what we are studying in Prison tonight.............. Finish the Mission John Piper APPENDIX by David Mathis What Next? Disciple a Few You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. 2 Timothy 2:1–7 Now what? Maybe you attended a missions conference. Or heard a life-altering message. Or read a missions book like this one—and maybe it was just a single chapter or paragraph, even a single sentence, that set you on fire for joining in God’s global mission. Or perhaps, best of all, you were turned upside down by personal interaction with a fellow Christian. Maybe for the first time, you’re seeing that we are all “sent.” Every Christian is called to live on gospel mission. Whether God is doing an unprecedented work in you for “living sent” where you already are or calling you to cross a culture in missions, what’s next? Where do you go from here? WHERE TO FROM HERE? Here’s the guidance David Platt has for us in his book Radical: I am concerned about a general vagueness that has existed in contemporary Christianity regarding the next step. We have seen that God blesses us so that his glory might be made known in all nations. But an all-important question remains. How do we make God’s glory known in all nations? If God has given us his grace so that we might take his gospel to the ends of the earth, then how do we do that? Do we walk out into the streets and just start proclaiming the glory of God somehow? Should we all go to other nations? If we go, what do we do when we get here? What does all this look like in our day-to-day lives? Jesus has much to teach us here. If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would immediately begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations. We would get the biggest names to draw the biggest crowds to the biggest events. We would start megachurches and host megaconferences. We would do . . . well, we would do what we are doing today. But Jesus is so different from us. With the task of taking the gospel to the world, he wandered through the streets and byways of Israel looking for a few men. Don’t misunderstand me—Jesus was anything but casual about his mission. He was initiating a revolution, but his revolution would not revolve around the masses or the multitudes. Instead it would revolve around a few men. It would not revolve around garnering a certain position. Instead it would revolve around choosing a few people. He would intentionally shun titles, labels, plaudits, and popularity in his plan to turn the course of history upside down. All he wanted was a few men who would think as he did, love as he did, see as he did, teach as he did, and serve as he did. All he needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world. 1 David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (pg 87–88) In the modern-day classic The Master Plan of Evangelism (which has gone through over one hundred printings since it was first published in 1963), Robert Coleman reproduces Graham’s response, perhaps a surprising answer to many: IF BILLY GRAHAM HAD BEEN A PASTOR Billy Graham once was asked, “If you were a pastor of a large church in a principal city, what would be your plan of action?” I think one of the first things I would do would be to get a small group of eight or ten or twelve people around me that would meet a few hours a week and pay the price! It would cost them something in time and effort. I would share with them everything I have, over a period of years. Then I would actually have twelve ministers among the laypeople who in turn could take eight or ten or twelve more and teach them. I know one or two churches that are doing that, and it is revolutionizing the church. Christ, I think, set the pattern. He spent most of his time with twelve men. He didn’t spend it with a great crowd. In fact, every time he had a great crowd it seems to me that there weren’t too many results. The great results, it seems to me, came in this personal interview and in the time he spent with his twelve. THE GRUNT WORK OF THE GOSPEL Second Timothy 2:1–7 is one such summons to paying the price. It’s a call for blue-collar Christianity—for rolling up your sleeves, putting on your mud boots, and doing the grunt work that moves the gospel forward. In particular, verse 2 is a pointed challenge from the apostle Paul to his disciple Timothy, and to us, to invest our everyday lives in the typically underappreciated, under-celebrated, often menial and thankless work of giving our lives in depth to a few individuals for the sake of their growth and joy and the advancement in the faith and the multiplying of their lives in others also. “The grunt work of the gospel” is the labor of cold, hard disciple making. There are very few frills. Rare accolades. Low hype. It’s jolly hard work that doesn’t grab headlines or come off as fascinating to the masses. And so this appendix, in keeping with the text of 2 Timothy 2:1–7, is a summons for engaging in the grunt work of gospel advance through personal, intentional, relational, patient, gospel-centered disciple making. First, we’ll look at 2 Timothy 2:2 and the call for making disciples. Second, we’ll look more broadly at the context and see how verse 2 relates in particular to what follows. Third and finally, we’ll end with where we find the strength for giving our lives to the necessary but typically no-recognition work of making disciples Robert E. Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1993), 103. 1) CHRISTIANS ARE CALLED TO MAKE DISCIPLES WHO MAKE DISCIPLES (V. 2) 2 Timothy 2: Verse 2: “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Here Paul is calling Timothy, and with him implicitly Christians today, to what we might call “disciple making,” to use the language of Jesus’s Great Commission. The word disciple simply means “learner” or “follower” or “student.” For the Christian, the idea of discipleship and disciple making comes from the life of Jesus. For over three years, Jesus mainly trained twelve men who were his “disciples,” his round-the-clock followers—the students of his whole life, not just the masses he addressed in bulk. The disciples spent countless hours with their mentor, not only hearing him teach in public but traveling with him, eating with him, doing all of life with him. “Disciple” does not mean that they learned only in the classroom. Jesus didn’t have classrooms like we think of. The world was his classroom. Everyday life was his classroom. And his disciples weren’t mere learners of information but learners of Jesus’s whole life. And following Jesus’s example, Christian disciple making is about intentionally and relationally investing oneself in the spiritual growth and maturity of a few disciples—part of which is training those disciples to then disciple others who disciple others. The way Paul says it in 2 Timothy 2:2 is that Timothy should entrust what he’s heard from Paul to faithful men who will in turn do the same for others also. So, under this first heading “Christians are called to make disciples who make disciples,” let’s note from verse 2, and its context, what is meant by the kind of disciple making that Paul modeled and is calling Timothy to—and us to. There are at least three important aspects here to disciple making: intent, context, and content. First, the intent. Disciple making demands intentionality. This intentionality, or plan for multiplication, is what makes 2 Timothy 2:2 such a memorable verse—it’s the generational awareness and pregnant phrase “others also” at the end. “Entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Paul’s charge to Timothy is not only that he be a disciple—and not only that he make disciples—but that he make disciples who make disciples. It’s generational thinking, a strategy for gospel multiplication, not mere addition. It involves seeing and investing in disciples not only as ends in themselves but also as means to making other disciples, who then make disciples. Note that Paul explicitly mentions four generations in verse 2: Paul himself, Timothy, the faithful men, and the others also—and implicit in “others also” is the ongoing transmission to spiritual generation after generation. Disciple making involves being intentional in personally mentoring another believer, or a few, younger in the faith (though not necessarily in age), not only to be a disciple himself but then to turn and invest in others, such that he also makes disciples who make disciples. But there’s not only intentionality here, with a strategy for multiplication. Intentionality on its own will become cold and calculated. The second aspect of disciple making to notice here is the context: deep relationship. Disciple making is not an event (like new birth), but a process (like sanctification). Where this deeply relational dynamic of disciple making comes out so strongly in this text is Paul’s relationship with Timothy. In verse 1 Paul calls Timothy “my child.” Back in chapter 1, verse 2, he calls him “my beloved child.” And in 1 Timothy 1:2, he called Timothy “my true child in the faith” and again in 1 Timothy 1:18, “my child.” This is affectionate, familial language reflective of an intimate and deep relationship. Paul’s discipling of Timothy was not mere formal information transfer. It was not a professor-student classroom interchange. It was not held together merely by intentionality and multiplication strategy and training Timothy to train others. But the context for Paul’s disciple making was profoundly relational. He deeply knew Timothy. Whenever possible, they did life together. There must have been both quantity and quality time. There was a deep love for and enjoyment of each other, such that Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:4, “I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.” And this comingling of intentionality and relationship made Timothy a kind of spiritual son to Paul, which really illumines the discipling relationship. Disciple making is a kind of spiritual parenting. As a brief aside here, the call to disciple making begins in our homes. It begins with being intentional and relational in caring for and leading our wife and being concerned for her spiritual growth and well-being, and in exercising the discipler’s mind-set toward our children. I do believe God is calling us here in 2 Timothy 2:2 to intentional and relational investment, a kind of spiritual parenting, in a few specific others outside our homes. But don’t think for a minute that it ever means anything less than disciple making in our own homes—or to the detriment of disciple making in our homes. Disciple Making 101 is caring for and nurturing and growing—discipling—our families. And it’s not the only thing included in disciple making. God also calls us to invest ourselves in the lives of spiritual children, outside our home. But it starts in the home, as it did for Timothy.4 So spiritual parenting, seen in Paul’s affectionate language to Timothy, is a help for us in thinking about the dynamic of intentionality and relationality. But there is one more essential dynamic at work here in 2 Timothy 2:2. There is not only intent and context, but also content. Note elsewhere in 2 Timothy how Paul acknowledges that Timothy’s own discipleship started in the home. In 2 Timothy 1:5 Paul says that Timothy’s faith “dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice,” and he notes in 3:15 “how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Third, the content of disciple making centers on the gospel. Here let’s quickly make the case that the phrase “What you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses” refers essentially to the central message of the Christian faith, namely, the gospel that Jesus saves sinners. Note the word “entrust”: In 1 Timothy 1:10-11 Paul says that “sound doctrine” is that which is “in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” So Paul says that he has been “entrusted” with the gospel. Then seven verses later, in 1 Timothy 1:18, he says, “This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child.” And at the end of 1 Timothy, in 6:20, he writes: “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.” So here’s what we have so far: Paul has been “entrusted” with the gospel; and now he is entrusting this gospel, which he also calls “the deposit,” to Timothy. This is where Paul ends 1 Timothy, and where he goes right away in 2 Timothy. In 2 Timothy 1:12 he refers again to the gospel as being “what has been entrusted to me,” and then in verse 13 he turns to Timothy and tells him, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that,” notice this phrase, “you have heard from me.” Sound familiar? It’s the same wording as 2 Timothy 2:2: “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men.” Then in 2 Timothy 1:14 Paul charges Timothy to “guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (here’s the “deposit” and “entrusted” language together). So what’s happening in 1 Timothy and then in the first chapter of 2 Timothy is that Paul is reminding Timothy that in discipling him he has entrusted to him the gospel, which he also calls what “you have heard from me” in verse 13 and “the deposit” in verse 14. And Paul charges Timothy to guard it (v. 14) and to live it out (v. 13). But then something new and very significant happens in 2 Timothy 2:2. In 1:13–14 Paul merely said to guard it and live it out, but now he says entrust it to others. Don’t only guard it and live it out (don’t just be a disciple) but pass it along (make disciples)—and do so in such a way that they make disciples as well (make disciples who make disciples). Build the gospel into them. Be intentional and relational. Be personal and particular and patient. Entrust the treasure of the gospel into other jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7)—in a process, not an event—at such depth and potency that they can’t help but then spend their lives building the deposit of the gospel intentionally and relationally into others. It is the gospel that is the message that Timothy heard from Paul “in the presence of many witnesses.”5 And so when he charges his disciple in 2 Timothy 2:2 to turn and make disciples who make disciples, he’s not referring to their backroom conversations or his own personal hobbyhorses or idiosyncrasies, but the main things, the things Timothy heard from Paul again and again, “the sound doctrine” centered in the gospel of Jesus giving himself at the cross to save sinners like us. So the call to disciple making here has at least these three aspects: (1) intentionality, (2) relationality, and (3) gospel-centrality. Why This Applies beyond Timothy Now briefly, before we touch on verses 3–7, here’s why the 2 Timothy 2:2 summons to disciple making applies not only to Timothy but to all Christians. When Paul appeals to Timothy to engage in the grunt work of disciple making, he does not do so because Timothy is some kind of special apostolic delegate or has some unique gifting. There is nothing special or irreplaceable about Timothy. Rather, three times in the span of just a few verses, Paul appeals to universal truths about any healthy Christian in his call for disciple making. In 1:13 he tells Timothy to follow his pattern of sounds words “in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” In 1:14 he says Timothy should guard the gospel “by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us [and note the plural here!].” Then in 2:1 he tells him to be strong “in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Three things true of all Christians. So Paul appeals to universal Christian realities—faith and love in Jesus, Holy Spirit indwelling, and grace in Jesus—not to something special or unique to Timothy, when he instructs Timothy in verse 2—and thus with him, all Christians—to make disciples who make disciples. Note here that there is a community context for disciple making. It’s not Paul and Timothy locked away in a room. It happens in the everyday life of the church and alongside the public proclamation of the gospel (“in the presence of many witnesses”). Sermons, books, blogs, classes, and conferences play an important role in disciple making, but they simply do not replace the heart of relational, intentional, gospel entrusting. 2) DISCIPLE MAKING IS HARD WORK AND BRINGS SUFFERING (VV. 3–7) Here’s where we put on the blue collar, get down in the trenches, roll up our sleeves, and talk about the grunt work. While we have this pristine, ideal, undiluted picture of disciple making in verse 2, we find a surprising reality coupled with it in verse 3: suffering. Don’t miss this: Paul has bookended this section to Timothy on gospel transmission with the same phrase “share in suffering” in 1:8, and then again in 2:3. This whole passage is about Timothy’s sharing in Paul’s suffering by joining Paul in his mission of gospel advance through disciple making. In verses 4–6 Paul then develops the charge to Timothy to share in suffering, again right on the heels of verse 2, with illustrations of single-mindedness (the soldier), discipline (the athlete), and hard work (the farmer). Single-mindedness. Verse 4: “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” Satan has a thousand readymade, often event-oriented distractions to divert us from pleasing Jesus in the grunt work of advancing the gospel through the process of disciplemaking. Discipline. Verse 5: “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” Disciple making often feels like a really long lap around the stadium. It would be so much easier to take a shortcut across the field. There is great temptation to cut corners by constructing mechanism after mechanism, and program after program, for mass-producing disciples. But disciples who make disciples can’t be mass-produced. I’ve seen it again and again, where Christians made by event after event, but not coupled with intentional, relational, gospel-centered disciple making, go haywire at the strangest times. Defaulting to the easier, often more single-event, hype-oriented methods doesn’t produce the same depth of gospel transformation and then gospel transmission and multiplication as intentional and deeply relational life-on-life disciple making. Hard work. Verse 6: “It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.” We might want to call this “jolly hard work,” because now in verse 6 Paul is drawing out the great joy at the end of disciple making, which is not material rewards but people rewards, strange as it may sound. It’s being able to say, as Paul does in Philippians 4:1, that those in whom he has invested have become “my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown . . . my beloved.” (Note the connection with the athlete’s crown in verse 5.) It’s the kind of reward that causes our mouths to fall open when we read in 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.” The point Paul is getting at in these three illustrations is that entrusting the gospel in a few others who will invest in others also (v. 2) will mean sharing in Paul’s own suffering (v. 3). There will be temptations to diversion, cutting corners, and laxity. But the mission of disciple making will take single-mindedness (v. 4), discipline (v. 5), and jolly hard work (v. 6), which leads us to this enigmatic verse 7. Verse 7: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”( Holy Spirit) Here’s how I think Paul might explain this verse in the context of what he’s just said in verses 2–6. “Okay, Timothy, think over what I’m saying here. Jesus entrusted the gospel to me. I’ve given my life to entrusting it to others, to multiplying his message in others’ lives, and what I’ve received for it in this life is suffering and prison.” And now, Timothy, I’m calling you not only to be a disciple—not only to guard the gospel and live it out—but to entrust it to others. To build it into others. To make disciples, to use Jesus’s words. To work for gospel advance in a few specific lives, such that they in turn disciple others. And, Timothy, the path ahead will not be easy. It will require single-mindedness and discipline and hard work. As I have suffered, so you will suffer. Think over what I say, Timothy. I’m in prison for gospel advance and now I’m calling you to the same. Entrust the gospel to faithful men who will be able to teach others also and be ready for the suffering that will come with it in due course.” So here’s our call to suffering. Here’s our call to do the hard thing: invest the gospel deeply in the lives of a few, such that they also will invest in a few, who invest in a few. (Side note here: people don’t often get too upset when you’re just being a disciple, but when you start seriously giving yourself to making disciples—and disciples who make other disciples—suffering in some form is not too far around the corner. Back to Paul . . . ) “ So now we face this tension. We’ve seen that we Christians are called to make disciples who make disciples, and that disciple making is hard work and brings suffering. So now the issue is: Where do we get the resources for the tough task? Where do we find the strength to press through the resistance and hard work and pain and suffering and difficulty with single-mindedness and discipline in making disciples who make disciples? This brings us back to verse 1 and the final point of this appendix. NOTE: Don’t think of Christian suffering merely as something that happens when you do street preaching in a foreign country hostile to the gospel or when you’re put down by others because you believe the gospel. Paul’s suffering in 2 Timothy (being imprisoned) comes from doing what he charges Timothy to do in 2:2, namely, investing the gospel in those who will invest the gospel in others also. It’s just everyday disciple making, making disciples who make disciples, that brings suffering—for Paul the suffering of prison and most often just the everyday difficulties and labor of verses 3–6. To use the language of the Great Commission, merely observing Jesus’s commands is tough and might get you in trouble, but teaching others to observe all that he commanded—that will bring hardship, pain, suffering, toil, and perhaps prison in some societies. David Platt writes, “Making disciples is not an easy process. It is trying. It is messy. It is slow, tedious, even painful at times [might he have 2 Tim. 2:3–6 in mind here?]. It is all these things because it is relational. Jesus has not given us an effortless step-by-step formula for impacting nations for his glory. He has given us people, and he has said, ‘Live for them. Love them, serve them, and lead them. Lead them to follow me, and lead them to lead others to follow me. In the process you will multiply the gospel to the ends of the earth.’” Radical, pg 93. 3) THE KEY TO DISCIPLE MAKING IS GOSPEL GRACE (V. 1) Verse 1: “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Disciple making is essential, and it’s hard, but in Jesus is the grace for it—grace in several senses. As we saw earlier, the grace of the gospel is the content of disciple making, what we seek to pass along. The gospel is the deposit we entrust to others. We disciple grace—and not just general, ambiguous grace. Not laxity. But the grace, gospel grace. And the grace of the gospel is not only the content of disciple making but also the power, the strength, and the energy for disciple making. “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Gospel grace is the fuel that runs the discipler’s engine up the hills of resistance and hardship and pain and suffering and obscurity. This in particular is what Paul is getting at in verse 1 (as well as in 1:8, “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God”). And notice that Paul doesn’t say in verse 1, “Make yourself strong in Jesus’s grace.” Rather, it’s “be strengthened by the grace”—not first a charge to act, but to be acted upon. Just as Jesus is the ultimate guarder of the gospel, as Paul mentions in 1:12, so also he’s the ultimate advancer of the gospel, the one who promises, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Jesus is the one who empowers the mission through his blood-bought grace. Jesus does the strengthening for disciple making and doesn’t leave us to muster up our own strength for the gospel’s grunt work. He calls us to be receivers of his strength, not originators of our own. But how does this empowering happen? And here’s where we end with the deepest sense of how gospel grace is the key to disciple making. At the heart of how Jesus energizes us for the hard work of disciple making is our continual receiving of the grace of the gospel that covers our endless mistakes and failures in disciple making. And here’s ultimately how the gospel and the cross and grace are central in disciple making—not merely in being the content, and not in being some kind of mystical empowerment, but in being the objective achievement of Jesus for us at the cross in history that covers our sins, and in doing so empowers us for the hard work of extending grace to others. Begin the process of trying to build the full-orbed gospel relationally and intentionally into a younger believer and see how quickly and significantly you fail. If you want to destroy your perfectionism, take up disciple making. One of the few guarantees in disciple making is that we will not do it perfectly but poorly—and often, if not frequently, we will fail miserably. There has been only one perfect discipler, the One who gave his life to discipling only twelve men on his way to giving his life to accomplish our redemption. Paul says in 1:9–10, God “saved us . . . not because of our works”—not because of our disciple making!—“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.” The ultimate disciple making of Jesus’s life on earth ended with the ultimate disciple covering when he took our sins at the cross, including all our failures in discipling. So Jesus is more than the perfect model of disciple making. He died to save sinners like us who even with new hearts prove so woefully inadequate in making disciples who make disciples. In the end, by his grace, gospel advance and disciple making are not on our shoulders. Jesus will build his church (Matt. 16:18). Jesus is the one who will guard the gospel he has entrusted to us (2 Tim. 1:12). Jesus is the ultimate empowerer of disciple making. And Jesus is the one whose cross covers all our many failures in, and through that cross energizes us for, making disciples who make other disciples of his lavish grace.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 02:43:36 +0000
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