Remember Jesus Christ, 2 Tim 2:8

2 Tim 2:8

Remember Jesus Christ

2:8ESV Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel,

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

Remember--the act of calling to mind what has been committed or should have been committed to memory. It is another indicator of the primacy of the use of the mind in the Christian life.

Jesus is mentioned quite often in this little letter. In 4 Chaps--83 verses Jesus is mentioned 42 times. If we add the name of God into the number, it becomes 55.  This book is not just God-centered, it is Christ-centered. The Lord Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian message, even when addressing other issues like suffering (That is mentioned only four times in the book.) There are different ways in which Paul mentions Jesus. 6 times he uses Jesus Christ or the Lord Jesus Christ. 8 times he uses the name Christ Jesus. There are at least 15 pronouns that refer to Jesus and 1 use of Master, though Lord would have sufficed. He used that explicitly 11 times. Jesus or God are mentioned in more than half of the 83 verses that make up the book.

In vs 8: Paul is telling Timothy to remember this person, remember Jesus Christ. I can't imagine Timothy totally forgetting about Jesus. But, sometimes even ministers of the gospel need to be reminded about the basics. It is easy to get off track, even when preaching the truth. One gets off the track by forgetting to preach about Jesus and what his life or his words mean for the passage under consideration. Another way to get off track is to forget the ministry is about pointing others to what Jesus ahs said, his life and death and the good news of sins forgiven and life endued by the Spirit of God. The gospel is good news--it is the best news for the sin affected dying soul. There are very few passages that don't tell us something about Jesus and the various offices that have been given to him or at least point us to him directly or indirectly.

Jesus is the given name of the human expression of the second member of the eternal trinity. He was given this name by the God through the angelic messengers from God because Jesus was sent to save his people from their sins, Matt 1:21. The Hebrew Yeshua in its Greekified form is this name, Jesus.

Christ means that he is the specially anointed. He is the one prophesied about in the OT over 100 times. He is the one sent from god to deliver God's people from their sins. To be anointed is to have the special blessing of God upon you. A man cannot be more blessed than Jesus because Jesus God Himself and able to bless others. Jesus was God and man. The word incarnation literally means the enfleshment. It is when the eternal son of God took on flesh. That is why the virgin birth was needed to keep Jesus untainted from the sin of Adam.

Lord is often placed before the name Jesus. It is a title of respect and adoration for the one who is uniquely the master or Lord over all things. This is one aspect of who Jesus is that is most easily forgotten. He is Lord of all--even those who have not bowed their knee to him in faith taking him to be their personal Lord and Savior.

There was also so much that Jesus did in his life even before He came down to earth. He was an important part of what the faithful Jews expected. At some point they forgot life was all about waiting for the messiah as they became political--thinking that one day Israel would rule over all the nations from Jerusalem. They forgot the messiah, God's anointed one, would rule spiritually in the hearts of his people. And, there is so much more….

Timothy would have heard a lot of these details. By remembering, TImothy was to intentionally call to mind what he knew about Jesus from the many sources that would have been travelling around with Paul and from the Apostle himself.

Luke's gospel would give us a full idea of the kinds of truths Timothy, a Greek, had been exposed to through Paul's teaching ministry before the many witnesses. What Timothy was to call to mind was a part of the content he was to recall and preach to others. Knowing Jesus and knowing about him were two proverbial sides to the same coin. That one phrase is a summary of so many things that Jesus was and did. Thumb through one of the Gospels to remind yourselves--as you go back to remember Jesus.

This activity is for more than ministers, elders and those who aspire to that office.

The same sentiment is found in Hebrews 12. Remember is very close to the idea of considering. When we consider something, we take it apart in our minds, or with another person or a group of people. We break it up into many parts and consider each one and how they fit together to help us understand the whole. That is why some preachers spend many years preaching through a gospel or the life of Christ--it is to show the congregation all of the parts of what Jesus did and who he was. The expectation is that over time, those who hear will put it all together. Listen to Heb 12:1-2: It includes a familiar athlete metaphorà

Heb 12: 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 

As we run the race:

2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

It is easier to run looking out in the distance at a focal point than it is looking down at one's own feet. This is the metaphor being used. Look out to Jesus. Focus on him. He is the one who started the work in us and he is the one who will perfect it. He has all that is needed at his call. He will fulfill all he has promised to do in his people.

The writer to Hebrews goes on to remind his readers about What Jesus Did….

who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The cross was dreadful torture at the hands of professional armed soldiers. They crucified men for a living. They were professionals. If we were to rightly understand what happened to the Lord on his last two days alive before the burial, we would weep at the agony he suffered in his body. Add to that the suffering inflicted upon his soul, including his mind, as he suffered for his peopleà for you and meà only if we believe or come to believe. He despised the shame that that sort of death would have been to most as malefactors, enemies of the Roman empire. It was of no concern to Jesus. He knew he had to suffer for the sins of his electà He freely gave himself to that end so that those of us who believe or will come to have faith will not have to suffer on our own. He paid it all.

Based on verses 1-2 we are told to do something important:

3 Consider him [that is Jesus] who endured from sinners such hostility against himself,

He endured the sin of those who put him to death my Roman torture.

He endured the desire of his own people, the Jews, in Jerusalem who wanted him dead.

He endured being forsaken by his friends, the disciples.

He endured the penalty for the sins of all who would believe. He suffered the wrath of God against the sins of men and women like no other person or being.

He endured the fickle crowds who were always after him for stuff.

He endured the Pharisees, and others who sought a time when he could be killed during the last years of his ministry.

He endured all things for the same of his elect.

He endured through all suffering to be an example to us of how we might have to suffer--but never to the extent of it.

He endured through the many glorious experiences of praying with people, with meeting the faithful ones, of preaching the gospel and seeing some believe in him.

There is so much good to what Jesus was and what he representsà we sometimes forget the good as the contrary comes in and eclipses and eclipses the other. But, real things happen to us as we think about Jesus…

Even the disciples were told about the death and resurrection. It is as if all they heard and remembered was the death part of what would happen when they went to Jerusalem.

All of these things are worth considering.

The benefit of considering Jesus:

so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Are you ever tempted to grow weary and to be fainthearted? God gives us the remedy for that dangerous situation. It is simply, and exclusively to consider Jesus and the fullness of what that means. It is the answer that many are told, but few follow-through with it. People try all sorts of other means except for the one God gives us in his word. His means to avoid weariness in the Christian life and the temptation to faintheartedness is to remember Jesus Christ.

Paul would have known the needs of his dear son in the faith. The words back in 2 Tim 2:8 are for him particularly--Remember Jesus Christ….

Was Timothy in danger of growing weary or being fainthearted? With what Paul writes, it could be, or at least it is to prevent him from becoming like this.

It is a glorious remedy to times of being downcast in the Christian life--consider Jesus. Read through a gospel.

Remember Jesus and all that he is and means.

Paul refers to Jesus in two particular ways among the hundreds that could have been spoken. The first is as the….

….Seed of David

Why is this significant?

It was a thousand years earlier that the prophet, speaking under inspiration of God looked forward to a time when one from David's offspring would be king in a grand and glorious manner.

2 Samuel 7: 11 since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel, and have caused you to rest from all your enemies. Also the Lord tells you that He will make you a house. 12 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. 15 But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever." ' "

The work of God in giving the good news found in the Christian gospel was not a new thing. It had an ancient pedigree. It had always been God's plan to have a people. First to the Jews (Rom 1:16), but also to the Greeks. The Gentiles to whom Paul was called to go with the gospel and of which half of Timothy's enthnicity was made. He was half-Jewish and half Greek. Timothy had the privilege of having a lot in this gospel enterprise by way of his bloodlines. He was sent to his own people--more or less.

The legacy of the gospel was born out of Judaism, but was a new thing God was doing, as well. Timothy had a natural part in both worlds. The world that gave birth to the messiah and through prophecy told about his coming--which, by the way, was the only scriptures in existent at this time. The NT had not yet been written. Paul's letters were being circulated with a sense that they were scripture, but the collection of books we call the NT, was not yet established. So, this message, even to the Gentiles was based primarily upon the written word, the Jewish writings, even as it went to a Gentile audience. That is worth remembering always.

The Christian gospel was not tied to one kind of people, race or ethnicity, it was for the whole world even though it was of the Jews and Jesus was the King of Israel--but with an Israel with a more expansive definition--all who would be called to believe in the messiah--the king and prince of his people everywhere his kingdom would go. Whoever believed was made to be a subject in his kingdom and under his rule. Timothy needed to remember those sorts of realities.

Paul also mentions the Resurrection. The bodily resurrection from the dead was absurd to the Greek mind. They sought deliverance from the body, not deliverance in the body.

They saw the body as a prison house. It was the body that was organ of sin. The immaterial part of humanity, like the mind and soul, were the important parts.

When Paul preached in the Greek world, he often preached on the resurrection. It would have been a jolt to people's sensitivities. Among the philosophers on Mars Hill, they thought Paul was a babbler because of this doctrine.

The resurrection is an important doctrine going back to the beginning of God's revelation to mankind. We find in Job, one of the oldest book in the scriptures, the expectation that one day, Job would be raised in his flesh and that he would see God (19:25-26). The idea of resurrection had been central to biblical doctrine among the Jews. It should not surprise us that Timothy is encouraged to remember the resurrection, especially that of the Lord Jesus. It would have shocked the Greek mind as it appealed to their desire to live forever.

In Christianity, salvation is in the body and living the Christian life is about subduing the body through Spirit-assisted self-control. In Ephesus, there seems to have been a form of proto--Gnosticism that believed that Greek idea that the body was bad and could not be redeemed. We are in danger of going back to this doctrine from paganism in our day--especially in evangelical churches where it doesn't really matter what you do with your body as long as your soul is intact. The soul and spirit are distinguished as the soul, as the place where the divine presence is found, and the spirit, the animating life force that influences our thought and life is where we get our unique personality. Christian doctrine is that the totality of our being is saved when God calls us to be his own. Corruption is subdued by God's grace. TO be born anew is to be raised from spiritual death. We are raised to life to become dead to sin (Rom 6 and others: Eph 2:1,5,6; Col 2:12; 3:1.) That is what moritification of sin is all about--dying to sin. It is a doctrine we need to be reminded about and Timothy is more like us that we might want to admit. He needed to hear the same things that any believer needs to be taught.

It is through the resurrection of Jesus that many spiritual benefits come to us, especially Justification--the pardoning of our sins so that we may be given the righteousness of Christ on our account in heaven. 

To remember the resurrection is to remember the power of God in raising the dead physically, and spiritually and that he will raise all who believe to life with Christ in heaven for ever. Even our bodies will be raised and rejoined to our souls to be forever reunited in heaven, but in a state of glory and perfection.

What good news it is, that mere men and women can receive these wondrous realities found only in the Christian gospel.

This same privilege that can bring undescribable joy and heavenly glory to us as we await the general resurrection of all. Those who believe to eternal life in the special loving presence of god. Those who don't believe will experience the judgment and wrath of God forever.

Based on who you are right now, where will you spend eternity?

If it is not in God's heaven, or it doesn't appear that you believe in Jesus for the salvation of your body and soul, in the stillness of your mind call out to God to give you undeserved grace to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you believe, consider Jesus and remember Him, especially all the ramifications of his resurrection and his being the offspring of David, the ancient king.

Amen