2 Timothy 1:1-2: An Apostle’s Greeting
2021-12-11
Introduction to the Epistle
This second letter from Paul to Timothy is also the second pastoral epistle. The first letter was much about instructions to Timothy about how to bring the Ephesian church to maturity. However, Timothy must be somewhere else now: “And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus” (2 Timothy 4:12). There are elements of church business in this letter also, as well as a lot of personal address. Paul is writing this from prison (2 Timothy 1:8, 16) on the eve of this death: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand” (2 Timothy 4:6). See also 1 Clement 5:5-6, which records that he died after preaching to rulers.
Greeting
There are a lot of similarities between the greeting in 1 Timothy 1:1-2 and 2 Timothy 1:1-2. Here, Paul is an apostle “by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:1).
Paul is an apostle “by the will of God.” It was God’s desire to make Paul an apostle, which is why it was by commandment in 1 Timothy 1:1. He is also an apostle “according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.” Paul was used to bring the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome and everywhere in between. Also, consider this: “And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10). Imagine all of Asia, which in the Bible means the general area of modern Turkey, hearing the Gospel. The idol makers, whose business was affected by the preaching, concur that all Asia was affected by gospel preaching (Acts 19:26). The apostle’s writings of the New Testament have reached even more over the last 2,000 years.
The “promise of life... is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:1). There is no other life found in any other. The life of this body, the heartbeats, the breathing, the brain activity is not real life. Real life is the eternal resurrection life that is only found in Jesus Christ.
In 2 Timothy 1:2, we see a very similar address to Timothy compared with 1 Timothy 1:2. In the first letter, Timothy was “my own son in the faith.” Here, he is “my dearly beloved son.” This is even more a personal address. The rest of the verse is the same, with a slight difference in word order. The attribute “mercy” is only in the addresses of the pastoral epistles in an otherwise standard Pauline blessing.