“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may
be cheered by news of you. For I have no
one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests not
those of Jesus Christ. But you know
Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the
gospel. I hope therefore to send him
just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust in the Lord that
shortly I myself will come also.” –Philippians 2:19-24 (ESV).
“I have no one like him,” wrote Paul of the younger preacher Timothy as he
planned to send him on a journey to the church at Philippi. What a commendation coming from his teacher
and mentor whom Timothy considered as a father and Paul, in turn, termed Timothy
his ‘son in the gospel.’ Scholars generally agree that the letter
to the church at Philippi was written about 62 A. D. when Paul was a prisoner
in Rome. The salutation of the letter
says it is from “Paul and Timothy,
servants of Christ Jesus’ (1:1). As
we learned in the study of Acts, Paul, though imprisoned, was in his own ‘hired
house,’ and even though guarded by a Roman soldier from the Praetorian Guard,
he could have visitors. Timothy was with
him when he wrote the letter to the church at Philippi and was to be sent
shortly by Paul, probably to bear the letter, and certainly to encourage and
teach the Philippian Christians. In the
letter, Paul is optimistic and thankful, even from prison, stating: “”I want you to know, brothers, that what has
happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become
known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my
imprisonment is for Christ. And most of
the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much
more bold to speak the word without fear.” (Phil. 1:12-14). Observing this
attitude in Paul, his mentor, it follows that Timothy would have been greatly
influenced by his optimism. Paul had
heard from Epaphroditus when he took a love offering to Paul from the church
that there was some division in the fellowship.
Paul was interested to know how the church at Philippi fared, and was
sending Timothy to them. Timothy had a
genuine concern for the people’s welfare, what we sometimes call ‘a pastor’s
heart.’ Until Paul himself could be
freed from prison with the possibility of visiting the church at Philippi
again, he was sending Timothy as Christ’s representative.
What
we know of Timothy we learn from Acts and from several of Paul’s letters. He was instructed as a child by his mother
Eunice and his grandmother Lois. He was
born in Lystra of a Jewish mother and a Greek father. He was converted to Christianity on Paul’s
first missionary journey (Acts 14:6-23) and was referred to several times as
Paul’s ‘child in the faith’ (1 Cor. 4:17; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2). Of the thirteen letters written by Paul in
the New Testament, seven of them have both Paul and Timothy listed as authors
in the salutation: 2 Corinthians,
Philippians, Colossians, I and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon. In addition, Paul
wrote two letters to Timothy. I Timothy
was written to him when he was at Ephesus serving as pastor of that
church. He encouraged Timothy to “know how one ought to behave in the
household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress
of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15). In the
second letter to Timothy, Paul urges his protégé to minister in the spirit, “not of fear but of power and love and
self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7) and to never “be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord” (1:8). Paul asked Timothy to visit him in
prison, to come before winter and bring his winter coat, and to brings scrolls
and parchments so Paul could study (see 2 Tim. 1:4, 4:13, 21). Hebrews 13:23
speaks of Timothy’s imprisonment and release. To
have an older, dedicated mentor is a good experience for a younger
Christian. Paul’s ‘son in the gospel,’
Timothy, had a good example to follow and he proved himself faithful. To God be the glory.
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