Introduction

Be strong. Suffer hardship. Remember Jesus Christ. These are Paul's words of counsel to Timothy in a fallen world and imperfect church. Timothy is facing persecution and many dangers, toils, and snares as he lives and ministers among the people of God. Paul's words are not only inspired words of counsel suitable for a minister of the gospel, but also for all the people in the Ephesian church who are living the Christian life. These are suitable words for us.

Be strong. Suffer hardship. Remember Jesus Christ. These are Paul's words of counsel to Timothy in a fallen world and imperfect church. Timothy is facing persecution and many dangers, toils, and snares as he lives and ministers among the people of God. Paul's words are not only inspired words of counsel suitable for a minister of the gospel, but also for all the people in the Ephesian church who are living the Christian life. These are suitable words for us.

The Christian life requires strength through God's grace.

First of all, Paul says, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." The very first thing that Paul tells Timothy is that Christian life and ministry is characterized by dependent responsibility.

When you first hear those words, you may sense a contradiction. On the one hand, Timothy is being exhorted to strengthen himself, to be ready for vigorous, active service for the Lord. We could picture a cowboy in an old Western movie telling his apprentice to "cowboy up"—to be strong, ready to take on the hardships of service. It's a call to personal exertion. It's a call to personal strength in the service of God. But Paul says, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." He's calling on Timothy to be ready to work vigorously, but to do so while utterly reliant on the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Timothy is not to summon up the strength natively within him and do the best he can. He is to be utterly dependent on the grace that is in Christ Jesus. In this exhortation we see a summation of the massive biblical truth that all of Christian life is a matter of dependent responsibility.

Sometimes we live the Christian life as if God has saved us, and now it's up to us. We think, The Lord saved me by his grace, and now the rest is up to me. Other times we live according to this manner of thinking: Well, the Lord's done it all. I just need to sit back, relax, let go, and let God, because it's all about grace anyway, isn't it? The apostle Paul will never let us rest with either incorrect attitude, because they're unbiblical. The apostle Paul wants us to work by grace, so he exhorts Timothy and the Ephesians and you and me to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. In every aspect of the Christian life—whether we're worshiping, serving people that are a little bit hard to serve, or attempting a challenging feat of ministry—we must simultaneously serve with every possible resource at our disposal engaged and yet be in utter, humble, dependent reliance upon God.

There is a nexus in every aspect of the Christian life: we are called to be responsible, yet also reliant upon the grace of God. This is because God is sovereign, and we are responsible. That's the way God has created this world. He is the sovereign ruler over this world and his church. He supplies the church with what she needs. At the same time, he expects us to engage all of our energy for his purposes.

What God requires, he supplies. The prayer of Augustine captures this so beautifully: "Lord, command what you will, but give what you command." In other words: Lord, tell me to do anything you want me to do, but then enable me, by your grace and supply, to do the things you have called me to do.

The old Puritan motto in prayer was: "Pray and Work." The Puritans remind us that prayer and work go hand in hand, because depending on God and serving God go hand in hand. Paul is telling Timothy to work in conscious dependence upon the grace of God—to work knowing that the gift of God is the instrument whereby he will make his work effective, but be strong in the grace of Christ.

There was a man who had a small, struggling business. He was just ahead of the creditors, so he would work all day long, come home and eat, and then go back to the office. When he wasn't working, he was worrying or fretting about the company. He had many a sleepless night. He didn't want to take vacation days or close the shop on holidays because he thought: We might lose business that would otherwise keep the doors open and pay the employees and the taxes and put food on the table for the rest of the month. He worked and worked, but he could never rest because, as he worked, he didn't trust that God would supply his need. He worked, but he wasn't strong in the grace of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, there was a woman who also had a small business, and she worked hard. She went to work early and stayed late. But when she came home, she stopped thinking about work. When a holiday came, she closed up shop. It didn't matter how much needed to be brought in the next week before payroll had to be made. When it came vacation time, she sent the employees home, closed the shop for a week, and they all took the time off. She slept well at night. She worked hard, but she didn't worry and fret. What was going on? She was working hard, but also trusting God to supply what she couldn't make happen. She couldn't make new business come in the door. She couldn't guarantee what was going to happen tomorrow. But she worked hard and trusted that God would supply.

Paul is calling on us to be strong—not by our own power, but in the grace that is in Jesus Christ. What God requires, he supplies by his Spirit. As he calls us to activity in the Christian life, he promises us he will supply the strength we need to do what he has called us to do.

Here is the first call of Paul to Timothy: Be strong in the grace of Christ. These words remind us that the Christian life is not a life of laziness. It's not a life of leisure and ease. It's a life of work. That feeds right into the very next thing that Paul says to us in this passage.

The Christian life requires hardship.

In verse 3 Paul writes: "Suffer hardship with me." Paul says to Timothy: Christian life and ministry expects hardship and embraces it. I've been let down by everybody in Asia Minor. I led most of them to Christ, starting most of their churches. But they have all let me down.

This is a word of warning to Timothy. Paul is saying: Timothy, don't go into the Christian ministry thinking that the church is always going to come through for you.

Paul's not speaking of an imperfect church. He's speaking about the natural hardships of Christian life and Christian ministry. He says: Here's the mindset that I want you to have, Timothy. I want you to expect hardship, so that you're not surprised by it when it comes along. When building up the church turns out to be hard work, don't be discouraged by that. Expect it, because the Christian life is a life of hardship. Here's the attitude I want you to have: be ready to suffer with me. Have a mindset that expects hard work and suffering in gospel life and ministry.

That's so important for us to grasp. We live in an affluent society that cherishes ease and comfort. When hardship comes along, we are typically surprised by it. We think something must be wrong: It's not supposed to be this way. It's supposed to be easy. The church is supposed to grow easily. The church is supposed to work easily. The Christian life is supposed to be easy. Becoming godly is supposed to be easy. And this hardship —I don't understand it. I don't know why this is happening to me. The apostle Paul says: I want you to have the mindset of a soldier. I want you to have the mindset of an athlete. I want you to have the mindset of a farmer.

In Paul's day soldiers for the Roman army were recruited away from their jobs. Some of them might have been farmers, but then they were recruited by a captain or a general and placed in military service. They were paid to serve in the Roman army so they wouldn't think about their farms back home. In the movie Gladiator, Caesar asks Maximus, "How long have you been away from your wife and your home?" Maximus responds, "Two years, 246 days, and this morning." His service for Caesar has taken him away from home for almost three years, but he suffers that hardship as a good soldier. Paul is saying: Christian, be ready for the kind of sacrifices and hardships that are called for in the Christian life.

Paul then speaks of the athlete. Athletes in the ancient Greek games were required to come before the judges prior to the contest and swear to Zeus they had been in training for at least 10 months. This is probably what Paul means when he says you can't win the prize unless you compete according to the rules. Unless you can acknowledge you have been in hard training for 10 months, you can't even compete for the prize.

Paul then speaks of the farmer. Before the farmer gets his yield, he's got to prepare the soil by breaking it up the soil and clearing it of rocks. Then he has to plant the seed and endure all the threats that come with weather. It is only then that he receives his reward.

All three of these images—the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer—are images Paul gives us to remind us of the sacrifice and hard work that is part and parcel of the Christian life.

In Henry V, William Shakespeare describes the moment when King Henry V of England speaks to his vastly outnumbered troops before the battle of Agincourt. He's trying to get them to look at things from a different perspective. He stands up and gives this speech:

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian ….
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.' …
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother ….

He's saying: We will glory in the fact that we were here to fight this fight. Those who were not here to fight it with us will curse the day they weren't here to go through this trial. He changes their mindset about how to look at this battle. Paul is saying to Timothy: Embrace that hardship.

When we are called to experience the wounds of an imperfect church, we should, as Christians in this prosperous society, quickly embrace that opportunity to endure the hurt. We have so few trials relative to our Christian brothers and sisters around the world.

So also we should embrace the hardships that the Lord brings our way in the Christian life. Perhaps the Lord teaches us to trust in the most difficult of ways, setting his finger upon the one we love the most and removing that one from us. Perhaps the Lord teaches us to serve the Lord Jesus Christ at great personal cost and expense. We should quickly embrace these hardships of the Christian life.

The Christian life requires remembering the truth about Jesus.

Paul says one last thing to Timothy in verse 8: "Remember Jesus Christ." Be strong in the grace of Christ Jesus, suffer hardship with me, and remember Christ Jesus. He's reminding Timothy that the Christian life and Christian service is based on the person of Christ, on the work of Christ, and on the truth of Christ. He's calling on Timothy to remember the one who is truth and life.

This exhortation is so relevant. Within four decades of Paul's death—he died somewhere in the 60s of the first century—all kinds of crazy things were being taught in Christian churches planted by Paul, Timothy, John, Peter, and the other apostles. There were people who taught that Jesus was not a descendant of David and was not bodily raised from the dead. In other words, they were preaching a Jesus of their own imagination. So Paul says: Timothy, you remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, the descendant of David according to my gospel.

Paul said this not because Paul had invented Jesus, but because Paul had been called by Jesus to be a proclaimer of his gospel. Paul wanted the truth to be proclaimed. He's saying: Timothy, you remember Jesus Christ as he is. You remember him as he's taught in the Bible. You remember him in accordance with the Scripture—as the one who is the anointed descendant of David, raised again from the dead in his own body.

Paul's final exhortation is important for us today, because it seems like everywhere you go there's someone who wants to say who they think Jesus is. Whatever flows from their mouth is heresy, contradicting everything the Bible says about Jesus. But we know that only the Jesus of the gospel will save you—the Christ who is crucified, dead and buried, raised again on the third day, and now reigns as the Savior of the world.

Paul says to Timothy—and to you and me: Be strong in grace. Live this life in dependent responsibility. Be ready to suffer hardship. Don't be surprised when hardship comes into your life. And whatever you do, remember Jesus Christ preached according to the gospel.

For Your Reflection

Personal growth: How has this sermon fed your own soul? ___________________________________________

Skill growth: What did this sermon teach you about how to preach? ____________________________________________________________________________

Exegesis and exposition: Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Theological Ideas: What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and the unique message that God is putting on your heart? ____________________________________________________________________________

Outline: How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting points? _____________________________________________________________________

Application: What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message you sense God wants you to bring to your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Illustrations: Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Credit: Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so, when and how will you do it?

Ligon Duncan is the Chancellor/CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary and the John E. Richards Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology.