1 Tim 1:8. BE NOT THEREFORE ASHAMED OF THE TESTIMONY OF OUR LORD.
Since, he says, thou hast received from God not a spirit of timidity and cowardice but of power and constancy, let it not shame thee to profess and minister to Christ our Lord, preaching him and him crucified — a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles. Beware lest fear of ignominy or ill repute draw thee back from the charge thou hast undertaken. The testimony of Christ is called, in the manner of Scripture, every preaching or confession which is made concerning Christ before men. Hence he says to his disciples in John 15: And you shall bear witness of me, because you have been with me from the beginning. And again in Acts 1: You shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, etc. Although afterward those were called particularly martyrs, that is witnesses, who gave testimony of this kind to the point of suffering death.
NEITHER BE THOU ASHAMED OF ME HIS PRISONER.
That is, let it not shame thee either on my account or on account of my bonds. Do not take it as a burden to be called a disciple of Paul, a man in captivity. For I am a prisoner of Christ, that is, I am held in chains not on account of any wrongdoing or crime but for the name of Christ our Lord.
BUT LABOUR WITH THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE POWER OF GOD.
In Greek and Syriac: But suffer evil together with the gospel, that is, be thou a sharer in the afflictions which the gospel endures. For there is a certain personification of the gospel, which is said to labour and suffer persecution when those who preach it suffer these things for its cause. And so he warns Timothy not to shrink from labouring and being afflicted together with the gospel, but to act manfully, and this according to the power or strength of God. This can be understood in two ways: either according to the power which man has from God — for God, he says, hath given us the spirit of power — or through the power by which God works in man. In either sense Timothy is called away from confidence in his own strength and bidden to trust in God and in the power of his might. The words that follow favour the latter sense.
2 Tim 1:9. WHO HATH DELIVERED US AND CALLED US WITH HIS OWN HOLY CALLING.
The pronoun his own appears to be an addition, for it is read neither in the Greek nor in the Syriac text, nor does the Ambrosian text acknowledge it, nor do certain ancient Latin codices. Nor does the Greek read delivered but rather saved, with the agreement of the Syriac and the Ambrosian, though the one is understood from the other. The Apostle speaks here in the person of the faithful elect, since he presently makes mention of predestination. And the sense is: Who, when we were perishing, saved us by bestowing faith and repentance and remission of sins and the adoption of sons, which are the beginnings of salvation, and called us to this salvation with a holy calling — either one by which he sanctifies us, for the calling of God is efficacious, or one by which he called us unto sanctification, as in 1 Thessalonians 4. These things are said by the Apostle in a kind of digression, so that by the recollection and amplification of the salvation given through Christ he might more powerfully stir Timothy to the free proclamation of so great a benefit.
NOT ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS.
That is, not according to our merits, as the Ambrosian reads. The Apostle does not deny that eternal salvation comes from works, since he everywhere teaches that God will render to each one according to his works (Rom. 2, 2 Cor. 5, and elsewhere), and since toward the end of the previous Epistle he taught that eternal life is laid hold of through good works; but he denies that the whole of salvation, whose beginning is from faith, comes from the merit of works. The reason for this is plain enough, since even the good works themselves by which we in some manner advance toward eternal life are comprehended within that salvation which is wholly from God. Hence it is established by the Fathers, defined under anathema, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits. And that which is connected with this is also established: that our predestination is not from merits but from the mere good pleasure of God's grace, as follows:
BUT ACCORDING TO HIS OWN PURPOSE AND GRACE.
His own in Greek is proper or peculiar, which is not without emphasis. For the Apostle wishes every consideration of our merit to be excluded from our salvation and calling, and only the purpose and grace of God to be considered. By purpose he understands the prior and eternal will or decree of God, which elsewhere he called predestination. And from this passage it is clear that those are mistaken who, in Romans 8, where it is said those who are called according to purpose, interpret purpose not as that of God who calls but as that of the men who are called — an interpretation which we have shown in several places there to be foreign to the mind of the Apostle. Furthermore, by grace he does not understand the created grace which is in us — for this is the effect of predestination — but uncreated grace, that is, the gratuitous beneficence of God, which he presently says was made manifest through the coming of Christ, and which in Titus 3 he calls mercy, saying: Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Therefore this word grace adds to purpose the note of gratuity — as if the Apostle said: According to his own purpose, by which he determined to save us freely and apart from all our merit.
WHICH WAS GIVEN US IN CHRIST JESUS BEFORE THE TIMES OF THE WORLD.
In Greek: before eternal times, although our translator also renders it correctly here, as likewise in Titus 1, as times of the world, but with a meaning different from that in which he elsewhere wrote worldly judgments, worldly affairs, worldly desires (1 Cor. 6, 2 Tim. 2, Titus 2), since indeed in Greek the words are different. The Apostle therefore calls eternal or worldly times the perpetual succession of ages from the founding of the world. But since whatever precedes this succession of ages is properly eternal, by saying before the times of the world he has denoted eternity, so that the sense is: This grace or mercy, as regards its effects, was given to us through Christ — that is, was prepared from eternity in view of the merits of Christ. From this thou wilt rightly conclude that Christ merited our predestination, which is also consonant with other places in the Apostolic writings, as Ephesians 1: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. And again: Who predestinated us unto the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ.
2 Tim 1:10. BUT IS NOW MADE MANIFEST THROUGH THE ILLUMINATION OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.
For illumination the Greek has epiphaneia, that is, apparition or appearance, which elsewhere he translates as advent, as in the last chapter of 1 Timothy. The Ambrosian text has through the illumination of the advent, perhaps from two versions conflated into one. The sense of the Apostle is: That grace prepared for us from eternity was at length made openly known in this present time through the advent of Christ our Saviour, declared to the world by the preaching of the apostles. It was indeed known to the ancient fathers who pleased God through faith, but more obscurely, and was not then made known to the world at large but came to the knowledge of only a few. Concerning the manifestation of this grace the same Apostle says more in Ephesians 3.
WHO HATH INDEED DESTROYED DEATH.
Namely by his own death. For the sense is that Christ by his passion and death merited for us before God the perfect abolition of our death. For the Greek verb signifies to abolish, to render void and of no effect. He used the same word in Hebrews 2 in a similar sense when he said: that through death he might destroy him who had the empire of death. The question arises as to which death the Apostle signifies — temporal or eternal. The answer is that both are signified, for both are taken away through the blessed resurrection which we await as a consequence of Christ's death. Moreover, in saying that death has been destroyed by Christ, understand also that sin has been destroyed and abolished, which is the cause of both deaths.
BUT HATH BROUGHT TO LIGHT LIFE AND INCORRUPTION THROUGH THE GOSPEL.
The Greek word phōtizein has two meanings: to illuminate and to bring forth into the light; but the latter meaning suits this passage better, as other interpreters also have rendered it. For the sense is: He brought incorruptible and immortal life into the light, made it manifest, and brought us certain hope of it through the gospel, which he willed to be preached. Observe that to each of the two deaths there is opposed life and incorruption.
CONTINUE
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