Motivation for Ministry

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of preaching and teaching in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

Motives are such tricky things. They are so easily compromised, mixed, diluted, corrupted. When the Lord called me into the ministry out of a career track toward research chemistry there were a lot of steps along the line, but when I examined my heart closely, which probably wasn’t often enough, I couldn’t help but see on the one hand I wanted to go this way because the Lord had given me a real burden for lost men and women, yes, and because I wanted to see the gospel promoted, yes.

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And because I thought the Lord had given me at least some gifts and graces along these lines, yes, and because there were some Christian leaders who were telling me I should, yes. I did have one or two astonishingly powerful experiences under the ministry of the Word as others were preaching that called out to me. I will never forget the sermon by a chap called Wilkerson who preached on Ezekiel 22. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none,” and it was as if the Spirit of God just broke my heart and made me cry out, “Here am I, send me!”

It’s all very noble stuff, and I can tell the story in such a way that, well, I come out smelling like a theological rose. But if I’m really, really honest, you know, somewhere buried in there, before very long, I could imagine myself preaching to crowds and influencing people and people looking up to me in the ministry. Then I would, of course, immediately feel guilty and repent of that, and start all over again and remember the gospel and my own lostness. But the other stuff gets intermingled in that pretty quickly, doesn’t it?

Am I the only one like that? Motives are such tricky things. At least they are for, you know, people from North America. Maybe not in Australia. But here we find the apostle Paul, toward the end of his life telling a younger Timothy what ought to drive him. In verses 3 to 7 he reminds him of his heritage. He reminds him of Paul’s own love for him.

“I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” Isn’t that a wonderful way for an older man to speak to a younger man instead of standing back somewhat aloof and waiting to be revered? Paul declares that his joy depends, in this instance, on seeing the younger one. Do you see? It’s as if Paul is concerned to puff the centrality of the younger man. It’s wonderful! Then he reminds him of his family heritage, Lois and Eunice, of the gift God has already given him.

Paul wants Timothy so to be driven that he does not succumb to the timidity to which, apparently, temperamentally, he was prone. “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” So what he does in the following verses is lay out what ought to drive Timothy. What his motives should be. These verses talk about ministry, motives, and mentors.

1. Maintain a clear grasp of the value of the gospel.

Most of this is transparent in this passage, 2 Timothy 1:1–2:2.

A) The gospel is the unimaginably important news that saves us from death and makes us holy for all eternity, out of God’s sheer grace.

Verses 8–9. We have been introduced to the gospel, which, by the power of God, saves us. God has saved us and called us to a holy life. Saved in Paul regularly means saved from hell, saved from condemnation, saved from damnation, saved from destruction, saved from death. “[He] has saved us and called us …” Not simply to life (for the antithesis is not simply life) but “… to a holy life.” Otherwise, there is soon death.

“[He] has called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” So in the first instance, the gospel is the unimaginably important news that saves us from death and makes us holy for all eternity, all out of God’s sheer grace. You just cannot ever lose vision of that.

B) It is anchored in eternity and manifest in history in Christ.

I read quickly through verse 9, but it is important to slow down a bit. “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Now we must not understand that to mean before the beginning of time it was especially given to me so that it is my salvation, my individual transaction that is in issue. Now there are biblical texts that do say that, but that’s not the point here, as the connection with verse 10 makes clear.

The emphasis is on Christ. We read, “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus.” The emphasis is on Christ Jesus, rather than on the us. “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death.” In other words, the thought is akin to what you find in Revelation 13 and Revelation 17. In the mind of God, Christ was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

It was already in God’s mind. It was part of his plan, part of his purpose. That doesn’t mean Christ’s death is somehow atemporal. It means from God’s point of view, the cross wasn’t tacked on when everything went to pieces. It was already in his plan primordially, in eternity past. The cross was not an accident, a massive repair job tacked on at the last minute and then in due course it emerged in time, in history. It took place in real space-time reality. In God’s mind, it was already there.

That’s the nature of the gospel we’re talking about. Then in the fullness of time, we are told, it appeared. It was revealed in God’s mind, “… but now revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus.” Here the appearing refers not only to the incarnation, but to his incarnation, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension. For it brought, then “… immortality to light through the gospel.”

“This is my gospel,” he says. So it is unimaginably important news that, from our vantage point, saves us from death, makes us holy for all eternity, and all out of God’s sheer grace. In fact, it is anchored in eternity past and manifested in history in Christ Jesus. Now it is important to pause here and say how easily this simple truth (I’m not telling you anything new) can be twisted.

I don’t just mean the gospel can be twisted; we can get it wrong. I mean the relative importance of things can be twisted. Those of us who come from a heritage, a good and noble heritage, of maintaining the centrality of preaching the whole counsel of God, can actually unwittingly begin to elevate preaching above the gospel or our ministry above the gospel.

Now you might think it’s inconceivable because, after all, our ministry is about the gospel and what we preach is the gospel, but we’re such finite people and our motives are so easily corroded that, in fact, without ever being quite so crass as to say it, we begin to think of preaching as an art form. A sermon is to be admired. After all, aren’t there people who go around and say, “Oh, he’s a great preacher!”?

And in our corrupt motives, we start thinking, “Yeah, I wish somebody would say I was a great preacher. Oh, no. I mustn’t say that.” But then somehow it’s on the performance again. Even in our translations we sometimes get confused. The old Authorized Version says it is through the foolishness of preaching that God was pleased to saved those who believe. Now that’s not quite right. It’s through the seriousness, through the folly, of the thing preached. It’s the message. It’s the gospel. Now it is the gospel preached, it’s the gospel heralded, but it is still the gospel.

So we do have to learn to preach. I’m not denying that. Although even here, another Aussie, Peter Adam down at Ridley, has said some very important things, namely: Preaching, in communicating the truth, is not everything. Preaching is a subset of what might be called the ministry of the Word. So there are lots of places for one-on-one Bible study and small-group Bible studies and investigative, evangelistic Bible studies and all the rest where there is not the heraldic element you find in preaching.

Now preaching is central. Don’t misunderstand me. Preaching is central, and wherever people begin to depreciate it or downplay it, I’m there pushing it and trying to train people for it. But, it is not the gospel. Indeed, it’s even possible to come off the rails in emphasizing the centrality of the gospel in another way. We can start talking about the gospel in such a way it becomes, for us, a catchword for the structure of the faith without actually talking too much about Jesus.

I have heard prayers that run like this: “Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel. The gospel is the power of God to salvation. Make us faithful for the gospel. Make us faithful to gospel. Help us to preach the gospel everywhere. It is the gospel that transforms. O Lord God, promote the gospel. Send the gospel everywhere in the world.” Gospel, gospel, gospel, gospel. And nowhere is there affection for Jesus.

Haven’t you heard prayers like that? And in one sense, they’re well-motivated, at least to begin with. That is, there are so many trends around us that begin to depreciate the gospel that to find people passionate about the gospel and eager about the gospel, you want to say, “Amen! This is good! This is good!” After all, in these verses gospel is mentioned in verse 8, gospel is mentioned in verse 10, gospel is mentioned in verse 11. Then you get the pattern of sound teaching in verse 13. Guard the good deposit in verse 14. You get into chapter 2. “This is my gospel.”

Yet when you read through those words, they are in the context of fleshing out.… I don’t know what to call it other than … a kind of adoring reiteration of who Jesus is and what he has done. It becomes Jesus-centered even more transcendentally than gospel-centered. Now if by gospel what you mean is all of that, well, fine, say it. Because there are lots of people who will simply imitate your formulas.

If your formulas in public praying and preaching talk about the gospel all the time but aren’t full of Jesus, then pretty soon you’ll have a church that’s talking about the gospel in some sort of abstract sense but won’t be all that transparent when it’s saying things like, “I love Jesus,” or “What has Jesus done?” Look at these verses.

“Join with me in suffering for the gospel. By the power of God, God who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Do you see how gospel is being fleshed out in a God-centered, Christ-centered, death-of-Christ-centered way all the time? All the time. Oh, I know we’re using gospel as a sort of formula to include all of that, but you have to spell it out. You have to spell it out again and again and again in your preaching, your teaching, your public praying, partly for the good of your own heart so gospel does not merely become a nice catchword where a whole lot of theological propositions are summarized but there is no reiteration of the truth of what God has done, no affection, no adoration. Maintain a clear grasp of the gospel.

2. Maintain a willingness to suffer for the gospel.

After all, the paragraph begins, “Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner.” Apparently, some people, as in Philippians, were saying, “You know, there are a lot of Christians preaching around the place who don’t get into trouble the way Paul gets into trouble. I mean, Paul’s a great man and all that. He did have that pretty cool Damascus Road experience and he has planted quite a lot of churches, but he’s got a big mouth. You know?

He’s in prison. He’s before Caesar. Distance yourself from him just a wee bit, because, after all there are a lot of Christians out there who are not about to be fed to the lions.” But, “Don’t be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God …” Then down in verse 11, “I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed.”

“Yes, I may be treated as a criminal, threatened with savage death, despised. People may wonder if I’m loyal to the state, disrespecting those in authority, but I am not ashamed because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” Then again in chapter 2, verses 8 and 9: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.”

There is in the New Testament a drumming note that Christians should expect to suffer. Not suffer just from cancer or from the common cold or from divorce or from penury or job loss or arthritis or old age or all the other kinds of things we mean when we talk about suffering. Then every once in a while we go a little more philosophical and we talk about suffering in the light of Katrina or of a tsunami or of a war. We might not be living under those conditions ourselves, but we see them because everything is presented to us digitally today.

You’re not allowed to throw a grenade anywhere without it being shown in our living room on TV. But in fact the dominant emphasis on suffering in the New Testament (not the exclusive emphasis but the dominant emphasis) is suffering for the gospel, suffering for Jesus’ sake. That’s everywhere, in surprising places. Philippians 1, verse 29: “It has been granted to you …” The word means it has been granted to you as a gracious gift. “… not only to believe in his name, but also to suffer for his sake.”

Imagine belief and suffering put on a par: both given by God’s grace. Do you ever think like that? Then two chapters later, Paul wanting to say, “Oh, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.” Then we remember how the apostles responded in the book of Acts when they begin to face the first whiff of persecution. They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name.

Then of course is the teaching of Jesus himself, the last of the eight beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, verses 3 to 10. “Blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Then that’s the only one of the eight beatitudes that is expanded upon. Jesus puts it into the second person, “Blessed are you when men shall revile you, despise you, say all manner of evil against you for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Here is an alignment of the individual believer with a whole heritage of God’s witnesses across ages past, New Testament and Old Testament. Rejoice; be happy over it. This shows whose side you’re on! This is not the way I normally think, I have to tell you. Then, of course, there are other passages, 1 Peter, which warns us if we are going to suffer, let it be because we are suffering unjustly not because we deserve to get smacked down. Because this is the way the Master himself went.

Christ left us an example that we should walk in his steps. Oh, there are some unique elements, of course, to his cross work, but one of the elements is its exemplary nature: doing what is right, being faithful to the revelation God has given, and being slapped down for it. Oh, it might not here be in terms of beating or being put in prison or being prosecuted. Who knows? It might come. It might not. But it will mean being despised. It will mean being treated like an idiot.

But Jesus includes that in his understanding of persecution in Matthew 5, doesn’t he, when he speaks of being reviled, all manner of evil being said against you, and being despised. Quite frankly, our inclination is to retreat from that and to back up just a little bit more and to soften our words so nobody will despise us all that much because it’s a bit embarrassing at the end of the day.

“Won’t I have more influence if I’m respected?” Well, it’s certainly true. It’s certainly true that there are some people who are despised because they open their mouths to change feet. They are undisciplined. They’re mean-spirited. They’re nasty, and they call it faithfulness. That sometimes happens. On the other hand, it’s far more prevalent, I think, for those of us who know the gospel, nevertheless, quietly, out of mixed motives again, some good, some bad, to start trimming the gospel just a wee bit so we avoid any kind of suffering, even the suffering of being despised.

Whereas the whole tenor of the New Testament is, “Hey, when you suffer for Jesus’ sake, you’re just beginning to arrive.” The disciples rejoiced that they were counted worthy for the name. If you get that built in to your DNA, the DNA of your motives, then everything changes. What it means is you have far less fear of men and women and far more of the fear of the Lord. Do you see? It looks, in the flow of the context, as if that has been one of Timothy’s problems. Paul writes in verse 7, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, Timothy, but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

Then he gives himself immediately as an example, verse 8. Do you see? “Don’t be ashamed of me.” Not because Paul wants an extra sidekick on side to stroke him every once in a while. No, no, no, no. Understand if you’re clear on the gospel, clear in the promotion of the gospel, where the gospel is talking boldly about the salvation Jesus brings and all he has done for time and for eternity and his exclusiveness and his power, there are going to be some people who lean on you, one fashion or another.

Rejoice when they do. It shows whose side you’re on, or, to use the language of Jesus in John chapter 17, “Why should any disciple of Jesus think that he is above his master. If they despise his master, why shouldn’t they despise the master’s servants?” So maintain a willingness to suffer for the gospel.

3. Maintain the mandate to guard the gospel.

Verses 13 and 14: “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” The BST volume by John Stott on 2 Timothy, you may recall, has the title Guard the Gospel. That’s exactly right.

This assumes, of course, that it is easily lost. It might be lost by laziness, by inattention. In the context, one suspects it is easily losable because we’re afraid of what people will think of us. We don’t want any kind of suffering at all, and when there are dissentions of a theological nature in the church, instead of graciously, with faith and love, tackling them, we may just back off because, “Well, after all, God wants unity, doesn’t he?”

It’s worth thinking about the constant tension in the Scripture between the ideal of unity and the ideal of maintaining the truth, because you do find both ideals in Scripture, don’t you? Frequently, in Western churches you find heritages that emphasize one or the other. There are some who so stress the importance of preserving the gospel you’re not sure what they really think of the importance of preserving unity.

There are others who so stress the priority of maintaining unity that unity becomes the absolute good. It is the summum bonum, the supreme good, and therefore, you’re prepared to have all kinds of diversity of doctrine because, after all, that’s not as important as unity. If somebody says, “Yes, but doesn’t the Bible say something or other here?” the response is, “Don’t be divisive. Maintain unity.” How do we think about these things methodologically? How do we think of them at a deep, principial level?

A) It’s important to recognize that in the Bible unity is not an absolute good.

In some contexts it’s a good, and in some contexts it’s an evil. It’s clearly a good, for example, a godly unity, in a passage like John 17 where believers are supposed to have unity likened if you will (you can’t get higher than this) to the persons of the Godhead, with love among us reflecting the unity of the persons of the Godhead. It is spectacularly powerful.

On the other hand, you have an ungodly unity in Genesis 11 where the peoples of the world come together to create a tower up to heaven to avoid any future flood and build a monument to any god who would control these things. You have an ungodly unity in the life of Jehoshaphat, who in his own beliefs, in his own faithfulness to the covenant, in his own values, in his own reign, was really a good man.

On the other hand, he builds a kind of unity with Ahab and gets killed for it and leaves his people defenseless. It was a dumb unity. It was a bad unity because it was a unity of a person himself, personally committed to the covenant with a person who was despising it both in action and deed everywhere. It was a bad unity. Unity is not an absolute good. For exactly the same reason there is a godly division and an ungodly division.

A godly division comes along in a passage like Luke 12:51, where Jesus himself insists he came not to give peace, but a sword. He recognizes his message will be intrinsically divisive. Yet, on the other hand, an ungodly division is found in a passage like Romans 16:17 where we are warned to watch out for those who cause divisions, or later in Titus 3, “Warn a divisive person once, and then twice, and then have nothing to do with him.”

There is an ungodly division that is certainly condemned in Scripture, but there is a godly division when you see the gospel comes and actually separates families: a father will be set against a son and a mother-in-law against a daughter-in-law, and so on, and so on, and so on. That, too, is gospel teaching.

As far as I can see, although there is a powerful gospel unity, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, unity in the abstract is not an absolute good. It is a unity in the truth. It is a unity around a profound submission to God and his Word, supremely his Word incarnate, the Lord Jesus and all that he has done.

We do have to guard our own hearts and our corrupt motives. Yes, yes, yes. So often our defense of the truth can become vicious and malicious. Somebody questions us, and it’s not just that they’re questioning the truth, it’s questioning of me as the minister here. What begins as a questioning of the truth, which we are supposed to answer with a certain kind of meekness and humility, becomes a challenge to my authority, and suddenly our motives are mixed all over again. That’s pretty awful.

That’s why these pastoral epistles are full of exhortations to answer older men gently and older women wisely and a sister with purity and those who are wrong you should gently rebuke, and so on, so on, so on. You see? There’s a huge emphasis on this so our motives don’t get corroded in this regard. But once you have said all of that, then you reread verse 13. “What you heard from me keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus.”

In other words, it’s not just a series of isolated propositions but a pattern of sound teaching. Listen. Informed Jehovah’s Witnesses have as high a view of the doctrine of Scripture as I do. Inerrancy does not guarantee a pattern of sound teaching. Don’t misunderstand me. I do think the Bible does maintain this very high view of Scripture, but a very high view of Scripture does not guarantee responsible hermeneutics. There might be an unbiblical pattern so the teaching is not sound.

In every church, eventually, you find some people who know quite a lot of Bible verses but somehow they have no glue in their brains, they can’t rub two theological thoughts together and make them stick. There’s an atomistic bit over here and another atomistic bit over there and another atomistic.… Sometimes they say things with profundity and insight and you think, “This is wonderful. Real potential there.” Then two sentences later they say something so screwball you wonder what planet they’re from. Thus there is no pattern of sound teaching.

You never, every give those people a voice or a Sunday school class or primary evangelistic responsibilities. You nurture them around, say, “God bless them,” let them do what they do independently somewhat, encourage them in their way, and hope they will improve with time, but some people, quite frankly, just don’t. Meanwhile, there are others who can quote quite a lot of verses and say quite a lot of true things and have quite a lot of theology but somehow the pattern goes screwball.

It’s no longer the pattern of Scripture, which means part of responsible teaching and ministry in the local church is to develop a historically rooted, biblically faithful pattern of sound teaching. Now all the criteria that go into that I don’t have time to tease out, but it’s astonishingly important to understand this is what Paul insists upon here. There’s another passage in this regard that’s worth thinking of.

Back a couple of chapters, at the end of 1 Timothy 4, Paul, still writing to Timothy but just a little bit earlier, says in the closing two verses of that chapter, “Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” Isn’t that fascinating? “Let everyone see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely.”

The assumption, in other words, is that if you remain in your ministry in (let’s take an arbitrary number) five years, people who have watched you in that time won’t just say, “Yeah, he’s a pretty good guy.” They will talk about your progress in life and doctrine. “You know, when he came to us he was a pretty good teacher of the gospel, but he just gets better. There’s more insight here, more grasp of biblical truth, more application. And you know what, his own personal life, his life in the ministry, his spiritual connection with the Lord Jesus, his adoration, his trust in the sovereign God is transparently richer.”

So if you’re in a ministry for 35 years, and there are people in that ministry who have been there all that time, they ought to be able to track your progress. Now if it’s progress in doctrine, as well as in life, that means you have to keep studying. You certainly don’t progress in doctrine if you don’t keep studying. If you’re only reading, for example, enough to get by the next Bible study or the next message …

You progress in doctrine. You do more in church history and you read more in commentaries and theologies and you talk with other people and your grasp of the expansiveness and the cohesiveness of the whole, how it all hangs together and brings glory to God. It becomes more and more rich, and people sense the richness in your teaching.

At the same time, there is an increased humility, an increased brokenness before the cross, an increased joy in the Lord, an increased sense that this person has one foot on the earth well and truly entrenched and the other foot in heaven and desires to be there. There is a kind of progress in both doctrine and life. Let all see your progress. Watch your doctrine and life.

So part of guarding the gospel here, therefore, is not merely defensive. As soon as you hear, “Guard the deposit,” or “Watch that you preserve the pattern of sound teaching” it can suddenly become merely a set of propositions that they got all the pattern right and then becomes very, very defensive. Oh, no, no, no, no.

As usual, the best defense is an offense, so you’re growing in your knowledge of Scripture and of the Word of God and in your godliness. Part of guarding the gospel, then, includes adoration, your own growth, and it may be with time you’ll see some of the details of your understanding of the pattern were, themselves, wrong. They’re modified and tweaked a bit as you bring everything into submission to Christ.

“What you have heard from me …” That is, from the apostolic emissary. For us, from the apostolic writings. “… keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you …” Never, ever think that this is achieved merely by your intellectual prowess. Rather, “… guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

Let me push just one bit further in all of this. For quite a lot of years now I have been teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, at least when I’m there. You know, there is a joke that’s going around about J.I. Packer. He’s retired now, but for many years he taught at Regent College, and the students there asked the question, “What is the difference between J.I. Packer and God?” and the answer was, “God is everywhere. J.I. Packer is everywhere except here.”

So far I don’t think that one has been transferred to anybody else, and I pray it will not be transferred. Nevertheless, when I am there, I have been at Trinity now for, well, this is my thirtieth year, and at the moment we are on a presidential search. That is, our president retired a couple of years.… He resigned, actually, to return to pastoral ministry after 12 years. He resigned, and now we are looking for somebody else. We have an interim at the moment.

Some of us have been doing some serious reading about institutions that were founded in the past as evangelical institutions that became secular in due course. Harvard, for example. You may have heard of it. And Yale. And Andover Newton. Major institutions that became universities or seminaries or whatever, and then eventually moved to a kind of Unitarian view of God, and then maybe to a secular view of God. In each step it seemed reasonable enough.

Well nowadays, there have been some research books written, not necessarily by Christians, that have simply tried to track out the steps that made an evangelical institution gradually drift to become something else because, transparently, however you think it happened, somebody didn’t guard the deposit. What were the steps? Perhaps the most important of these books is by James Burtchaell called The Dying of the Light, over 800 pages of careful research.

One of the things that he points out is this: at some juncture, these institutions which were usually founded by pastor-theologians with a deep commitment to the Word of God and to the gospel and with an entrepreneurial vision of how to build toward the future, eventually the institution is so successful, whether in this person’s administration or one or two on that they need people with really good administrative gifts to run the place.

Entrepreneurs are not always good administrators, so eventually you put in charge people who are orthodox but not particularly informed biblically or theologically. They are orthodox, but they are great administrators and fund-raisers, which is surely what you need at some point. Well, that’s a tricky step because when you judge somebody’s orthodoxy, in the very nature of the case, the orthodoxy is measured against errors in the past. So I have no fear, today, that Trinity is in any danger of appointing as our president somebody who is a flat-out liberal.

The person who is appointed will be orthodox. I have no fear about that. So by that which has criticized and critiqued and done damage to the gospel 100 years ago or 70 or 60 years ago, we’re safe. We’re safe. The problem is that the new dangers that come along are never exactly like the old dangers, and the people most likely to understand the new dangers are not those who are theologically safe because they’re orthodox, as measured by the problems of the past, but by those who are theologically trained and informed and interacting with the dangers and pressures of the present.

Do you see? We’re not going to get snookered by somebody who is introducing flat-out 1920s liberalism. No chance at all. It’s conceivable we could be snookered by somebody who comes in and doesn’t see anything too, too dangerous in the new perspective on Paul. I mean, he might not even espouse it, but you know, there’s a place for tolerance and this person holds a high view of Scripture and what’s the problem? I mean, there’s unity in the Bible, you know. The importance of the unity in Christ Jesus!

Suddenly you have opened up a crack that in the next generation becomes a little broader and a little broader and a little broader. Which means in local churches and in institutions which claim to be confessionally biblical, confessionally evangelical in the best sense, you must have at their head, people who are not only theologically trained but who have been tested in matters of discernment who have an ultimate say.

Now under them they may need a wide battery of capable administrators. Far be it from me to criticize administrators. They’re a blessing sent from God. Administration is a charismatic gift. Do you remember that? Thank God for administrators. But at the same time, administrators are rarely the most discerning regarding the pattern of sound teaching. Rarely. So in due course, around these sacred corridors, you’re going to find a new archbishop. And eventually my dear friend John Woodhouse will step down from Moore College.

I’m not announcing something. In local churches and institutions and ministries, look for those who know how to preserve the pattern of sound teaching in faith and love in Christ Jesus or else the institutions go under, and it takes a great deal of work to bring them back. In God’s mercy it sometimes happens. It’s not always a one-way street downhill. No, no, no, no.

“What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” I feel badly saying all of this in one sense because I don’t want us to start developing a defensive posture. This is not a defensiveness, a back-to-the-wall fear.

Rather, it is a spectacularly privileged function of being a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s guarding the glorious truth that prepares men and women for eternity. Do you see? And part of the responsibility, part of the motivation in all of this is to understand we are to maintain the mandate to guard the gospel.

4. Distinguish the betrayers and supporters of the gospel.

Verses 15–16: “You know that everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me, including Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus.”

Yes, there’s a personal dynamic in all of this, all right, but Paul’s personal dynamic is always built into his estimate of how people are aligned with the gospel itself. It’s possible to develop merely a personal dynamic of loyalties that depends on friendship, but Paul’s dynamic of friendship depends on whether people are really, finally, loyal not simply to him as a person but to him as an emissary of the gospel.

You know, God raises up Christian leaders of different sorts and styles. Some of us are temperamentally gentle and a bit slow, melancholic, and others are a bit obstreperous and in-your-face and a bit prickly and challenge everything. Those of a weak self-image don’t like that latter group. They’re a miserable bunch to work with. On the other hand, they often get stuff done, don’t they?

Listen. Learn to respect and pray for and thank God for those who are fruitful, genuinely fruitful, in the gospel, whether you like them or not. Learn to be careful about those, no matter how gentle, how smooth, how personally friendly they are, who are quietly undermining the gospel. Learn to distinguish betrayers and supporters of the gospel. I wish I could say much more about that, from many passages, but I pass on to the last point.

4. Work hard at the passing on of the gospel.

As you know as well as I, there were no chapter breaks or verse breaks when these manuscripts were first written, so the end of chapter 1 runs smoothly into the beginning of chapter 2. “You, then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”

In other words, in the light of the flow from the end of chapter 1, the way you preserve the pattern of sound teaching, the way you guard the gospel, the way you elevate the good news of Jesus Christ is not simply by going in an isolated fashion to a defensive posture but precisely by training a new generation. In other words, one of the ways you preserve the gospel is precisely by finding another generation to tap them on the shoulder and becoming a mentor to them so they themselves learn the gospel well.

Otherwise, no matter how faithful you are, the most you have done is preserved it while you’re still alive. Which means your vision is small. So one of the responsibilities, in other words, of any generation of Christian leader is precisely to preserve the pattern of sound teaching, to preserve the gospel, to glory in it, to teach it, to evangelize, to establish believers in it and be willing to suffer for it precisely by mentoring a whole new generation coming along behind who themselves prove to be reliable men who will be able and qualified to teach others.

Do you remember the unbearably sad account of Hezekiah? A good man on so many fronts, but then he’s told he’s going to die. He whines, and in due course, the Lord gives him another 15 years, and at some point, boasting about his possessions, he allows in the emissaries of the fledgling empire of Babylon. Babylon when it is still not yet a threat. Eventually he’s confronted by the prophet and told, “Because you did what you did.… You didn’t seek the face of God. You’re busy boasting about your stuff instead of securing your own kingdom, the time is going to come when Babylon will wipe this nation out.”

Do you remember what Hezekiah says? “The word of the prophet is good,” he says, which sounds so pious, doesn’t it? Then the writer adds, “Because he thought in his heart, ‘I will have peace in my time.’ ” Hezekiah wasn’t interested in protecting his flock to the next generation and beyond. He was only interested in peace in his time. That’s all. It’s desperately sad.

What he should have done was fallen on his face before the Lord and begged the Lord’s forgiveness and asked him if only he would renew his own heart so he would be humble again and seek the Lord’s face and plead for the people. “Lord God, these people are sheep. I have betrayed them. I have done damage. Will you not have mercy on them? They are your covenant people.”

Isn’t that how he should have prayed? And maybe the Lord, in his mercy and kindness, would suspend the judgment or delay it or the like, but all he thinks about is his own life, his own generation. He whines when he’s going to die. He whines again when he’s told he has acted stupidly and he’s going to bring judgment upon his own people. So long as he can have peace in his time, “That’s fine by me.”

Where is the generation, then, of pastors and preachers and Christian leaders who are thinking strategically down the road all the time? What does it take for the next generation? What does it take? Whom can I mentor? How can I train them? And in this mentoring and training there is nothing more important than passing on the pattern of sound teaching, entrusting it to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.

That’s the sort of thing you also find in a passage like 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 15. It has a wonderful exemplification of the same sort of stance. Peter writes, “I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.” In other words, not just that you’ll remember them as long as I’m here and then after that it’s not my problem, you know? You’ll find your own minister. What can I say? I’m gone. I’m out of here.”

No. “I will make every effort so to indoctrinate you with this material, so to teach you the whole counsel of God you will remember these things when I’m gone because I’m getting old. I’m out of here. The Lord has told me that I will die, that I will be a martyr. And before I go, I want you to grasp the pattern of sound teaching. Where are your young men who will then pass this on to yet another generation?” What this means, very often, too, is that there needs to be intervention from senior saints.

My own call to the ministry was complex and confused, partly because I’m an easily confused sort of person. I didn’t suddenly wake up and have some insight as to how I was going into the ministry. Do you know what the first step was? The first step was still when I was an undergraduate at McGill University, studying chemistry, and the minister of the church came up to me one spring (Northern Hemisphere spring, March-ish, early April) and said to me, “Don, I want you to be an intern with me this summer in our church.”

Now we had quite a lot of college- and careers-aged people in that church, and I said, “You know, with respect, I think you’ve probably confused me. You know I come from a pastor’s home and all that, but I’m not heading into the ministry. I’m heading into chemistry. There are quite a few people here who are contemplating the ministry, and I’m not one of them. Ask somebody else.”

“No, no. I’m not confusing things,” he said. “I want you to do it, and if you go back to university next year and finish your chemistry, well, you know, God bless you. But I want you this summer because I want you to be my intern. That’s what I want.” So we had a good old ding-dong for an hour or two, and quite frankly, I won. I didn’t do it, you know? But it was the first little niggle, the first little wedge. What is somebody seeing in me that says I should at least, as a Christian, be thinking about this?

It wasn’t that I was despising the gospel. I was faithful at church, always showed up at prayer meeting and young people’s group and all the services and brought people to church. I was involved in McGill Christian Fellowship, and I thought someday when I was a research chemist I would give quite a lot of money to missions. But this dude was breaking my paradigm.

He was doing what Paul says Timothy is supposed to do. “Find young men who are able to teach others.” He was laying it on me. Now it took a lot more lessons, because I’m a bit thick. It took a lot more lessons before I got there, but the first wedge was this. So the question now becomes, for those of you who are in charge in some way of other people, whether a small Bible study group or you’re a minister in charge or whatever, when was the last time you tapped somebody on the shoulder and said, “I want you”?

That’s part of your job. That’s how you guard the gospel. That’s how you preserve it. Or are you just thinking for your own generation? Get through this charge and get another one and then eventually get retired. No, no, no, no. “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses …”

This apostolic, Pauline gospel which has come down to us in Holy Writ in these 13 epistles, nestled within the 66 books of the Canon, “The things you have heard me say yourself, which are now transcribed in written form, these things you entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” We pass on the whole counsel of God with gratitude for what we have received and in anticipation of ministry to a whole new generation, world without end, until the Master himself returns. Let us pray.

Increase our vision, we beseech you, Lord God, our vision of who you are, of what your dear Son has achieved on our behalf, of the privilege of service and the privilege of suffering, of what faithfulness looks like, not only in the promulgation and articulation of the gospel but in its defense, not only in bitty points but in the pattern of sound teaching, what it means for our own priorities and friendships and what it means for passing on the glorious truths of your beloved Son to a new generation.

Give us these motives, these visions, we pray, and your people here and abroad will be blessed for all eternity. Hide your face from us on these fronts, Lord God, and we are utterly undone. So have mercy upon us, we beseech you, for Jesus’ sake, for the good of the people for whom he shed his life’s blood. In Jesus’ name, amen.