Design for Discipleship

I don’t suppose that it has ever occurred to you that Emperor Nero and President Bill Clinton have a lot in common. Both came to power at a young age. Nero was just 16 when he took over the reins of the Roman empire. Like Bill Clinton, Nero tended toward the pudgy side. Both men had their “escapades” with the opposite sex.

And Nero, like Bill Clinton, was up to his ears in a real estate scandal. About half way into his reign, he built a magnificent palace for his second wife, but the problem was—he did it with public tax money. He used his power and privilege to feather his own nest.

They called Nero’s palace the Golden House, and you might say that it became Nero’s version of Whitewater. It became a scandal to the Romans.

To begin with, it cost a fortune. It had walls that were overlaid with pure gold, and studded with jewels. The ceilings were made of carved ivory.

It had a circular dining room with a removable roof and a sprinkler system that would actually spray perfume on the guests. I suppose that would have come in handy if one of Nero’s guests had forgotten to use his deodorant that day.

It had jacuzzis with hot and cold running water, and a milk bath for Nero’s wife. It even had a room they called the vomitorium, where the guests could go and tickle their throats with a feather, throw up, and then be able to go back to the banquet table and gorge themselves some more.

The Golden House was a scandal and it really damaged Nero’s popularity with the people of Rome.

They say that the more things change, the more they remain the same. We still live in a troubled world where politicians often line their own pockets. We still have political corruption.

We still have moral decay. We hear a lot today about divorce and remarriage and blended families. As you know, Bill Clinton came from a dysfunctional family. And Emperor Nero did too. His mother had already been married twice when she decided to marry her uncle, who just happened to be the Emperor of Rome. So that meant that Nero’s great-uncle was also his step-father. I guess he called him Uncle Dad.

There were all sorts of sexual shenanigans going on in Rome at the time. Nero divorced his first wife, married his mistress, killed her in a rage, and ended up actually marrying a boy. This kind of stuff almost sounds like what goes on in Washington these days, if the names Packwood, Reynolds, and Barney Frank mean anything to you.

The major reason for the moral decay in ancient Rome, just as in our day, is that there was tremendous religious confusion. The Romans worshiped many gods, but in reality, they worshiped no gods.

Oh, they had temples to Jupiter and Apollo and Venus and Mercury. There was a temple on every corner. But nobody took religion very seriously. It was just something they did out of tradition—to keep up appearances—it didn’t have any practical application to their daily lives.

When it came to determining their personal values and morals, they kind of just made it up as they went along—a lot like people do nowadays. Remember when the Roman governor Pontius Pilate spoke to Jesus on Good Friday? Jesus brought up the subject of truth, and Pilate responded “What is truth?” For him, there were no absolutes.

That’s where a lot of Americans are at today. They’ve basically given up on there being any source of absolute truth. Most Americans have bought into the assumption that truth is plastic—it can be whatever you want it to be.

And if there’s no standard of absolute truth, then there’s no absolute standard for personal morals either, and you just make it up as you go along. If you want to pursue an “alternative lifestyle”, hey, that’s up to you. That’s your choice.

So the world today, in 1995, is a lot like the world as it was in the 1st century. It’s a troubled place. And there’s one more striking similarity. The people who lived in Rome at the time of Nero didn’t like Christians. There was opposition to the followers of Jesus.

The Romans didn’t appreciate these people who were called Christians. There was something weird about them. They didn’t fit in. They didn’t think like everyone else did. They actually believed that there was an absolute standard of truth, and they were ready to die for what they believed. They were fanatics.

When the city of Rome caught fire in 64 A.D., Nero blamed the Christians for starting it. He launched an official government campaign of persecution against them.

Christians were arrested, thrown in prison, sent into the arena to be torn apart by wild animals. Nero even hung some of them up on poles, covered them with oil and set fire to them to light his evening garden parties. And that all met with the general approval of the people of Rome because Christians just weren’t very popular. They were an easy target.

In case you haven’t noticed, the same kind of sentiment is creeping into America today. We see it in movies and on television and on talk shows, where people who read the Bible and pray are so often held up to scorn. We see it in the policies of our government, which wants to eliminate any mention of Jesus Christ from our public schools. You can’t even offer a prayer at a high school graduation ceremony nowadays without getting sued.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that if you are going to be a true follower of Jesus Christ today in America in 1995, you’re going to find yourself more and more out of step with the values and beliefs of our society.

The time is long past when you could just be a “nominal Christian”. Today, it takes total commitment, because today you’re far more likely to have to pay a price for being a believer. It’s time for the true follower of Jesus Christ to stand up and be counted.

Back in 66 A.D., the apostle Paul went to visit the Rome of Emperor Nero. He no sooner got there than he was arrested and thrown into prison. He found himself in a dark, damp dungeon. They were holding him there for execution. Paul was an old man, and he knew that his time was up.

And it was while he was there in that dungeon, in a city that hated Christians, that he wrote a letter to his young friend Timothy about what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. We still have that letter today. It is in the New Testament and we call it 2 Timothy. You can find it on page 1178 of the pew Bible.

If you want to know what a true follower of Jesus Christ looks like, just read 2 Timothy. Because in 2 Timothy we have a Design for Discipleship. 2 Timothy is a manual of how to live as a true Christian in a world that is rapidly turning hostile toward followers of Jesus.

Should we run away and hide? Should we drop out of society and go underground? Or should we go on the offensive? Should we man the barricades and launch a culture war against anyone who opposes us? We’re going to walk through 2 Timothy this Fall and try to find answers to these questions. Because you and I can make a difference in a world where people are searching for the truth.

Let’s look at the first portion of this letter.

2 Timothy 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

Now let’s stop there. As you look back over these first few sentences, it doesn’t take a theologian to realize that Paul was writing to a close friend here. He calls Timothy “my dear son”, and he says that he has been thinking about him a lot. He longs to be able to see him just one more time.

Paul and Timothy went back along way. They first met when Paul passed through the city of Lystra on his first missionary journey sometime around the year 46 A.D.. Timothy’s mother was a Jew, and she believed in Jesus. But his father was a Greek, and apparently, he didn’t believe in anything.

But it seems that Timothy became a follower of Jesus through Paul’s ministry, because Paul calls him in another place “my true son in the faith”.

Four or five years later, Paul passed through Lystra again, and he asked Timothy to join him on his missionary travels. Timothy agreed to go along, and the two became close friends and fellow workers. Paul was the mentor; Timothy the protege.

Timothy, although he was still quite young, eventually settled down in Ephesus and became very active in the church there. From time to time, he went on special missions for Paul, and served as Paul’s special representative to churches in other cities. Meanwhile, Paul travels ultimately took him to Rome, where, as I mentioned, he was thrown in prison for preaching the Gospel.

Keep in mind that 2 Timothy is the last letter that Paul ever wrote. It has sort of a bittersweet quality to it. Paul looks back over a career that spanned several decades, and he’s choosing his words carefully. He knew quite possibly that this would be his last chance to communicate with Timothy, and he wanted to make every word count.

He begins the letter by recalling three things about Timothy that were values to remember.

1. His Friendship

He said “I recall your tears”—presumably the last time they said good-bye—and he said “I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” Meanwhile, he said “I’m constantly praying for you.”

You know, one of the greatest blessings of being a follower of Jesus Christ is the deep friendships that you form with other Christians. There’s just something about being united under one Lord, marching together under one banner, serving together in one great cause that unites our hearts with others of like faith.

Six years ago, in 1989, I had the opportunity of traveling to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania to teach and train the Christians there. This was back when the Communist Iron Curtain still hung like a dark cloud over Eastern Europe, and it was a crime to be a Christian. So I had to go into those countries secretly and make a pre-arranged rendezvous with people I had never seen before in my life.

I can remember my partner and I walking through the streets of Bratislava, making sure that we weren’t being followed, and entering a dingy apartment block. We crept silently up the stairs so as not to alert the informant who always lived in the ground floor apartment by the entrance.

With apprehension, I knocked softly on the door of a certain apartment. A woman answered the door and without a word, she quickly pulled us inside. But then, the tension evaporated. We could tell immediately that we were among friends. And for the next two days we studied the Bible with them, and prayed with them, ate with them, and laughed with them.

Their leader Pastor Andrej, had served time in jail for being a Christian. Against our protests, he took us to the train station when it was time for us to leave. He did so at great risk to his own personal safety because it was a crime to be seen talking to foreigners. But Pastor Andrej didn’t care. There on the platform he embraced us. And I’ll never forget the tears in his eyes as he said “Thank you so much for coming. We are brothers in Christ.”

One of the great values of being a follower of Christ is that you can find friendships like that all over the world. There’s a second value that Paul remembers about Timothy:

2. His Faith

v. 5 I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

As Paul sat in that dungeon, he was in a situation where he had had everything taken away from him—his freedom, his possessions, his rights, his comfort, his dignity, his health, his safety, even his future. And pretty soon, they were going to take away his life. But there was one thing they couldn’t take away from him—his faith.

And as he thinks of Timothy, he’s glad to remember that Timothy has that faith living in him too.

I have always been fascinated by the stories of people who have gone through great trials in their lives. I have read many of the accounts of the American pilots who were held as POW’s in Viet Nam. I have read about Terry Anderson, the journalist who was held as a hostage for many years in Beirut, Lebanon, or Nien Cheng, the woman who endured years in solitary confinement in China during the Cultural Revolution.

And I have been fascinated to find that in almost every case, when life has been stripped down to its barest essentials, all you have left is faith in God. Each of those people found that the darker their circumstances got, the brighter their faith burned, and the more strength and courage they derived from their relationship with God.

We live in a world where most people have tried to put other things—money, pleasure, material possessions—at the center of their lives instead of God. Faith in God doesn’t seem to be important in America anymore, if you judge by what happens in your typical neighborhood every Sunday morning.

But then these same people who never even give God a passing nod wonder why they are never quite satisfied, and why their lives don’t seem to have any real meaning. And what’s going to happen to them when they lose those things that they have substituted for God? Because one day all those things are going to be gone.

A true follower of Jesus Christ is a person who says that God is the only worthy foundation on which to build a life, and faith is how you build it. So don’t neglect your faith. Nurture it. Feed it. Exercise it.

There’s a third value that Paul celebrates in Timothy’s life:

3. His Family

He said “I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice…”

Timothy didn’t have a perfect family. His father was an unbeliever. His parents were going in opposite directions spiritually speaking.

But even so, the family was where Timothy’s values as a follower of Jesus Christ were formed. It was in the family, under the godly influence of a mother and a grandmother who loved the Lord that Timothy’s character developed.

We live in a day when the family is under tremendous pressure—economic pressure, sociological pressure, moral pressure. Families are breaking up in record numbers. More and more children are being raised by single parents.

And many more kids, who do have both their parents, are left to virtually raise themselves because their parents are both working. They are the latch key kids. They are the kids who are being institutionalized and raised by hired hands in day-care centers so that their parents can make the payments on a larger mortgage or a second car. They are the kids who turn to the television or the Internet or rock music or drugs for emotional support.

A follower of Jesus Christ is someone who believes that the family is the number one agency that God has designed for the formation of Christian character. You can’t expect the schools (even Christian schools), or the church, or the government to raise your kids and give them values and teach them to love God. Only you can. And you do it in the day to day routine of family living.

Well, Paul has been remembering these things about Timothy - his friendship, his faith, and his family. Now he goes on to say to Timothy that there are three things that he wants him to remember:

2 Timothy 1:6-7 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.

The gift of God that he refers to here was a particular equipping for ministry that God had given to Timothy through Paul. We don’t know specifically what that spiritual gift was—it might have been the gift of leadership, or pastor-teacher, or something like that.

But whatever it was, Paul was urging Timothy to fan it into flame. He needed to cultivate it, to develop it, to hone it. He couldn’t just sit on it. Timothy had a lot of potential to make a tremendous impact on the world around him, but he needed to get moving and do something about it.

And Paul reminded Timothy that there are three virtues that God has given every Christian that we need to resource if we’re going to make a difference in our world. Those three virtues are power, love and self-discipline.

1. Power

The first thing you notice when you become a follower of Jesus Christ is that you do not have the power to live a transformed life. The kind of life that God expects us to live is simply not possible to live under our own steam—we just run out of fuel.

But God has made His power available to us through the Holy Spirit. Remember Acts 1:8…

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

When the Spirit is living in you, the power flows through you.

2. Love

Love is the ability to see every other person who comes into your life in terms of the fact that they matter to God. You have never locked eyes with a person who does not matter to God. And because they matter to God, love says, they also matter to you.

Now you might say, “Well I can love most people, but there are some people that I just cannot love.” That’s because you’re trying to love them with your own love. You’re not tapping into God’s love.

The first thing you’ve got to do when you run into somebody that you just cannot love is this: You’ve got to pray “God love this person through me. You do it. I’m willing to be the channel for it, if you’ll just supply the love.” It takes faith to pray a prayer like that. And it takes the willingness to go ahead and risk showing love to that unlovable person simply because you want to be an instrument in the hand of God.

3. Self-discipline

One of the most amazing men who ever lived was Alexander the Great. He conquered so much of the world that there was really nothing left for him to conquer. But there was one thing he could never conquer. He never conquered himself.

He had a violent temper that he was never able to control. And that temper caused great heartache both to himself and to the people around him.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all like Alexander the Great. We’re all fighting what one author has called “the War Within”. Oh the battlefields are different, to be sure. Like Alexander, you may be fighting the battle of anger. Or maybe your battle is with apathy. Or addiction. Or a physical appetite gone out of control.

But wherever the battle is in your life, you’ve found that you’re losing more than you’re winning. It seems like the enemy just has more weapons, or more persistence, or more reinforcements than you do and you so often go down to defeat.

That’s why God has given us a spirit of self-discipline. We need his help to win the War Within.

You see, Christianity is never going to work for someone else if it doesn’t work for you. You’ll never see Christ change someone else’s life if you’re not letting him first change your life. Because only changed people can change people.

Power, love, self-discipline. Exactly the resources we need. Where do we get them? We get them from God.