31 May 2023
Paul's Letter to Philemon is part of his swan song, written from his final time in prison. It's a message to a Christian man Paul knows, a letter carried in the hands of one of his escaped slaves, now returned to him as a believer. We can imagine the counseling process the slave endured to bring things to this denouement.
The slave Onesimus had made his way to Rome and met Paul where he was in prison, and came to Christ. The letter is almost entirely personal in nature, except for the underlying principle that we must rise above the fleshly accounting of mere material value and engage the moral value of things on a spiritual level. If Philemon must have a material accounting for loss, then Paul would pay. However, Philemon needs to think about what a blessing and testimony this thing can be for the prosperity of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In similar fashion, Paul's second letter to Timothy is the last writing we have from Paul's hand before he was executed by Nero, roughly 66 AD. There's not much here that we could call Christian Covenant Law.
However, the whole letter keeps resounding with the call to take seriously the message of revelation. Paul does not regret sacrificing his life for the gospel. At the foot of the Cross, Paul's life was forfeited for whatever use God saw fit. He trusted the Lord to make it all work out for the prosperity of the Kingdom of Heaven. And here on earth, we have no greater treasure than the revelation of His Word.
Paul briefly laments at how so many of the Christians in Asia Minor turned their backs on him when he was arrested the second time. He names a couple of significant figures who slandered him, and then names a third man who was quite the opposite.
On to Chapter 2. By this time you can be sure that three of the Gospels have been published and circulated, as well as some of Paul's earlier letters. The New Testament canon was growing, though we cannot know when the churches began to consider these works as Scripture. Still, Paul refers to a body of teaching he had passed on in Timothy's presence, and asks him to keep it rather like a treasury, and pass it on to others. So great is the task that Timothy would have no time for hobbies.
Then Paul lays out the motivation that I've mentioned before: We endure a lot of hardship for the sake of God's Elect, knowing that the majority of them will remain invisible to us. In this sense, "blind faith" is the right term for it. Then he shares another sort of mantra or hymn about God's faithfulness. He asks Timothy to remind everyone of these things, because Christian Law means nothing without it. If our God is not uniquely superior, then His Word means nothing.
Contrast that with the words of men who speculate out of their own reason. It becomes a principle of Christian Law that we not engage in semantic wrangling. This is a Hebrew religion centered on a Hebrew God, and in the Hebrew language, words do not have fixed precise meanings. They are not a thing unto themselves, but flexible tokens of something that cannot be pinned down by mere words. Any debate that hinges on the meaning of words is a false dispute without merit and must be presumed based on dark motives.
Thus, we come to that famous memory verse in 2:15 about "making a straight cut with the message of truth". It's not about words, but the Living Word Himself. This is the antithesis of a couple of fellows Paul mentions by name who have promoted a false idea about the meaning of eternal life. Everyone whom God calls are eternally His, regardless of their apparent purpose in the Kingdom of Heaven.
By the way, his comment about "youthful lusts" is actually a reference to juveniles who finally reach the developmental stage where formal logic is possible. It's exhilarating, making them feel like a master of the universe. Suddenly they think they know it all, and became annoying smart-alecks. It was the same thing when rabbinical students discovered Hellenized reasoning under the urging of Alexander the Great. Suddenly they thought they understood everything because they had some universal rules by which to contain everything in neat orderly categories, and yet understood nothing of God's general moral character. Such is a snare of the Devil; it has no place in Christian teaching.
In Chapter 3 Paul warns of how this smart-aleck stuff leads to other forms of self-serving, and is the signature of Judaizer influence. It's the same stuff Jesus said about the Scribes and Pharisees. They are predators looking for ways to exploit human frailties for their own gain. Paul mentions two of Pharaoh's court magicians, diabolical men who opposed Moses by undermining the very assumptions behind his prophetic claims. They opposed Moses purely for personal gain, not seeking truth. It should have been obvious to anyone, and it was plenty obvious when Judaizers were doing the same thing.
This is the core nature of the Fall itself, seeking to determine for oneself what is good and evil. It's the fundamental assumption that the mind is competent to measure what is good and evil, but it's part of Satan's lie. The human mind is utterly incapable of being impartial; a man's logic will always end up serving his fleshly comfort in one way or another, completely blind to how the fleshly lusts feed into his "pure logic".
Paul congratulates Timothy for his devotion to the Scriptures. This brings us to another popular memory passage in 3:16-17. So long as the Earth remains, we are accountable to the written record of God's Word. It is the sole source of truth about good and evil. And continuing into Chapter 4, Paul says that Timothy needs to be so focused on the gospel message that everything is evaluated by that standard. He should be ready 24/7/365 to bounce everything off the Word. Yes, it gets boring to the flesh, but it's the source of eternal life.
Having done this himself, Paul announces that he is ready to leave this world. He wants Timothy to come for a visit ASAP, because his time is short. There are some personal notes indicating that Paul had managed to get as far afield as the Dalmatian Coast to plant churches before being arrested. At his initial hearing before the court, everyone was too fearful to stand with Paul, lest they also be arrested, so there were no witnesses for the defense. Paul's sense of security was in eternal life, not the legal proceedings of mere men.
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