immortality in the debate about the resurrection…


Their criticisms of Paul, which made it necessary for him to write a letter like 2 Corinthians, were influenced by their image of what a leader should be, and this too reflected their environment. Leadership style and the principles of Christian ministry constitute the great theme of this second letter.


Paul BlackhamRead More