Introduction

The central question we must grapple with is this: Do you really believe that the gospel is enough?

Do you really believe that the cross is sufficient to meet the needs of your heart and your soul? To answer the deep craving of your heart? Do you really believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is worth abandoning your life to? Do you really believe that the approval and pleasure of Jesus is of greater value than the approval of the world? Do you really believe that God is more satisfying than the things that the world can offer you?

The Context: Paul’s Final Words

Paul is in prison in Rome. He has been released from previous imprisonments, but not this time. Now he writes to a young man by the name of Timothy, his beloved son in the faith. Paul, the aged gospel warrior, is facing imminent execution at the hands of Rome, and he knows it.

In chapter 4, verse 6, he says to Timothy, “I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

So Paul writes these final words with apostolic authority and with deep urgency and with the tenderness of a father to a beloved son, because Timothy is floundering.

Timothy is pastoring and involved in ministry in one of the three major urban centers of the ancient world, the city of Ephesus. It is there that the great temple to the goddess Diana stands, along with the great amphitheater in which the fights between soldiers and with beasts take place. Timothy is considering his own life and he is tempted to give in to his fears and to feelings of shame at identifying with the gospel in such a difficult environment.

The cost of serving Jesus in the Ephesian culture seems just too great. So Paul writes this urgent, loving, explicit letter to this young, faltering warrior, and Paul is sounding a battle cry.

As you read this short letter, there are two overriding great themes that Paul addresses in every single chapter of this letter:

First, Timothy, you must protect and proclaim the gospel. Chapter 1, verses 13 and 14, and the text that we’re about to read again in chapter 3, verse 14. Chapter 4, verses 1 through 3: “Preach the word.”

Second, Timothy, you must be willing to suffer for the gospel. You see, the protection and the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ means that we must be prepared for the suffering that will certainly accompany it.

The Cosmic Battle

God is on mission to call out for Himself a people from every tribe and tongue and nation and people group—people who will gladly worship Him in spirit and in truth to the praise of His glorious grace for all eternity. A war is raging in our generation for the souls of men and women. This is not a physical battle; it is a spiritual one, and there are no neutral parties.

You who read this are either on one side of the equation or the other. There are no in-betweens. You are either for Him or you are against Him.

The one at the center of this cosmic battle is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ Himself. The gospel declares to us that we are to know Jesus, we are to embrace Jesus, we are to submit to Jesus, or we will be judged by Jesus.

Every generation of Christ followers advances the mission of God in the trenches of everyday life. This generation is no different. It’s not more difficult today than it has been in generations gone by or in the days of the Apostle Paul as he awaits his execution in Rome.

The struggle is real. Every true Christian has doubtless faced the angst of what it means to faithfully follow Jesus in the midst of a culture that rejects Him. We have all been Timothys.

The gospel always advances in the face of opposition because the kingdom of Satan is in direct conflict with the kingdom of God. This is exactly where Timothy is, as Paul is writing. His fears are threatening to overrun his faith.

2 Timothy 2:1-4

“You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.”

Three Key Truths

Three truths flow from our text, particularly verse 3: “You therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

1. Suffering for the Gospel Is Expected

Paul begins chapter two with the words, “You therefore, my son.” You can never begin with a “therefore.” We go back into chapter one—Paul is expressing to Timothy, he’s challenging Timothy, he’s concerned for Timothy while Paul is facing execution. Timothy is wavering. Timothy is filled with fear. He’s wondering if the cost is too great to identify boldly and publicly with the gospel.

Notice the invitation that Paul issues to Timothy to share in suffering for the advance of the gospel: “You therefore endure suffering, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

You see, suffering is a guaranteed part of living in a fallen world.

A man from our church came some years back and said, “Please, can you come and visit my niece? She’s in a bad way.” I accompanied him to the house. As we entered the front door, we could hear someone screaming in the back room. We walked down the little dark hallway and into the room, and there in a little blank room, a room about three meters by three meters, on a reed mat lay Florence.

She’d been suffering from a terminal illness, and her body had been reduced literally to a living skeleton. In all my days in Africa, I’ve never seen someone in such a terrible condition, but still alive. She was suffering. In any other country, she would be in hospice care, and her pain would be alleviated, but the local hospital had simply sent her home with her mother to die.

The evening before we arrived, she had been begging her mother, “Please, if you love me, kill me. I can’t take it anymore.” We entered, sat, held her hand, and shared with her the gospel. I don’t know what God did in her heart. She said that she believed, and if she believed, then when she passed away the next day, she went to be with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The world is full of suffering. The news this morning of over fifty people who were shot in Las Vegas last night—it’s senseless, it’s useless. Our world is filled with suffering because it is the effect of sin, our sin, or the sin of others. We live in a depraved world.

Deep emotional and physical suffering is not limited to just Christians. Death, accidents, hurricanes, cancer, earthquakes, childhood abuse, rape, terrorism remind us every day of the effects of sin upon the human race. Though we seek escape, suffering is inevitable.

A Different Kind of Suffering

But this is not the kind of suffering that Paul is speaking to Timothy about. You see, this is the kind of suffering that comes to us because we are alive in the midst of a sin-cursed world. The suffering that Paul is speaking of in verse three—”endure suffering, Timothy, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ”—is different.

Chapter 1, verse 8: “Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but be partakers of the afflictions of the gospel”—the suffering that comes because of your identity with Jesus Christ and His gospel. “Share with me in these sufferings according to the power of God.”

“Endure hardship, suffer afflictions,” carries with it the idea of choosing to carry out our duty. In the carrying out of our duty, there is often suffering that goes along with it. This is a suffering that you willingly identify with.

This is the suffering that Jesus spoke of in Mark chapter 10, when He turned and said, “Take up your cross daily and follow Me.” Your cross is not your backache. Your cross is something that you look at and you choose whether or not you will identify with your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, regardless of what it will cost you.

You identify by picking up that instrument that to the entire Hebrew and Roman world of the day identified a condemned criminal, and you pick it up gladly and willingly, and you drag it through the city streets. By so doing, you identify yourself with Jesus Christ and with His gospel. That’s the challenge to Timothy.

Suffering is expected of everyone who serves as a soldier. Notice what he says in verse three: “endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” In other words, Timothy, the suffering that goes along with the advance of the gospel is not optional for soldiers.

In fact, in chapter 3, verse 12, look what he says: “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”

2. Why Gospel Advance Involves Suffering

Why does this calling to gospel advance, to live as Christians—why throughout the New Testament, from Jesus through all of the apostles, the writings of the apostle, all the way through the book of Revelation—why is the gospel message and discipleship inevitably connected with suffering?

Because We Live in Difficult Last Days

“Know this,” Paul tells Timothy, “that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men will be lovers of their own selves.”

Sort of the Snapchat generation, isn’t it? We kind of throw our image out there because we want people to think a certain way about us. All the while, we talk about being authentic.

Why do we suffer for the gospel? Because we have been called to serve and advance the gospel in a world that loves itself.

“Covetous, boasters, proud.” Do you know at the very core of every disagreement and argument that you have with people today, whether it’s back where you come from or in your dorm, do you know at the very root of that is pride?

“Blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

Are you a lover of God? What did Jesus say? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. This is the first and great commandment.”

Why does our Christian calling to advance the gospel involve suffering? Because we live in difficult last days where people are lovers of themselves, all the while seeking to keep up the appearances of godliness.

In this text, Paul is not talking about the pagans. He’s talking about people like us who want to get into their little world, and they want to present to everyone that they’re a good Jesus person. Look what he says in verse 5: “having a form, an external facade of godliness, but denying the very power that produces godliness.”

Because let me tell you, when you face the suffering, the potential suffering of your family and your context, and you decide to go out of the secret place and to publicly share and represent, you decide that you will not live in fear and shame, that you will go public with your faith, you’re likely to suffer.

Because Religious People Reject Biblical Truth

Not only because we live in difficult last days, but also because the majority of religious people reject biblical truth. Look at chapter 4, verse 3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers.”

They’re going to fuel their own lusts, fuel their own desires. They will heap to themselves teachers who will tell them what they want to hear. They’re going to gravitate to the friends who are going to tell them that, “Hey, it’s okay. Everybody is doing it. I mean, don’t be a fanatic. Don’t get crazy with this stuff.”

3. The Power to Endure

Fear of suffering threatens the advance of God’s mission. This is why Paul reminds Timothy that he must endure suffering as a good soldier. “Do not be ashamed,” he says in 1:8, “of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God.”

You see, if you are to willingly embrace the probability of suffering for the sake of gospel advance, you need a power outside of yourself to pull that off.

This is why he began with “therefore” in chapter 2, verse 1: “You, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

Don’t be ashamed of the gospel. You know why we’re tempted to be ashamed of the gospel? Because we really don’t believe that the gospel is enough. We fear death. We fear sickness. We fear unknown dangers. May I remind you that in that context, fear is always the face of an idol in your life. In that moment, you love something more than you love God.

Conclusion

If we’re to advance the gospel, it will be at the price of suffering. Every one of us will die. How terrible it would be to die having never lived for anything.