They will maintain
the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So
avoid people like these. – 2 Timothy 3:5 (NET)
Consider Paul’s use
of the term “power.” This terms makes frequent appearances in his
writings. To take just a couple of examples that set out Paul’s opinion
concerning power, one can look to the first chapter of Romans. There,
Paul refers to Jesus as the Son-of-God-in-power (1:4). He then goes on to
declare that the Gospel “is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes”
(1:16b). Here, Paul equates the Gospel of Jesus, which is the message
that Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Lord of all, with power. That is what produces salvation---bringing a
person into the ranks of the covenant people.
For Paul, it seems
that the very declaration of the fact of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, which for
him is somehow brought about through the prompting of the Holy Spirit (for Paul
insists that one only calls Jesus Lord---confesses a trusting allegiance in the
Gospel---by the movement of the Holy Spirit – 1 Corinthians 12:3), is what
releases the inherent transformative power of the Resurrection into the
world.
Returning then to the
second letter of Timothy, one finds Paul writing that it is through “our Savior
Christ Jesus,” that the Creator God has “broken the power of death and brought
life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (1:10). The fact that
Jesus is Lord, and ones belief in such, is paramount. It is what brings heaven to earth and ushers
in the new age. Paul here informs his
audience that the power of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is such that it breaks
the power of death. Since the Gospel includes the message of One that was
raised from the dead, such an insistence is a necessary corollary. It
goes beyond the breaking of death’s power, as the Gospel brings life and
immortality.
To see this life and immortality,
Paul has only to reflect on what he takes to be the fact that the risen Jesus
is alive and ruling the kingdom of God that has been inaugurated, in a world
that is now subject to two forces (death and Resurrection), and in which one of
those forces (death) has already been defeated, while all creation, together
with the people of God, await the consummation of that kingdom and the
installation of the force of Resurrection as the animating principle of the
Creator God’s kingdom in a restored and renewed creation. In this way of
thinking, Paul, in hope, awaits the life and immortality to be shared by the
Creator God’s people, through their believing union with the Christ, in the
Resurrection of the righteous that is to come.
Having spoken in this
way, Paul goes on to insist, “For this Gospel I was appointed a preacher and
apostle and teacher” (1:11), with a clear echo (along with his talk of power)
of the opening of Romans, as he refers to himself as “a slave of Christ Jesus,
called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). To
Timothy he continues on to write: “Because of this, in fact, I suffer as I
do. But I am not ashamed, because I know the One in Whom my faith is set”
(1:12a). Paul’s use of “not ashamed” is not only significant in that it
reminds the reader of the fact that he lives in an honor and shame culture in
which casting one’s lot with a crucified man was a shameful thing, immediately
evokes thoughts of Romans 1:16 again, where he announces the power of the
message of the crucified yet risen Lord, prefacing it with the words “I am not
ashamed.”
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