You may not want to hear these words. You may be tired from fighting, from putting on a mask, trying and trying, but there is a call from the Holy Spirit, if not from those who cheer you on today, ‘find your strength for it is there to be found.’
Paul has already emphasised the importance of faithfulness, of courage in the face of suffering, the power of the gospel and the importance of not being ashamed of Christ or those who serve Him. There is then two connecting words bridging us into what we have deemed the second chapter. It is as if Paul is saying, “Given everything I’ve just reminded you about – the reality of persecution, the power of God, the importance of the gospel – here’s what you must do: find your strength in Christ’s grace.”
“You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 2 v 1)
My son. He wasn’t his son—not biologically. But Paul was his spiritual father. We are desperately short of such fathers today. We have fathers, yes, but not spiritual fathers. Not the ones who demonstrate Christlikeness in flesh and bone. Not the ones who cheer from the sidelines, who applaud with genuine joy, who carry a burning desire that the son should go further, achieve more, reach higher than the father ever did.
Be strong in the grace. Here lies the revolution of the Christian life. We must find our strength not in the brittle foundations of our achievements and status, not in the hollow echo of titles and accomplishments. We must refuse to draw strength from the fickle plaudits and praise of man—those fair-weather friends that arrive with success and vanish with failure.
Instead, we are called to be strong in a love that defies logic, a grace that seems almost unfair in its generosity. This grace covers and clothes us regardless of whether we are good or bad, successful or failed, rising or falling. It is grace that never dies because He died to release it into the world like a flood that can never be dammed.
You will let many people down—this is certain. You will disappoint those who believed in you. You will not be popular all the time, perhaps not even most of the time. But in these moments, be strong in Grace.
When you do this, something beautiful happens: you realize you are not perfect, and that’s exactly why you need Grace. You probably agree with your critics more than you’d like to admit, but Grace disagrees with them entirely. You learn not to take yourself too seriously because you know you will always need Grace. You discover you can survive your own humanity precisely because of Grace.
This is not the conditional grace of man. Human grace always comes with strings attached—man wants conditions, they demand a win-win arrangement. You get something from them, but they expect something in return. Man cannot let you fail and simply let it pass. They must speak up, they must extract their pound of flesh, they must balance the books.
Thank God this is not the Grace we need for life.
The Grace that makes us truly strong is found in Christ Jesus.
It’s worth reminding ourselves of this truth again and again. In a world that measures worth by performance and love by achievement, we find our strength in the scandalous grace of a God who loved us while we were still sinners, who raises the dead, who calls the weak strong and the foolish wise.
This is the gospel. This is our source of strength. This is what makes spiritual fathers and mothers, and this is what will carry us through every failure, every disappointment, every moment when human grace fails us.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Missions Paul 