2 Timothy 1:1-7
Your Grandmother Lois
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus,
2To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
3I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience as did my forefathers, as I constantly remember you night and day in my prayers.
4Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.
5I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am convinced is in you as well.
6For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
7For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
Berean Standard Bible
This is a last letter. Paul writes it as a prisoner, and before the end of it he tells Timothy that the time of his departure is at hand, so the man holding the pen knows roughly how much of his life is left. He spends it on one young friend.
Timothy gets a long stretch of affection before he gets a single instruction. Paul thanks God for him and tells him he is remembered night and day in the prayers of a man in a cell. Then he mentions tears. Somewhere behind this letter there was a parting that went hard, and Paul has not forgotten what it looked like, and he says that what he wants is to see Timothy again and be glad. Only after all of that does he name Lois and Eunice.
I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am convinced is in you as well.
Paul could have credited his own preaching here, and he would have been within his rights to. He hands it to a grandmother and a mother instead. The two of them arrive in the letter as family rather than as teachers or elders, with no office and no title between them, and Paul says the faith he is counting on in Timothy lived in them before it lived in him.
The first instruction follows, and it is a mild one. Paul tells Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God that came to him when Paul laid hands on him. Nobody fans a fire that is burning well. The gift needs active tending, and Paul neither scolds him for it nor pretends not to have noticed it; he tells him to go and tend it. Then, in place of the accusation you might expect next, he writes a sentence about what God hands out.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
Paul never says outright that Timothy is frightened. He describes what God has given and what God has not, and he leaves a young man in a hard job to work out for himself why that particular sentence needed to be in his letter. It is a patient way to tell somebody the truth about himself, and it comes from a man who does not have much time to be patient in.
How We Know
The household in verse 5 is one another account already described.
Acts 16:1 says Paul came to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, the son of a believing Jewish woman and a Greek father. Acts 16:2 says the brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him.
2 Timothy 1:5 names the mother and the grandmother, Eunice and Lois, and traces the faith through them. Acts names neither woman and never mentions a grandmother.
So one account gives the situation and the other gives the names, and neither one completes the other or points at it. Two accounts describing one household and agreeing on its unusual feature is a strong textual relation. It is not by itself a demonstration that the household was historical, and the texts give no way to tell whether one writer had the other in front of him.
What they share is the detail that the faith in that house came down the mother's side.
Questions
1 Paul is a prisoner and he is short of time. What does he spend the opening of this letter on?
AnswerOn Timothy. He thanks God for him, tells him he is prayed for night and day, and remembers the tears when the two of them last parted. Nothing at all is asked of Timothy until every bit of that has been said first.
2 Before we get to Timothy, who taught you what you believe? Whoever comes to mind first is the answer.
AnswerUsually it is somebody at home, and usually it is somebody who would never have called it teaching. Paul names the house Timothy grew up in, which is where most of us would have to look too.
3 Paul tells Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God. What does that tell you about how Timothy was doing?
AnswerThat it needs tending. Nobody fans a fire that is burning well. Paul does not accuse him of anything, and he does not soften it into a compliment either. He names the thing that needs doing and asks him to do it.
4 Paul writes that God has not given us a spirit of fear. Why would he put that sentence in a letter to Timothy?
AnswerThe sentence may be addressing fear, though Paul does not say Timothy was afraid. Instead of naming it, he lists what God has handed out: power, love, and self-control. Timothy is left to work out for himself why the subject came up at all.
What This Means for Us
The gift is God's, and so is the spirit that goes with it. Verse 6 calls it the gift of God, and verse 7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. Nothing in the passage asks Timothy to manufacture either one. He is told to fan into flame something already given to him.
That is why Lois matters here and does not carry the weight. The faith Paul trusts in Timothy first dwelt in her, and she did nothing that looked like much on any given day. What she was handling was not hers to produce.
So whoever is reading this to the room tonight is doing something small with something given. Do it as tending rather than as building, and expect God to be the one who supplies what is being tended.
Prayer
Father, thank you for the people who taught us before we could understand them, and for two women who never knew what their ordinary faithfulness would become. Keep our fires from going low. Fan them, and take the fear out of us. Amen.