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Paul began his second letter to “Timothy, my beloved child” (2 Tim 1:2) by giving thanks for the young man’s “sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you” (2 Tim 1:5). He reminded his colleague that “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” (2 Tim 1:7). Near the end of the letter, Paul gave Timothy a charge in which he reminded him of important qualities including “my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness” (2 Tim 3:10). Common to both of these lists is the word “love.”
In the second chapter, Paul challenged Timothy to be a good soldier of Jesus and said, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David — that is my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). When we remember Jesus Christ, we remember his words about love, words which are not so much a fuzzy feeling as they are a call to action: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). When asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God … You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:36-39). Jesus also gave the order, “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). “If you love me,” said Jesus, “you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
So, what does it mean to remember Jesus? Love your enemies. Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love Jesus. Love one another. Show so much love that you lay down your life for your friends. In other words, be a missionary of charity. Although we often think of charity as the act of giving help to people in need, typically in the form of money, the word charity comes from the Latin caritas, which means “affection.” Charity is fundamentally Christian love and affection, not a monetary gift. We should all be missionaries of charity,
In 1979, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after a lifetime of building homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers, and hospices for the terminally ill. According to the Nobel website, she was a “saint in the gutter.” She heard a call from God to help the poor and founded a group in India called the Missionaries of Charity. In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech she said, “I am sure this award is going to bring an understanding love between the rich and the poor. [That] is why Jesus came to earth, to proclaim the good news to the poor. And through this award and through all of us gathered here together, we are wanting to proclaim the good news to the poor that God loves them, that we love them, that they are somebody to us, that they too have been created by the same loving hand of God, to love and to be loved. Our poor people are great people, are very lovable people, they don’t need our pity and sympathy, they need our understanding love.” Again and again, one particular word popped up in Mother Teresa’s speech: Love.
Jesus gave a call to action in his words about love, and Paul suffered hardship as a Christian when he responded. But the saying is sure, he insisted: “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Tim 2:11-12). Jesus wanted us to show our love to the fullest, and to show it to the very end of our lives. Through our acts of sacrificial love, he wanted us to die and live with him, as well as to endure and reign with him. The challenge is to love God, love neighbor, and even lay down our lives for our friends. The world needs this kind of Christian love, now more than ever, and this “word of God is not chained” (2 Tim 2:9). In the United States, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and there is not much “understanding love” between the two. In the year 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the top one percent of families took home an average of 26 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent. Income inequality has risen in nearly every state, and it has many negative effects including increases in crime and illnesses.
Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching out to the poor with Christian love. She didn’t judge them, but instead she offered them affection and assistance. Her loving actions were the way she remembered Jesus Christ, “raised from the dead,” even though these actions caused her hardship (2 Tim 2:8). We can do the very same, as we seek to create “an understanding love between the rich and the poor.” This passage from 2 Timothy is one of the Bible’s Greatest Hits because it challenges us to remember Jesus Christ and present ourselves to God as “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth” (2 Tim 3:15). As Christians who actively love God and neighbor, and who lay down our lives for our friends, we can be true missionaries of charity.
Questions:
1. What comes to mind when you remember Jesus Christ?
2. How do the words of Jesus about love serve as a call to action?
3. Where do you see Christian workers who have “no need to be ashamed”?
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