Hi James and Ellen,
2 Timothy is the second recorded personal letter that Paul sent to Timothy and Paul’s last canonized letter. It was around 67 A.D. that Timothy received this second documented letter that Paul sent to him. While Paul was on his first missionary journey – which was around 47 A.D., Paul spent some time in the city of Lystra. During Paul’s time in the city of Lystra, Paul met Eunice and her ma Lois – who were a couple of devout Jews. Eunice’s husband was Greek. Eunice and her Greek husband had a kid who they named Timothy. Probably from the time that Timothy began to understand what was being said to him, Eunice and Lois instructed Timothy on the teachings of the Torah regarding the life and worship laws that God gave through Moses to His specially chosen guys and gals – who are the Israelite people group guys and gals – or the Jews, to live by. After Paul told Eunice, Lois and Timothy about the Good News belief paradigm that had been launched by the life, teachings, suffering, death and resurrection of an incarnated man whose name is Jesus Christ, Eunice, Lois and Timothy became Christ-followers. When Paul about four years later returned to the city of Lystra on his second missionary journey and even though Timothy had to have known about the hardships and persecution that Paul and his traveling companion – who was Barnabas, had experienced on Paul’s first missionary journey, Timothy was convinced by Paul to go with him and his traveling companion – who was Silas, as they continued on Paul’s second missionary journey – which ended up having them enter into the land area of Macedonia. Timothy became ‘branded’ as being Paul’s spiritual kid. Timothy – over the next twenty years or so, became one of Paul’s principal traveling companions as well as one of Paul’s itinerant reps.
Even though what Paul asked Timothy to do had to have often challenged Timothy’s reserved personality and hardwired timidity, Timothy’s innate selfless willingness character strength to do whatever he was asked to do for the sake of the emergent Christ-follower church had him ministering in servant leadership positions. Several years before Paul penned this second letter to Timothy, Paul had Timothy go to the city of Ephesus to oversee the elders of the house fellowships that had been ‘planted’ in the city of Ephesus. Your grandpaa conjectures that the elders in the fellowships of Christ-followers that were meeting in houses in the city of Ephesus were probably graduates from the Tyrannus Hall Bible Education Program. About ten years before he couriered this letter to Timothy, Paul taught Bible for two years in Tyrannus Hall. During the three or so years that Paul spent in the city Ephesus, your grandpaa thinks that Timothy probably got to know the Tyrannus Hall graduates – as he thinks that Timothy probably spent a lot of time in the city of Ephesus when Paul was there on his third missionary journey. At the time that Paul penned the four chapters that make up the second letter that he sent to Timothy, Paul was a lonely prisoner confined to a dank, dark dungeon. A year or so after Paul penned this letter to Timothy, Nero martyred Paul.
Because Paul knew that his time living on planet Earth was about up, Paul – as Timothy’s spiritual dad, uses this letter to encourage his spiritual kid to staunchly endure in the faith that his ma and grandma had in believing in the Good News, to resolutely teach the truths that separate the Good News from other teachings, and to faithfully preach the Good News message in season and out of season. This second letter that Paul sent to Timothy is in sharp contrast to the first letter that Paul sent about four years earlier to Timothy– which is to your grandpaa a foreboding, confrontational and tactical letter. Paul’s instructions in this letter to Timothy on how to do disciple making became the foundational underpinning for the Bible education programs that your grandmaa and grandpaa were instrumental in helping to initiate in Bolivia and Guatemala. A disciple to Paul is a guy or gal who desires to be taught so that he or she can teach God’s truths to other guys and gals, who desires to be enabled so that he or she can defend God’s divine plans, who desires to be trained so that he or she can compete to win the prize in God’s life race, who desires to be trained so that he or she can be a productive fruit producer for God, who desires to be apprenticed so that he or she can be an invaluable day laborer for God, who desires to be a flawlessly molded tool so that he or she can be used for God’s sake and who desires to be sealed by God with His servant’s seal so that he or she can live a life of service serving God. Your grandpaa senses that disciple making today in Christ-follower fellowships is the missing link towards having a mature Christ-follower family of guys and gals. An indictment that your grandpaa has against Christ-follower fellowships today is that there invariably seems to be a pastoral oversight who has taken on a papal like authority. The Paul model – which mimicked Jesus’ model of group discipleship, is to use interactive teaching with each guy which the guy is to then proactively apply in real life situations. The training/teaching model that your grandmaa and grandpaa promoted was a Jesus’ group prototype. Your grandpaa believes that two years of receiving intensive Bible instruction is the minimum that a guy should have before he assumes a church oversight position. Jesus spent at least two years with his group of twelve disciples. Your grandpaa’s ideal class size is twelve guys. Timothy is an example of a guy who in spite of his apparent limitations did well because of his living faith in God.
2 Timothy