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2 Timothy 1:8, 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,
Are you ashamed of the gospel? Or, as Isaac Watts put it in his hymn, Am I a Soldier of the Cross, “are you afraid to own His cause, or embarrassed to speak his name?” Are you willing to stand up for Christ, even to die for your faith in Christ?
Jeremiah Neitz was. He was at the September 15,1999, youth rally at Wedgewood Baptist in Fort Worth when Larry Ashbrook opened fire in the sanctuary. Jeremiah had just recently come back to the Lord after some wandering away. When the shooting started most everyone dropped to the floor, including Jeremiah, But then for some reason he got up, sat in a pew, and started praying. Ashbrook had already killed seven people. Jeremiah was about a pew length away. He looked at the shooter and said, “Sir, you don’t need to be doing this.” Ashbrook cursed Christianity and pointed a gun at Jeremiah, who calmly said, “Shoot me if you want to. I know where I’m going when I die. What about you?” Then he added, “What you need is Jesus Christ in your life.” Gunfire rang out, but it wasn’t Jeremiah who slumped to the floor. Ashbrook had killed himself. Jeremiah went outside the church and collapsed in the grass. Why did he speak to Ashbrook? All Jeremiah could say was, “It didn’t seem like me saying those words. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot me.” All he could say was that God stopped the gunman and used him to tell Ashbrook about Jesus one last time.
Don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. That’s Paul’s message to Timothy and to us. Last week we saw in verse 7 God’s three gifts that counter a fearful spirit – power, love, and a sound mind. Now Paul is going to give us reasons in verses 8-12 why we should never, never, never be ashamed of the gospel. Notice in verse 8, “do not be ashamed.” Then in verse 12, “I am not ashamed.” No question, unashamed of the gospel is the theme of this section. Let me give you one more observation. Verses 8-11 is one long sentence full of participles and conjunctions and other parts of speech. You home school moms can assign your brilliant students the project of diagramming that sentence. You’ll need lots of paper! If anyone succeeds in diagramming it, I’d like to see it.
Why are we tempted to be ashamed of Christ and the gospel? Most of the time it’s because we don’t want to offend people, we fear scorn, ridicule, rejection. We know the world thinks Christians are looney-tunes, stupid, not cool, and we just don’t like being mocked or thought odd. That’s why churches soften the hard edges of the gospel; they don’t want people to be offended. So, Paul encourages Timothy, “Don’t even begin to be ashamed of Christ or of me His prisoner.” Note, Paul didn’t see himself as Nero’s prisoner, but the Lord’s prisoner. He knew God could cut his chains and deliver him at any moment. He did that in Philippi. So, Paul calls Timothy to join him in suffering for the gospel by the power of God Almighty! Paul knew God’s power would strengthen Timothy, just like it had him through all his trials and suffering.
These next verses (9-11) are a concentrated summary of the greatest truths you will ever hear. Nothing strengthens believers more than a firm grasp on the gospel in all its fullness and dimensions, which is exactly what Paul is going to give us. Here are ten reasons why you and I should never be ashamed of Jesus Christ, the gospel message, or His people in this world. The first five are in verse 9.
2 Timothy 1:9, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
#1 Because God saved you.
Saved is a great word, folks. We have become so educated and sophisticated and full of technology with devices of every kind, but the fact is, we still need to be saved. We need to be saved from our sins, our guilt, God’s wrath, from our natural depravity and spiritual death. We still need to be able to face death knowing we are saved to spend eternity with God.
Who saved you? You didn’t or cannot save yourself. God saved you. No church saves anybody. You weren’t born saved. God saved you at a point in time. You may not know exactly when you were saved but there was a time when you weren’t saved and then you were saved. Notice it says God has saved you. It’s a done deal. He’s not trying to save you. God never tries to do anything. He has saved you. And He has saved you. He has rescued, ransomed, redeemed, delivered you. This is the message of the gospel. Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The Philippian jailor asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:11). Romans 10:9 promises, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved!” Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” You and I should never be ashamed of Christ or the gospel for this great reason: because God saved us.
#2 Because God called you with a holy calling.
How did God save you? By calling you. This isn’t the general call that God sends out to everyone; this is the effectual call. It’s a call that accomplishes its purpose. It’s like God knows your address, comes ringing your bell, walks into your sinful heart with the gospel message empowered by the Holy Spirit. This call makes you aware of your lost condition and your need of saving. God through the gospel makes you aware of your sin and that Christ died on that cross so many years ago for rebels like you, and you bow your heart to Christ, repent of your sins, and put your entire trust in Him as your Lord and Savior. You are brought into God’s family, declared righteous because of the imputed righteousness of God’s Son, forgiven of all your sins, given the Spirit as a pledge of greater things to come, and you follow Christ, who said, “My sheep hear my voice, they follow Me, and I give them eternal life.” That’s the effectual call.
This calling is a holy calling. God sets your entire life on a course of willing holiness, desiring from your heart to please God. Spurgeon says, “You rejoice in holiness as naturally as before you rejoiced in sin.” God has given you a new heart. Don’t be ashamed. God saved you and called you.
#3 God saved you apart from any merits in you.
“Not according to our works.” Most people think they’re not all that bad. If there really is a God, surely He’d be impressed with their good deeds that outweigh their bad deeds. After all, they’ve gone to church all their lives.
No, God saves us completely apart from any works or merits of any kind. Over and over Paul has drilled this home. Romans 3:28, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. One thing the Bible is crystal clear on: we’re not saved by anything we do. Not our good morals, baptism, communion, confirmation, or church attendance will merit salvation. Even our faith is a gift from God. We are sinners; none of us sought God, God sought us. All we can say is, “Thank you, Lord. I want to love and serve you without ever being ashamed.”
#4 God saved us purely by His own sovereign purpose and grace.
This is news to many – you aren’t saved because you chose Jesus. You are saved because God chose you. It was God’s purpose and grace that brought you to Jesus Christ, not your purpose and efforts or even your free will. Your will was bound by sin. We call this grace sovereign and irresistible because when God means to save someone, He gets it done. Paul emphasizes the word “own.” It is God’s own purpose and grace that saves us. You may have struggled and fought God’s call on your life, but God’s grace, like that hound of heaven, got on your trail and chased you down. Or like God’s sheep dog, he circled you around and brought you as a sinner to the feet of the Savior, conquered by divine grace and mercy in Jesus! “Wonderful grace of Jesus, greater than all my sin!”
#5 God planned all this for you in Christ from eternity past.
Incredible. You aren’t just an evolutionary accident with no purpose in life. You were born because God planned to save you in and through His Son in eternity past. In the eternal counsel of the triune God, God the Father promised to give His Son a vast number of brothers and sisters, and Christ promised to come and suffer as a substitute for all those God would save and call to Himself.
When? NASB, “From all eternity,” or ESV, “before the ages began.” This is too much for us to wrap out pea brains around. Before God spoke the universe into existence and lit up the vast black space with all those sparkling galaxies, before the sun warmed the earth and the moon glowed in the dark nights, before the foundation of the earth, before God created time and space when there was nothing except the eternal and infinite God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit God planned to include you in His saving purpose. Incredible. He planned it all and made sure you would come into His sovereign plan and that He would provide all you need to be saved and live for His glory. How could we be ashamed of this incredible gospel, and our incredible Savior?
#6 Jesus Christ entered the human race as our Savior.
Now Paul brings us from God’s eternal purposes and plans into our history.
2 Timothy 1:10-11, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 11 for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.
From eternal ages, BUT NOW! Right on schedule, planned before the foundation of the world, suddenly Christ appeared on planet earth. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, God was turning on the light in this world’s spiritual darkness.
Then He appeared. In that dark Middle Eastern night, the angel suddenly announced to those Bethlehem shepherds, “I bring you good tidings of great joy!” He’s here! After all those silent centuries, Christ Jesus our Savior appeared. History books give Jesus of Nazareth a couple paragraphs as the Jewish Messiah and then on to more important facts. But this appearing of Jesus Christ, the incarnation, the hypostatic union (God and man in one Person), virgin-conceived, is the most significant event in all human history. They are trying hard to cancel Him, but their efforts are worthless. History collapses into a purposeless abyss without this invasion from the third heaven, from the very presence of God.
Why did He appear? First John 3:5 says, “And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins.” Whose sins? Yours if you are willing to repent and trust Him as your Savior. First John 3:8 adds, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” This takes us to the seventh reason we should never be ashamed of the gospel.
#7 Jesus destroyed your greatest enemy.
He abolished death! He ripped the fangs right out of the devil when He came up from the grave.
Hebrews 2:14-15, Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
We can face death fearlessly. In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and Hopeful come to the River of Death which they must cross to enter the Celestial City. Both are fearful, but Hopeful goes ahead and calls back, “Be of good cheer, brother. I feel the bottom and it is good.” Listen to this exclamation of triumph from our risen Savior as He declares His victory over the grave.
Revelation 1:17b-18, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, 18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”
#8 Christ turned the floodlights of heaven on life and immortality through His resurrection.
You want to know where life is? Look at the empty tomb and rejoice. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” True, we all still die physically, but immortality is in your future. Christ destroyed death for us and will resurrect our physical bodies, a complete transformation, body and soul, so we’ll have bodies just like His! Your body was sown a perishable body. That’s why we have all these diseases, aches and pains, arthritis, toothaches, cancer. I deeply appreciate the skills of surgeons and dentists and eye doctors, but they won’t be needed any more. Through Christ’s transforming power these wrinkling, aging earth vehicles will become imperishable and immortal through the gospel. Why be ashamed of our certain future?
#9 God has given us the greatest message imaginable.
In verse 11 Paul says he was appointed a preacher, apostle, and teacher. This is the information age. We can find out anything in a couple seconds. I discovered through the lightning speed of Google that the International Space Station zooms along at 17,500 MPH, orbiting the earth every 90 minutes. There’s a lot of trivial information at our fingertips. But Paul is saying God appointed him with a message as a preacher, apostle, and teacher that the world must hear or be doomed and damned in sin forever, and he’s not ashamed of that message. It’s the power of God that saves everyone who believes (Romans 1:16)! This is what lit a fire under Luther, and he preached it fearlessly and boldly, regardless of the consequences: justification by faith alone in Christ alone!
We have the greatest message any human being, any sinful human being could ever hear. I read a news item this week about a Shakespearean actor and hater, Brian Cox. Mocking Christianity he said, “It’s all about this notion of God, the idea that there’s a God that takes care of us all. There’s no such thing, doesn’t happen, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about us.” He also commented on the Bible, “One of the worst books ever. Stupid people believe it.” He’s 77. The day is quickly coming when he’ll wish he heard and believed this message Paul preached.
#10 God has promised to keep you for Himself.
2 Timothy 1:12, For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.
Timothy, here’s why I’m not ashamed of the gospel. Paul’s not ashamed because he doesn’t have a shade of doubt or question of whether Christ will be faithful to him. He knows Christ will guard and keep his soul – the thing Paul has entrusted to Him. Something like you trust your investment to a bank, but much different. Christ will never let Paul down. Christ will be faithful right up until that day when He calls Paul home, that day when Christ gathers his church at the rapture. Paul’s suffering was hard, but it didn’t make him bitter. The hard times drove him closer to his Savior all the time.
There’s Paul in that miserable dungeon singing, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded, that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day!” I don’t know how Paul got that hymn since it wasn’t written until the 19th century, but that truth still rings true, and we are blessed to sing those words today.
Unashamed of the Gospel – that’s what these verses are all about. Let’s be bold for God and unashamed to stand up for Christ, like Jeremiah Neitz. Here are ten reasons we should never be ashamed of Christ or the gospel.
- God saved you.
- God called you.
- Not because of your works.
- Because of His purpose and grace.
- Given you from all eternity.
- Now Christ appeared.
- He abolished death.
- He brought life and immortality to you.
- God appoints us as His spokesmen.
- He’s able to keep us till that final day.