NOTES for Ti2 2:4

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⁴No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

In the Epistle to Timothy, as in some other cases, Paul compares the Christian to a soldier who cannot allow himself to be entangled in the everyday affairs that burden others.

It may appear that, in that case, a Christian should have neither home nor family, and that the only possible Christian path is the monastic path: a monk is in fact like a soldier precisely because nothing in this world binds him. But in reality this does not have to be about monasticism, although there is a definite connection between the path of a monk and the path of a soldier, at least as it was understood in traditional cultures. The issue is, above all, the inner state of a person, which the Bible calls poverty. Not in the sense of material condition, but precisely in the sense of a spiritual state.

Of course, in certain cases, for certain people, the path of inner poverty is possible only with a complete renunciation, including an outward one, not only of every kind of wealth but also of family and home, and therefore of property in general, apart from the bare minimum needed. But the point is not such renunciation in itself. The point is to renounce every attempt to rely in life on anything except God.

And for this a person must realize the simple and, on the whole, obvious fact that we do not even belong to ourselves: after all, we became human beings because of that "breath of life" which God "breathed" into us at creation. And if we are not our own, but God's, then our claims to own anything in this world have hardly any meaning. God gives us the whole world, but not as a possession; He gives it for use and stewardship, yet on one necessary condition: the practical recognition of His full and unconditional sovereignty both over the world and over us ourselves.

And then a person can, while using everything, live having nothing and binding himself to nothing, like a soldier who, while he is in service, does not think about how to earn his living, but thinks about how to carry out the order he has received. His food is provided by the one in whose service the soldier stands. And if such an attitude toward life is expected of everyone who has entered the spiritual path, then all the more should it be characteristic of a Christian as an inhabitant of the Kingdom, which is what Paul reminds Timothy of.

Other notes

For Ti2 2:1-13

¹Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

²And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

³Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

⁴No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

⁵And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.

⁶The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.

⁷Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.

⁸Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel:

⁹Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.

¹⁰Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

¹¹It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:

¹²If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:

¹³If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

Continuing the conversation about witness, Paul draws attention to the witness's responsibility. For the apostle, witness is... Read more

Continuing the conversation about witness, Paul draws attention to the witness's responsibility. For the apostle, witness is a kind of spiritual relay, in the course of which everyone who has received the possibility of sharing in the life of the Kingdom afterward becomes a witness for those seeking new life (vv. 1-2). And the issue here, as we can see, is not merely a sense of duty, even a duty that people sometimes call sacred. The point is that witness is the normal spiritual state of a Christian. Of course, this does not mean that a Christian must spend whole days preaching, telling everyone around him about Christ and the Kingdom. It means something else: if Christianity for a person is truly new life, and not simply a new religion or a new morality, he will not be able to hide this new life from those around him, and will hardly want to hide it. The issue is not only the joy experienced by everyone who knows what the Kingdom is.

The point is also that the Kingdom can exist only by continuously expanding and including new inhabitants within itself. The breath of the Kingdom was not accidentally experienced, particularly on the day of Pentecost, as wind: like the wind, it knows no barriers, and like air, it penetrates everywhere it possibly can, occupying all available space. The difference between this breath and physical air is only that it spreads from heart to heart, and love for neighbor becomes for it the same organic medium of spreading that the atmosphere is for the wind. And a Christian, unless he wants to lose the Kingdom, must certainly become part of this process, this spiritual movement connected with the spread of the Kingdom in our world, which is being transformed but is not yet fully transformed. Only then will his own spiritual life be complete, as Paul reminds Timothy (vv. 3-7).

He also reminds his disciple of something else: the faithfulness to Christ without which there is no Kingdom (vv. 8-13). For Paul it is obvious that faithfulness to Christ and faithfulness to the Kingdom are one and the same, because Jesus of Nazareth is not simply a Teacher who shows the way. He Himself is the Kingdom; He bears it in Himself in all its fullness. A Christian can renounce the Kingdom to the extent that, before the complete transformation of his human nature, he still lives a divided life. Belonging to the Kingdom only in part, he also still belongs in part to the old, untransformed order of things. Christ is different: He is wholly the Kingdom. There is no other life in Him, and for Him to renounce the Kingdom would mean to renounce Himself. And Paul, as we can see, calls Timothy and all other Christians to become like Christ precisely in this fullness, in the fullness of the life of the Kingdom.