Iron Grip: 2 Timothy 2:8-15 - 10th Sunday after Pentecost

The more I learn of the Apostle Paul, the more I think of him as the action hero of the New Testament, like the Indiana Jones of missionaries. 

He travels all throughout the Roman world, establishing and strengthening the churches, but his enemies are never far behind. Every time they attempt to seize him or kill him, he miraculously escapes. Shortly after his conversion, he evades arrest Damascus by being lowered from a basket from the city walls. He survives beatings, floggings, and stonings. In Philippi, God sends an earthquake to break him out of jail. His foes repeatedly try and fail to have him arrested by the Roman authorities. He’s shipwrecked on his way to Rome, he eludes an assassination conspiracy, he escapes before the mobs can seize him. Not that he deserves all the credit: the believers aid his every death-defying escape.

Image by günter from Pixabay

Paul never believed he was invincible. He was a servant of the Gospel. He understood it was for the Gospel’s sake that he survived everything his enemies threw at him. But he also understood it was for the Gospel’s sake that he suffered. In other words, the Gospel that freed him one day may bind him in chains the next. 

The Book of 2 Timothy is quite possibly the last letter Paul writes. His message in today’s passage is extremely simple: I’m chained, but the Word of God is not. Moreover, the chains that bind his body symbolize the chains that bind him to Christ, in life, in suffering, in death, and resurrection. This is Christian freedom in its purest form. 

Trouble is, most of us don’t really know or understand what Christian freedom is because we chain ourselves to so many other things.

I’m reminded of that movie trope where you have a person who’s handcuffed to a briefcase full of cash, jewelry, or narcotics. If a foe wants the contents of the briefcase, they grab the person it’s handcuffed to, and it doesn’t end for them.

I mention this because the most dangerous chains for the Christian are not those that imprison you for the sake of the Gospel. Rather, they are the chains you choose to secure for yourself to whatever it is you can’t live without. 

The smartphone is the modern-day equivalent of the ball and chain, except the chain is invisible. You can chain yourself to your newsfeed, your social media feed. You can chain your hopes on a better life to winning the lottery. Keeping up with the Joneses is like chaining yourself to a moving vehicle.

The chains that are most dangerous to your soul are the ones you choose for yourself. Whatever treasures or pursuits are inside the briefcase you keep handcuffed to your own wrist. The problem with chaining yourself to things in this world is that you share their fate. You go where they go. If they perish, you perish.

Let’s not forget our addictions, and everybody has them: there’s substance abuse disorders, for sure, but there’s also gambling and pornography, there’s shopping and hoarding, overeating, oversleeping, workaholism. You can be addicted to approval and control. You may be holding onto grudges and resentments. These are chains that cannot be broken through willpower and strength. 

You are also chained to the chaos of this dying world, and you may find yourself a prisoner to everything from physical and mental illness to natural disasters and evildoers. 

But you are bound to Jesus Christ—and have been since the day of your baptism. The Gospel is the power of God to break every chain that binds you in sin and suffering. 

How hard men have tried; how hard the devil has worked to silence the Gospel, to destroy the Church, to put at end to what Jesus started, to imprison us in fear and despair. But the Gospel cannot be chained.

This is why Paul is so full of hope even as he faces his own death. His body may be chained, but his Spirit is free. His chains proclaim the cross and resurrection.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed this truth in another powerful way: our sisters Patty and Evelyn, despite their bodies being ravaged by illness and old age, bore witness to the salvation of Jesus in the face of death. Christ led them peacefully on their Passover from this life to the next. They died as they lived, bound in unbreakable faith to Jesus. 

It is in these times, when you lose the freedom to live life on your own terms, when your strength and willpower are completely spent, that you finally see yourself in the iron grip of your Savior. 

After all, what’s the Gospel worth to someone who sees themself as infallible and invincible? Who doesn’t need forgiveness, who’s never needed God’s help or anyone else’s to get by? Who believes they’ve earned and deserve their salvation?

But for the rest of us, chained as we are and unable to set ourselves free, we hold fast to the unbreakable chains of the Gospel that will liberate us from all earthly bounds in due time. The strength to endure is the saving power of Jesus. You can’t deny it when you see it. You can’t deny it when you receive it. 

2 Timothy 2:8-15 (NRSVue)

⁸ Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, ⁹ for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. ¹⁰ Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. ¹¹ The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
¹² if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
¹³ if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
he cannot deny himself.

¹⁴ Remind them of this, and warn them before the Lord that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. ¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.