-
[ 5 ] 2 Timothy 2:12–13
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
[ 5 ] 2 Timothy 2:12–13 • Prayer Lord Jesus Christ, you who loved us first,1 you who until the last loved those whom you had loved from the beginning,2 you who continue until the end of time to love everyone who wants to belong to you: Your faithfulness cannot deny itself—alas, only when a person denies you can he as it were compel you, you loving one, also to deny him. So may this be our consolation when we must indict ourselves for whatever offenses we have committed and whatever we have left undone, our weakness in temptations, our slow progress in the good, that is, our unfaithfulness to you, to whom we once in early youth3 and repeatedly thereafter promised faithfulness—may it be our consolation that even if we are unfaithful, you still remain faithful, you cannot deny yourself. 2 Timothy 2:12–13: . . . if we deny [him], he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he still remains faithful; he cannot deny himself. It might seem that the sacred text just read contains a contradiction, and if this were the case it might not only seem but would be strange even to call attention to such a text. However, this is by no means so. The contradiction would presumably lie in the fact that in the one clause it says that if we deny him, he will also deny us, and in the other that he cannot deny himself. But should there be no difference, 1. See 1 John 4:19. 2. See John 13:1. 3. Probably an allusion to the ritual of confirmation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark. Part 1 70 then, between denying him and being unfaithful to him? It is certainly clear enough that the one who denies him is also unfaithful to him, for no one can deny him without having belonged to him; but it does not follow from this that everyone who is unfaithful to him therefore also denies him. If this is so, then there is no contradiction. One is the strict clause, the other the lenient; indeed, here is the law and the gospel, but both clauses are the truth. Nor is there any duplexity in the text, but it is the one and same word of truth that separates people, just as the eternal truth, both in time and in eternity, separates them in good and evil.4 Just as it is reported in the sacred scriptures that only when the Pharisees had gone away did Christ first begin to speak intimately with the disciples,5 so the first clause removes, sends away, alas, as to the left side those who deny him, whom he also will deny;6 the latter clause, the lenient word of consolation, is spoken as to those on the right side.7 For he who bade his disciples not to cast their pearls to swine,8 his love, even if it wants to save everyone, is not a weakness that whiningly needs those who should be saved but is compassion towards everyone who needs to be saved. But you who are gathered here to participate in the holy meal certainly have not denied him, or in any case you are indeed gathered to confess him, or by being gathered today with the intention of doing that, you do indeed confess him. Even though it can therefore be profitable that the strict word be brought to mind and heard with that to which it inseparably belongs, so that we might not at any moment separate what God has joined together in Christ,9 neither add anything nor subtract anything,10 do not take from the leniency the strictness that is in it, from the gospel the law that is in it, from the salvation the perdition that is in it—the latter word nevertheless lends itself so preeminently well to being dwelt upon today. We let the terrifying thought pass by, not as something irrelevant to us; oh no, no one is saved in such a way; as long as one lives, it would still be possible that one could be lost. As long as there is life there is hope11 —but as long as 4. See Matthew 25:31–33. 5. See Matthew 15:1–20; Mark 4:10–11, 7:1–23. 6. See Matthew 25:41. 7. See Matthew 25:34. 8. See Matthew 7:6. 9. See Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9...