2Timothy

Dealing with Intimidation, Part 5: A Sound Mind

October 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Facing a Giant | Part 2: No Panic | Part 3: Power | Part 4: Love

When we’re facing something intimidating, God hasn’t given us a spirit that panics and runs away; rather, he gives us a set of gifts that empower us to do the opposite: to move confidently ahead to take on the challenge. The first of those gifts is strength, or power; why panic if you can take the guy? The second is love, which frees you from fearing the personal consequences of the outcome: what happens to others is of more consequence to you than what happens to you.

The third and final gift is “a sound mind” (KJV), or “sound judgment” (CSB), “discipline” (NASB), “self discipline” (NIV), “self-control” (ESV). Admittedly, those alleged “synonyms” cover a lot of territory; we’re looking at a lot of possible nuances.

We should probably start with the underlying Greek word and work our way out. The word is sophronismos, a noun apparently derived from sophos, “wise,” and phren, “understanding.” It occurs only here in the New Testament, but the related verb, sophroneo, occurs 6 times, of which 3 speak of mental health or sanity (twice of the maniac of Gadara [Mk 5.15; Lk 8.35] and once of Paul as a self-reference [2Co 5.13]), and 3 (Ro 12.3; Ti 2.6; 1P 4.7) speak of wisdom, or “self-control over one’s passions and desires,” as one lexicon puts it. Not long after Paul wrote 2 Timothy, Clement, the bishop of Rome, wrote in an epistle to the Corinthian church that the Corinthian women were managing “the affairs of their household in seemliness, with all discretion” (1Clement 1.3), and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wrote to the Philippian church that “our widows must be sober-minded concerning the faith of the Lord” (PPhil 4.3).

So this has to do with clear thinking—not so much raw intelligence, but the ability to analyze a problem and to come up with a practical solution.

I had an uncle like that. His name was Clarence, but everybody called him Red, and family called him Hooligan. As a boy I actually thought that was his name, until a teacher looked at me oddly when I referred to “my Uncle Hooligan.” Red dropped out of school after the third grade, I think it was, and went to work doing whatever he could that was reasonably age appropriate. He spent most of his adult life in construction and excelled at it. My Dad spoke almost reverently of his ability to look at a construction problem and just know, apparently intuitively, what the solution was. When he worked with trusses, it appeared to Dad that Red, the third-grade dropout, was doing trigonometry in his head.

I suspect that his skill was a combination of natural ability and lots of experience.

But we have something far more powerful—a divine gift, designed to enable us to see an intimidating problem through to a successful solution. Even beyond that, this is self-discipline; it’s good judgment; it’s moderation. It’s what a drug addict or an alcoholic doesn’t have. In short, it’s the ability to direct your own behavior, the ability to not be out of control.

You are not at the mercy of your own temperament, or your own personality, or your own weaknesses.

Maybe you’re “not a people person”; maybe you’ve always been shy.

Maybe you’re not intellectually gifted and can’t engage in witty repartee. Maybe, like me, you don’t have a natural sense of compassion that spurs you to take a genuine interest in the lives and difficulties of others.

These characteristics do not control you; God has given you the ability to do what He asks, even if you can’t—even if you have no natural ability.

God has given you the ability to choose to do His will.

And when you put all these gifts together, intimidation loses its greatest power. It can make you afraid, but it cannot make you flee the field; it cannot make you collapse in spiritual exhaustion; it cannot make you escape by turning within yourself; it cannot leave you without workable answers.

Exercising these gifts well may take practice and thus time. But the gifts are there.

We ought to use them.

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Dealing with Intimidation, Part 4: Love

September 30, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Facing a Giant | Part 2: No Panic | Part 3: Power

God’s second gift to the intimidated is perhaps a surprise. If I’m facing a situation that might provoke cowardice, then it makes sense for God to give me power. I can put that to use right away.

But love? Seriously? What’s love got to do with it?

It may help if we begin by defining our terms.

We’ve all heard that there are 4 Greek words for love. C. S. Lewis even wrote a book about them. They’re usually presented this way:

Eros is physical, sexual love.
Storge is the love of people who are like you.
Philia is natural, brotherly love.
Agape is divine love.

As usual, it’s not necessarily like this. For starters, Greek, like English, has multiple words for love, but the exact number depends on your presuppositions about what qualifies as love. Some people suggest 4; some suggest 6; some suggest 7; and a diligent use of a thesaurus, or a resource like Louw and Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, might yield any number of justifiable synonyms.

Further, in no language, including Greek, do words work like this—neatly classifiable into clearly distinct categories. Sometimes synonyms are just, well, synonyms that can be used pretty much interchangeably. In this case, for example, God is not restricted to agape love; Jesus said that the Father has philia for the Son (Jn 5.20).

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that philia is a natural affection, while agape is an act of the will. As evidence, it’s noted that agapao appears in the imperative, implying that it’s something we can choose to do. Trouble is, phileo appears in the imperative too, 29 times in the New Testament, in the Gospels, the Epistles, and Revelation.

We really need to pay attention to context and not be mechanistic about assigning nuances. Because we’re in the image of God, we’re creative, and we use our words creatively; they are not confined to a single meaning. Nobody uses language like that; I don’t, and neither do you.

So.

The word here in 2 Timothy 1.7 is agape. But because it appears in a list, without much in the way of context—other than that it’s something God gifts to us in situations where one might expect cowardice—we’re not going to be able to make any hard distinctions about why Paul used this word for love and not one of the other ones.

Our time would be spent more profitably meditating on the core question I asked at the beginning of this essay—why does God give us love when we’re intimidated? What’s the point?

And is this God’s love for us, or our love for him, or our love for others?

Here I think the context helps us. There are two other items in the list, and we can expect them to be used in parallel. Power is something given to us to exercise in the intimidating situation. By the grace of God, it resides in us. Similarly, a sound mind—we haven’t talked about that yet—also resides in the person to help him address the situation.

So I’d suggest that this is love that resides in us, that we exercise to respond to the intimidation. Yes, it comes to us from God, as do the other two items, but at the point of application it’s something that we exercise.

Love for whom? Do we succeed in intimidating circumstances because we love God, or because we love others?

I’d suggest that it’s our love for others that makes us effective in intimidating circumstances, in two ways:

We’re not cowed into silence by our desire to be thought well of; John Stott writes, “Since he is the Spirit of love we must use God’s authority and power in serving others, not in self-assertion or vainglory.”
We’re empowered to overcome the hostility we face by showing grace and mercy in return. “This love is not so much a love that produces ministry as a love that conquers contempt and opposition by forgiveness and refusal to seek revenge” (NAC).

God has given you the ability to place the needs of others ahead of your own, thereby reducing the power of their opposition and the personal stake you have in “winning.” Love is a liberating thing, freeing you from fear and freeing you to go for victory.

Part 5: A Sound Mind

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Dealing with Intimidation, Part 3: Power

September 26, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Facing a Giant | Part 2: No Panic

When, like Timothy, you’re facing a challenge that seems too big for you, it’s helpful to know that there’s no need to panic, because our Father has not given us a panicking kind of spirit.

But it’s also helpful to know what he has given us. Paul specifies three gifts from an omnipotent, gracious, knowledgeable, and sympathetic Father. The first of these is power.

God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (2Ti 1.7).

There are two common Greek words for power. One means “authority”; it’s the word used in Mt 28.18—“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” It’s also used in Jn 1.12—“to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” That’s not the word used here, but it’s worth noting that we do have divine authority, for the reasons specified in these two verses. Our commission to go and make disciples (Mt 28.19-20) comes directly from Jesus, who does have all the authority in heaven and in earth; and because his work has made us sons of God, we carry princely authority whenever we pursue his will.

But, as noted, the word translated “power” in 2Timothy 1.7 is the other word, the word that means “might” or “strength.” As you’ve often been told, it’s the word from which we get our word dynamite—though, as has often been noted (see, e.g., D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies), you probably should ignore that fact, because since dynamite hadn’t been invented in biblical times, it has no impact whatsoever on our understanding of the biblical text.

Very commonly in the New Testament it’s used as one of the three Greek words for miracles. There’s signs, which emphasizes the meaning of the miracle—they’re not just done to entertain us, you know—and wonders, which emphasizes the effect on the eyewitnesses, and then miracles, which is our word, often translated “mighty works,” which emphasizes the power of the miracle-worker. (The three terms are used together in Acts 2.22, 2Corinthians 12.12, Hebrews 2.4.)

Interestingly, though the word power in Matthew’s record of the Great Commission is not this word, Luke’s rendering of the same commission in Acts does include it:

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth (Ac 1.8).

Luke had earlier noted Jesus’ promise to his disciples that this power would come upon them:

And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high (Lk 24.49).

And Paul prays for the Ephesian believers that they will “be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Ep 3.16). Same word.

This is something we have. It is the strength supplied by God, manifested in us. It’s an irresistible force, an unstoppable strength; it’s the arm of the Almighty, the raw power evidenced everywhere in his creation.

In fulfillment of Jesus’ promise at the Great Commission, it’s the power that was poured out on the disciples at Pentecost, the power that turned the world upside down (Ac 17.6).

It’s what you need to get things done.

And God has given it to you.

God has given you the strength to do the hard thing, the thing that looks impossible, even though you’re “just not that kind of person.”

As long as your efforts are in the will of God, the strength is there to accomplish them.

Part 4: Love | Part 5: A Sound Mind

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Dealing with Intimidation, Part 2: No Panic

September 23, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Facing a Giant

As he commissions “son Timothy” (1Ti 1.18) to a daunting task—one likely overwhelming to his timid constitution—Paul begins, surprisingly, by noting what God has not given him—and us. He’ll get to what he has given us in a moment.

But God’s “stinginess” is important to our success. He has not given us a spirit of fear.

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (2Ti 1.7).

This is not the usual word for fear (phobos); using that more common word, God has often reminded us that although we should not fear other people (Dt 31.3-6), we most certainly should fear Him (Dt 31.12-13); as Jesus put it,

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Mt 10.28).

So it would not be true for God to say that He has not given us a spirit that is able to fear, for He has. Fear can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on its object and its justifiability.

This word means something different. As the NRSV, which I’ve quoted here, makes obvious, this is the word for “cowardice”—being controlled by fear to the point that you cannot or will not do the things that you should.

Nobody likes a coward. We glorify heroes, because they do more than we expect; but we will not tolerate a coward. We don’t ask him to be a hero; we simply ask that he do right despite his fear.

Some years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in an exercise with the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office’s SWAT team. They wanted some practice clearing a fairly complex building in a terrorist scenario, and they asked for some volunteers to play the terrorists.

Well, of course.

The deputies and the volunteers met in a room and went over the procedures. Each of the volunteers was issued a handgun and blank rounds and instructed on various limits to the exercise. Then they took us to the building and told us to go inside, position ourselves however we liked, and in 30 minutes they’d be coming in.

Some of my fellow terrorists set up hostage scenarios to complicate the deputies’ situation. I decided to go off by myself. Found a room, evaluated hiding places, and eventually decided just to wait for them inside the door.

Counted my rounds. Seven. OK.

Something this SWAT team did surprised me: stealth was not on the menu.

They came in the end door of the building with a crash, a wave of shouting, and a volley of flash-bangs.

There was no doubt that they had arrived.

Then they began working methodically down the hall in my direction, coordinating movements, pronouncing rooms “Clear!” and moving precisely as planned.

It occurred to me that in a measurable number of minutes, they were going to arrive at my location—and dispose of me. Let me tell you, that was really intimidating. I was terrified.

Even in a simulation.

As they got close, I fired down the hall, and I’m proud to say that I stopped them briefly. But then I made a fatal mistake: I neglected to count my shots. On the eighth trigger pull, the “click” brought the shout “He’s out!” and down came Sennacherib’s Assyrian hordes on my little walled city.

I was surprised, on reflection, at how scared I was, even though I knew that this was make-believe and that these burly brutes weren’t going to hurt me.

Sooner or later, we all come face to face with the fact of our fear. We’re afraid of physical danger, of course, but we’re also afraid of less physical things. We’re afraid of rejection; we’re afraid of failure; we’re afraid of biblical confrontation; we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing at funerals. I’m afraid, and so are you.

But God has not given us a spirit of cowardice; He hasn’t given us a spirit that bails out in a crisis.

God has not given us a spirit that stops short of doing what we must do. Even when we’re afraid.

Part 3: Power | Part 4: Love | Part 5: A Sound Mind

Photo by Astrid Schaffner on Unsplash

Dealing with Intimidation, Part 1: Facing a Giant

September 20, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

“It’s just too much!”

We hear people say that. Sometimes we say it ourselves. Sometimes we face a problem, or a frustration, or an opposition that just seems to overwhelm us.

I had an experience like that recently.

I’m not a mechanical person—mostly because I just don’t want to be. If there’s a problem with the car, or the house, or whatever, I’d rather pay somebody else, who knows what he’s doing, to fix it than put the time and energy into doing it myself.

A while back my riding mower broke down, right in the middle of my mowing the lawn—but then, when else would it? This was beyond my knowledge set, and I made plans to take it to a shop and have it fixed.

But no one would work on it. They’re swamped; they can’t get parts lately; they don’t work on this model.

Nobody wanted my money.

Well, Dan, you’re just gonna have to knuckle down and figure out how to fix it yourself.

It took a while—longer than it would have if the guy with the wrench had known what he was doing—but I’m happy to say it’s back to its old self again, and I have all my fingers as well as my sanctification.

Thank you, YouTube.

Over the decades I’ve faced bigger problems, longer-lasting ones, intimidating ones. And so have you. Since my life has really been relatively easy, chances are you’ve faced bigger ones than I have. I know that’s true for many of my friends.

A situation comes along that you just don’t know how to deal with. You don’t have the knowledge, you don’t have the strength, you don’t have the focus, you don’t have the emotional stability.

It’s all just too much.

There’s a discussion on social media these days over whether God ever gives you more than you can handle. I think the disagreement is largely a matter of definition—what does “more than you can handle” mean?

We do have Paul’s famous observation that everything that comes your way has been allowed—filtered, if you will—by God, and that there is a way of escape (1Co 10.13), though it may be difficult to find. We have Paul’s further assertion that all things eventuate well (Ro 8.28)—though many have observed that quoting that verse at the moment of crisis is not always the best pastoral care.

But when those hard challenges come, where do we turn? What’s in our toolbox? Where’s the instructional video?

There are several instances in the Scripture where God’s people faced significant challenges. We all know about David and Goliath (1Sa 17.40-54), and Joshua’s commission (Jos 1.1-9), and Solomon’s (1K 2.1-4), and Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples (Jn 14-16).

I think we can find some useful information in a lesser-known event, another transition.

Paul’s ministry is a wonder to behold. He achieved astonishing things in his few decades of service to Christ, moving the gospel from its first location outside Israel—Antioch (Ac 13.1-3)—to the extent of the Roman Empire, the world of his day. He planted successful churches all across Turkey (Ac 13.4-16.10), all across Greece (Ac 16.11-18.18), up into modern-day Albania (Ro 15.19), the length of Cyprus (Ac 13.4-12) and Crete (Ti 1.5), and (I’m quite sure) across Spain as well. Most pastors are doing well to plant one church; Paul seems to spin them off every few weeks.

But Paul, like everybody else, has limited time. Soon he is “Paul the aged” (Phm 1.9) looking to pass off his ministry to his proteges, most famously Timothy and Titus.

We know more about Timothy than Titus. It seems that Timothy was less than a natural leader; Paul once prodded him not to let others undercut his authority (1Ti 4.12) and admonished him to take medicine to settle his stomach (1Ti 5.23).

Timothy, apparently, felt too small for the job. He didn’t think he could do what the Word of God, from the mouth of the apostle, had ordered him to do.

In his final letter, Paul urged him on:

I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands (2Ti 1.6).

And then he lifted the haze of doubt and uncertainty and timidity and fear that welled up in Timothy’s heart by saying these words:

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (2Ti 1.7).

I’d like to take a few posts to consider how we can face the giants—and win—based on this brief sentence.

Part 2: No Panic | Part 3: Power | Part 4: Love | Part 5: A Sound Mind

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On Biblical Hymns, Part 7: If and Then

December 10, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As of the previous post, we’ve considered all 5 of the possible hymns listed in the series introduction. But as I noted there, the list is anything but certain. I’d like to look at a couple of other candidates.

Since we were in 1Timothy for the last two hymns, let’s go to 2Timothy for this post:

¹¹Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him, we will also live with him;
¹²if we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we disown him, he will also disown us;
¹³if we are faithless, he will remain faithful,

for he cannot disown himself (2Ti 2.11-13).

Paul calls this “a trustworthy saying.” There are four of those in the Pastorals (1Ti 1.15; 4.9; 2Ti 2.11; Ti 3.8). Scholars debate whether this label indicates some kind of official proverbial status, or whether he’s just saying the equivalent of our “You can take that to the bank!” The four passages have different topics and characteristics, but this one, given the extended parallelism and rhythm, strikes some interpreters (e.g., Hayne Griffin in The New American Commentary) as hymnic.

Like the other hymns in this series, this one is about Christ, who is clearly the one in view in the clause “if we died with him.” Its focus is the importance of our relationship with him. This is a constant theme of Paul’s; he seems obsessed with the idea of believers being “in Christ,” a phrase he uses 67 times, but which occurs only 3 times in all the rest of the New Testament (and one of those, Ac 24.24, in a narrative about Paul’s preaching; the other 2 are in 1Peter).

In the Father’s mind, we were “in Christ” before the world was created (Ep 1.4), and whatever your view of precisely how we came to be in him through conversion, the Scripture is clear that all believers are now in him. He died on the cross in our place, and when we believed, we were placed into his body, the church, over which he is the Head (Ep 1.22). We are locked in an eternal embrace.

That being the case, we benefit from his victory in two ways, delineated in the first couplet:

If we died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him.

If we are counted as beneficiaries of his substitutionary death, then we benefit as well from his resurrection, since it guarantees ours, he being “the firstfruits of those who sleep” (1Co 15.20). And if we demonstrate the genuineness of our profession by enduring to the end, we will receive the kingdom that he has prepared for us (Lk 12.32). His faithfulness, his success, showers us with benefits.

But there’s an “other hand,” and there always has been. Adam’s family included Cain; Abraham’s family included Lot’s wife; the mass of Israelites who came out of Egypt were a “mixed multitude” (Ex 12.38); and the church (even during the ministry of the apostles) included false professors, even false teachers, who “were not really of us” (1Jn 2.19). What of those?

There’s a second stanza:

If we disown him, he will also disown us;
if we are faithless, he will remain faithful,

for he cannot disown himself.

The good Shepherd knows his sheep, and they hear his voice, and they follow him. If they don’t recognize his voice, then they belong to a different shepherd, and they will make that plain over time. The end of that way is death.

But the fact that some other shepherd’s sheep gets lost is no reflection on the good Shepherd. He is faithful, dutiful, attentive, absolutely trustworthy. He cares for his sheep, and he never loses a one of them. The faithlessness of someone else’s sheep is no reflection on him.

If you’re in Christ, you’re a part of his body. He’s not going to go off and leave you somewhere; the very image is absurd. He’s going to care for you and deliver you safely to the ultimate, eternal fold.

Sing of him. Sing of his marvelous works. 

Sing it in private and in public. Sing it to those you love, and to those you don’t. Make it what everyone who knows you thinks of when they think of you. 

Sing.

Part 8: God and Us

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