2 Timothy 1:8-18

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day. And you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus. This is the word of the Lord.

What would make you back down? That's the big question for this morning. Oftentimes, as we think about our faith, we think about the convictions that we have, and a question like this prompts us to answer pretty quickly: well, nothing, nothing would make me back down. I remember growing up in youth group — spiritually traumatized as a kid, no, I'm just kidding — where someone would ask: if someone were to hold a gun to your head and ask you to deny Christ, would you back down? And of course, we're reading Scripture that says if you deny me, I'll deny you in front of my Father, and we'd say, of course not, we wouldn't. But backing down looks a lot different than denying the faith altogether. Most Christians don't wake up one morning believing and the next morning completely rejecting the gospel. Backing down happens a little more subtly. It happens quietly, when we become kind of vague about what we believe, when we soften what we believe.

Big Question

What Would Make You Back Down?

For us, convictions are easy to hold when there's no pressure, when there's no external force challenging us. But all of a sudden, when we're in a room and someone questions us about our faith, and we know there are people in the room who disagree with us, people we maybe want to impress, those convictions become a little more threatened. Maybe holding a conviction, or speaking one clearly, threatens a relationship — with a loved one, a family member, or just a friend. That's when we find out what we actually believe; that's when our convictions come under threat. We tell ourselves this probably isn't the right time, and there might be wisdom in that. But sometimes what we call wisdom is really fear. Our culture tells us the lie that you can believe whatever you want as long as it never costs anyone else anything, as long as it never offends anyone, and it never puts you outside the respectable majority. If we can only hold convictions as long as other people approve of them, we're really trapped by the people around us.

So what would make you back down? I think there are things in our lives that would. But fortunately, this passage gives us a great encouragement on how not to back down, and where we get that power from. So let's keep our Bibles open to 2 Timothy 1 as we look at these three sections throughout this passage: first, refuse the shame of the gospel; second, embrace the cost of the gospel; and third, guard the shape of the gospel.

Outline

1. Refuse the Shame of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:8)

2. Embrace the Cost of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:8-12)

3. Guard the Shape of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:13-18)

1. Refuse the Shame of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:8)

Last week we looked at an overview message of this entire letter, this letter from Paul to Timothy. Paul is in jail in Rome; he's about to be murdered, about to be beheaded for his faith. And he's writing — this is his last letter — writing to a man he loves, a young man who's a pastor in Ephesus. The theme, the melody that weaves itself through this book, is this encouragement to guard, endure, and preach the gospel without shame.

That's what we're going to see in this passage: an encouragement from Paul, as he continues after reminding Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God. So let's look at this first verse: refuse the shame of the gospel. After encouraging Timothy, he tells him this in verse 8: “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.” This section is the application of verse 7. Verse 7 told Timothy that he does not have a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control. This is the application of that: do not be ashamed, because you have the Spirit living within you.

And yet, in a culture of shame and honor — the culture Timothy is in as he's receiving this letter, probably a culture we don't quite understand — Timothy has every reason to feel ashamed. His mentor, his spiritual father, is in jail. It's one of the most shameful things that could be associated with you. Paul names two of Timothy's potential shames: first, the testimony of our Lord, and then, of me, his prisoner. Timothy could distance himself from the message, or he could distance himself from the messenger. Either way, shame would create distance between him and Christ.

In this culture, your reputation was how you were able to do things. Your right standing as a son or daughter, as a mother or father, as someone in the military, as a worker or a master — how you behaved in the role society had for you determined how you were able to function. It was almost more important than your wealth. Associating with someone in prison was one of the most shameful things, and on top of that, the gospel itself brought cultural shame. Christianity is centered on the proclamation of a crucified Messiah. Roman crucifixion existed precisely to humiliate people publicly along with brutally torturing them — there are records of people whose great-grandfathers were crucified being identified and mocked for it generations later. In Roman culture, only the worst of the worst ended up on a cross. So Paul is not asking Timothy to stand behind a respectable religion. He's telling Timothy not to be ashamed of the Savior the world crucified, the world humiliated.

For Timothy, this isn't about denying the gospel outright — it's the temptation to become soft, to become a little more quiet about what the gospel says. Shame does not usually appear as outright denial. More often it looks like silence, being vague about what we believe. The shame we feel about the gospel, especially in the face of people we disagree with, creates distance. You're not necessarily denying Christ; you're just making sure nobody can tell how closely you're associated with him. For pastors, and for Timothy, this kind of shame looks like choosing not to preach a specific text, choosing not to preach through a specific book of the Bible because we know its contents might offend a certain group of important people, or an important person who might leave if we said some of the things we know are true. Maybe it means not having a hard conversation — the right conversation — because it may make a relationship harder.

Joining in suffering means we embrace the fullness of the gospel. Think about what happened on the cross. Jesus had the opportunity to walk away from it all. As he's sitting and praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood, he has the ability to walk away. And yet he doesn't; he chooses the cross. He chooses knowing that he's about to be humiliated, knowing that he's going to be shamed. If Christ was willing to do that to save us from our sins, what does it say about us if we're embarrassed to share in even just a little bit of that suffering?

2. Embrace the Cost of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:8-12)

Paul continues, beyond asking Timothy not to be ashamed, to embrace the cost of the gospel. Verses 8 through 12 start with this: Paul is asking Timothy to share in the suffering, and this makes no sense on the surface. Not only is Paul asking him not to be ashamed, he's asking him to share in this suffering. He's saying, Timothy, I hope you end up where I am — come on, we're going here together. This isn't optional; this is something we are going to do together.

So how can Paul ask this? He can ask it because he knows that suffering does not mean God's plan has failed. Look at verse 9: “He saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” Before Timothy suffers anything for Christ, Paul reminds him of what God has already done for him. Paul can ask Timothy to do this because he knows the gospel is worth it. He says we are saved — and look at the irony of that. Paul's saying, I'm going to die, but I'm saved. You may die, you might endure terrible suffering, but you're saved. You may not be saved from a Roman prison, you may not be saved from execution, but you will be saved to eternal life.

Notice this in verse 9: Paul describes God's actions as completed before they even touch a human response. What God has done is already accomplished. Timothy was saved and called to be a pastor without his permission — that's what we see in this verse. And it shows us that whatever happens to Paul, and whatever might happen to Timothy, is not a shock to God. Whatever happens in our lives is not a shock to God. When things look like every plan has been broken, when we question how this could be God's plan — this is not an accident that overtook the plan. This has already been accounted for. In fact, this is the plan. Verse 10 shows that: “And which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” This has always been the plan — since Adam and Eve, since God promised Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the snake, since God promised Abraham that his offspring would bless the nations. We see it when God promised a better king to David, and we see it in the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus. And we will all see it one day when we are brought to our eternal home, when death shall be no more, neither mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things will have passed away. This is the gospel Paul was not afraid of. Later he even calls all his suffering “a light and momentary affliction.”

So when Paul tells Timothy to guard the gospel, he's not asking him to preserve a religious tradition because Paul simply preferred it. Timothy has been entrusted with the announcement that God's ancient purpose has been accomplished in Jesus Christ — the most important news on the face of the earth. That's the deposit. God's purpose before the ages began, accomplished in Christ throughout history. Paul was appointed as an apostle to proclaim it, and now Timothy must guard it, receive it, and pass it on. That's how the gospel works: it started with Christ, it was proclaimed through the apostles, given to the church. Our job is to receive it, guard it, proclaim it, and hand it on unchanged to the next generation. Disciples make disciples — the chain of our faith cannot end with us.

Paul can suffer death itself because death has been dethroned. Christ abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. Rome can kill Paul, but Rome cannot take his eternal life. This is what happens when we have our loves in order. Paul is the worst prisoner to have — tell him to stop preaching the gospel and he says no. So they throw him in jail, and what happens? He converts half the guards. So they say, fine, we'll put you under house arrest — and he writes half the New Testament from house arrest. So they say, this can't continue, we're going to put you to death — and his answer is, “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” You can't take Paul's greatest treasure from him. When we have our priorities in order, when we see eternal life, life and immortality brought to light — there's no amount of suffering this world can throw at us to make us back down.

This is why Paul can say in verse 12, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed.” Paul is not fearless because he thinks the suffering is painless — that's not the promise here. The promise is not that if you have enough faith, your suffering will be eased, that you will have it easy. Some of the most faithful saints have gone through some of the most tremendous suffering; there is no direct correlation. Do not hear, just because our name is Prosper, that if you have enough faith God will take your ailments from you — we're not health-wealth-prosperity gospel, I promise. Paul is fearless because he knows suffering cannot take Christ from him.

3. Guard the Shape of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:13-18)

Paul has told Timothy not to abandon the gospel itself, but now he tells him something even more specific: do not alter it. That's what verse 13 says — “Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me.” This idea, that we are not to alter the gospel, is something our modern church in America has largely overlooked. I've been part of churches, I've seen churches, that do this. It's a modern strategy; there are church consultants who would advise churches like ours to do something like it. Essentially, it's preaching a message so widely acceptable across a wide variety of Christians that it isn't offensive to anyone — something you could hear whether you were Methodist, Lutheran, Reformed, Pentecostal, or Baptist. There are churches where you can sit and think, “that pastor must agree with me,” no matter which background you come from. Watering down the gospel to a point where nothing feels offensive also means it no longer has teeth — it lacks the power, it lacks the truth.

We say, well, this part of the gospel will be offensive to some, so we won't talk about it here, in order for more people to come. The idea is: let's grow the church as large as we can, and to do that we need a message everybody can hear. Churches that do this would defend themselves by saying they're just trying to promote unity, to bring denominations back together. But the truth is, you're no longer guarding the shape of the gospel — you're no longer guarding the gospel itself. If you make the pool shallower, it feels like everyone can swim, but the truth is you just lack water. That's the opposite of what Paul is telling the church to do. Paul is telling Timothy to follow the gospel he's been given and not to change it — to guard the good deposit, as we see at the end of verse 13.

A deposit, in the world Timothy lived in, meant something different than it means to us. Someone would entrust something valuable for a season — like their grain harvest — to another person while they traveled, and that person would swear before God not to change it. This was one of the most sacred oaths you could take. By taking someone's deposit and guarding it, you were guarding their future — whether or not they would survive the winter. Receiving a deposit means you don't change what you've been given; it's sacred language. Timothy understood that guarding the good deposit wasn't accepting a general set of philosophies or principles. Paul's gospel, given to Timothy, was something Timothy would either follow faithfully or not. There wasn't wiggle room. When you guard the good deposit, you don't water things down, you don't pull punches. And church, I'm asking you again, hold me accountable as your pastor — never to be swayed by preaching a wider message just to get more people to fit into our church, never to take the teeth away from the gospel, never to pull punches.

For us, even individually, trying to have a faith that meets the lowest common denominator leaves us with a faith directly opposed to what Paul is calling Timothy to. We must be people who embrace the cost of the gospel without shame — that's our main idea this morning. Now, this can sound like Paul is saying, be tougher, have more courage, stop caring what people think. But that's not what Paul is doing. Look at where the power to do this comes from — verse 14: “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” Paul does not say, be brave because you're really strong, Timothy — this isn't a Disney movie; the answer isn't that you had it inside you the whole time. He says, Timothy, be faithful because Christ is worth it, because Christ has saved you, because Christ will keep you by the power of the Holy Spirit he has given you.

This changes how we hear the command. Christian courage is not pretending the cost is small — the cost of the gospel is real. You may lose approval, comfort, relationships. Paul lost his freedom; Paul lost his life. But the gospel gives you something infinitely greater than anything faithfulness can take away. So the question is not merely, am I courageous enough? The question is: do I believe that Christ is worth whatever faithfulness to him might cost me? And the answer to that shows itself in the ordinary moments of our lives — which is why we have two applications this morning.

First: do not edit the gospel for your audience. Whether you have the privilege of speaking to a large audience or to someone individually, do not edit the gospel for your audience. We're not allowed to change it, because we cannot make it better. The gospel isn't like a car where you can swap out the parts you don't like for an upgrade — there isn't anything we can add to it that would make it better. We also don't get to change it because we are not the author of it, we are not the owner of it. We're like an aunt or an uncle: you get to hold your niece or nephew, you get to be part of their life in a meaningful way, but it's not yours — you don't get to hand out discipline the way a parent would. It's the same with the gospel. We get to steward it, we get to receive it. We do not get to edit it, and we don't let it go out changed. That matters because all of us are tempted to present a version of Christianity that we think the person in front of us will accept — talking about God's love but not his wrath, forgiveness but not sin, heaven but not judgment, Jesus as Savior and friend but not Lord. That doesn't mean every conversation requires explaining every facet of the gospel — wisdom matters, tone matters, timing matters. Paul himself says to hold these sound words “in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus,” to do it in a loving way. But there's a difference between being wise about what you say and being ashamed of what the truth is. Our job is to guard what we've been entrusted with, not to change it.

Second: guard against doctrinal drift in your own life. Have you ever wondered why a church that was doctrinally sound fifty or sixty years ago has come, over time, to believe things that would go directly against what Scripture says? You almost look at that and think, their grandparents would never have allowed the church to go in that direction. How does that happen? We're not talking about style or how churches do ministry — we're talking about doctrine, the belief statement of a church. This happens because, as much as we like to say culture is “out there” and we reject it, the truth is we are all influenced by culture, and more often than not we bring it within the church and let it permeate our beliefs. Take the issue of homosexuality — for nearly 2,000 years it was one of the core beliefs the church had almost perfect unity on, across every denomination, until the last hundred years. In fact, the great majority of churches in America that now affirm homosexuality as not sinful made that decision only after the Supreme Court ruling — it wasn't until culture said this was allowable that churches decided to reconsider. Satan will always use what's popular to make believers feel crazy for not believing what culture says, because we implicitly believe it too. So where in your life do you soften on things because culture says they're okay? It might not be that specific issue — it could be consumerism, or any number of things culture tells us that directly oppose our Christian faith. Deep down we believe the lie that God wouldn't ask us to believe something that would cost us relationships or popularity. Doctrinal drift doesn't begin with denying everything outright. In the churches that drifted into believing troubling things, it didn't happen overnight, and it usually didn't even happen within a decade — it happened slowly, beginning with people no longer guarding what they'd been entrusted with. So know the Word, know what Scripture says, know what you believe, and don't let the spirit of our age catechize you more deeply than Scripture does.

So how can we guard this good deposit? All throughout the Bible we see that humanity, on its own, cannot. Adam and Eve failed to guard what God entrusted to them. Israel failed to guard what God entrusted to them. Fear makes us shrink back; shame makes us silent; suffering makes us want to let go of what's important. We can do this because Jesus didn't let go. Christ faithfully guarded his commission, guarded what was entrusted to him. Adam came under the curse because of his disobedience, but Christ willingly bore our curse — he was cursed because of his obedience. Paul says elsewhere that Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Jesus went to the cross because he was obedient to the Father; the Father treated Jesus like us so that he could treat us like Jesus. Jesus remained faithful to the Father all the way to death, and through his death and resurrection he abolished death — the death our unfaithfulness deserved. And now the risen Christ has given his Holy Spirit to his church. Paul's command here is not “try harder,” “be better,” “find the strength within yourself to guard the gospel.” He says, “by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” Church, the gospel you are commanded to guard is the same gospel by which God is guarding you. So embrace the cost of the gospel without shame.