We’re currently in a series on the vision of our church—the way we feel God calls us to live in his plan for this world. Just as a reminder, these are the three points of our church vision. We exist to:

1. Embody the gospel for the residents of Paris;

2. Train disciples who make disciples;

3. Send out Christians equipped to serve the gospel in France and beyond.

Last week we talked about what it looks like to embody the gospel for the people of our city; this week we’re moving on to our next point: training disciples who make disciples. It is the logical next step: once we meet Christ, we need to learn to live like him. It’s exactly what Jesus commands his disciples to do in Matthew 28: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

To talk about this, we’re going to look at a very well-known passage, chapter 3 of Paul’s second letter to Timothy.

In case you don’t know what’s going on in this letter: the apostle Paul had a protégé, a young man named Timothy. Timothy traveled with Paul, he listened to Paul teach and he watched him live.

Eventually, when Timothy was mature enough, Paul left him in Ephesus to pastor the church there. And then, Paul was imprisoned by the Romans.

He writes this letter from prison, a short time before his death. He wrote it as a final exhortation to Timothy, a farewell to his son in the faith. And it really is a kind of final exhortation to Timothy to keep central what is truly central—to remain focused on what is truly important.

He does this by first expressing his gratitude for Timothy’s faith, and exhorting him to endure in the gospel; and then he puts his exhortation into context by talking about false teachings that have been showing up in Timothy’s church and elsewhere. These false teachings aren’t coming from Timothy; they’re coming from other Christians.

And that’s where the danger lies.

The Danger of False Discipleship (v. 1-9)

That’s where we’ll start in chapter 3, verse 1.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

So this is what happens when true discipleship is not pursued. This is the counterexample Paul gives to Timothy.

In v. 1-5, Paul lists a number of characteristics that seem fairly obvious if you’ve read Paul’s other letters. But here, he seems to cast his net wider than usual. He talks about people who are self-centered, greedy, arrogant, disrespectful, liars, brutal, “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” It’s almost a caricature of what most of us would consider an “evil” person.

But one thing sets them apart that we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see here, and it’s the most important. We see it in v. 5: having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

These people have the appearance of godliness. That is, despite all the awful things Paul just said about them, if you saw these people in church, you’d probably never notice anything strange about them. These are people who claim to be Christians, and who even seem to be exemplary Christians. They have the appearance of godliness.

There’s a reason why Paul says “Avoid such people” at the end of v. 5, and that is that these people are particularly dangerous. don’t think I’m overstating when I say this: someone who calls themself a Christian, but who does not live as a disciple of Christ, is far more dangerous than a sinful unbeliever. They’re dangerous because, since they seem so godly, people will trust them. But since they’re guided by their own selfish desires instead of God, these men aren’t trustworthy.

Paul says that they prey on the weak—that’s what he means when he talks about “creeping into households and capturing weak women”. He’s not saying they prey on all women, but given the power dynamics between men and women at the time, a particular type of woman would have been an easy target: women who were “burdened with sins—who had sinned in the past and couldn’t get out from under the guilt of it, and who, consequently, continued to be led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

This can happen to men too, of course, but given the power dynamics between men and women naturally the time, this type of woman would have been an easy target. (A good example of the kind of woman Paul’s describing here is the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4. She was in exactly this type of situation in her life, except that she met Jesus at that well, and not the kind of man Paul describes here.)

What do these men do? They “capture” these weak women—they convince them of a false gospel, which has all the bells and whistles of piety, but no truth.

Paul says in v. 8 that these men are like Jannes and Jambres. Who were they? These names don’t appear in the Old Testament, but they are the names that early Jewish writings gave to the magicians who opposed Moses in Exodus 7. Just like people use Napoleon’s name as shorthand for a self-aggrandizing character, Jannes and Jambres were shorthand for the Jews to represent opposition to God’s truth. These men, Paul says, have had their minds twisted by sin. Eventually their folly will be plain to all, he says, but in the meantime, they do damage to themselves and to others.

Paul’s goal in telling all of this to Timothy isn’t to freak him out. He’s not trying to make Timothy paranoid and afraid of opening up. He’s trying to do things: first, he wants to put him on his guard, so he can have his eyes open for signs of this type of person, because they’re dangerous for themselves, but especially, they’re dangerous for the church.

The Life of True Discipleship (v. 10-13)

The second thing he wants to do is encourage Timothy in true discipleship. When true godliness is at work, its power will show itself in the way other people are pointed to Christ through the life of the godly Christian. And this is what we see in the following verses, when Paul talks about himself. V. 10:

10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.

Now I know that the way Paul starts v. 10 sounds awfully self-aggrandizing. He reminds Timothy of what Timothy saw when he was following Paul. He talks about “my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness.”

My instinct is to go, “Wow, Paul, you sure have a high opinion of yourself. Maybe a little humility is in order.”

But Paul’s not praising himself. Paul draws Timothy’s attention, not to Paul himself, but to the way Timothy has followed in his footsteps. In v. 10, he’s saying, “Timothy, you have learned well. You conduct yourself well. You have a good aim in life. You have grown in patience. You have grown in love. You have grown in steadfastness.” Timothy saw all this in Paul, and he followed in his footsteps. Paul is commending Timothy here, not himself.

Now, Paul says that in addition to following in his footsteps in terms of godliness, Timothy has also seen how Paul suffered in the different cities where he ministered. Paul reminds him that true discipleship is costly, and often humiliating. V. 12:

12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

For the disciple of Christ, persecution and hardship are part of the package. As Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15.20).

Why is he talking about persecution? Because it is another clear indicator of true godliness, of true discipleship. He’s contrasting the false disciples he described in v. 1-9 with his own experience, an experience that Timothy has witnessed and participated in.

When we were on vacation in the south of France, we went to a lake with another family. At the center of this lake, there was a platform you could climb onto and jump off of, into the water. Zadie was absolutely determined to jump off of the platform into the water. So she swam out there with the others, climbed up, and jumped off, like a champ.

I wanted to jump off too, because I like the water, I like swimming, and I like jumping off things.

The thing is, the water was really cold. Unpleasantly cold.  I wanted to go in and swim and jump off the platform, but I didn’t want it that bad. So I got in up to my knees, and then said, “You know, I’m good.” And I stayed out.

This is the dynamic we see when Christians are exposed to hardships or persecution for their faith. Paul and Timothy are all in. They’re determined to follow him. They’ll take the persecution for Christ, they’ll take the hardships for Christ, because they have Christ. They’ll brave the waters, because they know what’s waiting for them at the end, and it’s infinitely better than whatever they may suffer for it.

The people Paul described in v. 1-9 will never get that far. They will never accept persecution for what they say they believe, because they don’t fully believe it. They’re lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. They’ve learned a lot, but they haven’t arrived at a knowledge of the truth. When the Christian life becomes costly to them, they will show their hand; they’ll bow out. And, as Paul says in v. 9, their folly will be plain to all.

The question is, how did Timothy, this young Greek man who grew to know Christ, come to the point where he would be able, not only to manifest faith, patience, love and steadfastness, but to remain firm in that character, even in the midst of the hardship he endured?

The answer is, he followed Paul. He lived with Paul. He learned from Paul.

He followed him in godly character, and in the persecutions and sufferings Paul endured.

The important thing to see is that he didn’t do it on his own. Timothy learned how to faithfully live the Christian life, in good times, and bad, by watching Paul do it.

Of course, not all Christians have this same opportunity. And in those cases, God has consistently showed himself faithful to help us grow in the faith. But we have to see that this kind of discipleship model (the “desert island” model where a guy is marooned on a desert island with nothing but his Bible and still grows in his faith because God is good and gracious) is the exception rather than the rule in the Bible.

Jesus’s disciples learned to follow him…by following him. And they took on disciples of their own. Paul trained Timothy.

The norm for the Christian life is that we learn to live faithfully for Christ by observing and imitating others who live faithfully for Christ.

There are two things we have to see here. The first is pretty obvious, but it should be said anyway:

Firstly, if you have any access to the local church, you can’t live separated from it.

Some people are like me—they have a hard time in social situations. Some people have a hard time opening up. Some people have been wounded by the church in the past. There are lots of excuses we can find to remain isolated from a local church, and a lot of people will do that; they’ll say, “I love Jesus, I love the Bible, but I don’t really need the church, because God will speak to me and build me up himself.”

That’s not how it works. It’s a dangerous thing to presume on God’s grace, and choose to remain isolated from the church because you don’t want to open yourself up to it. So if you have access to a local church—like all of us here do—then the norm the Bible gives us for Christian life is for us to grow in Christ by living out our faith together, letting one another see what it looks like, and then imitating one another in faithfulness.

If we have access to a local church, we cannot live separated from it. That’s the first thing.

The second thing we need to see here is that the stakes are enormous. The life of discipleship that Paul models for us with Timothy is the means by which we avoid becoming the type of Christians he described in v. 1-9.

He gives this long description of these people who call themselves Christians, but who are actually serving their appetite for pleasure.

Paul makes a contrast here between what these so-called Christians did, and what Timothy did, saying these false believers are disqualified regarding the faith.

And then he tells Timothy, “But that’s not the case for you. You haven’t lived like they live. You haven’t done what they’ve done.”

What did Timothy do instead? He followed Paul. He learned from Paul. He grew to live faithfully by watching Paul.

We can tend to think of discipleship as an add-on to the Christian life: something we can do if we have time, but that’s not strictly necessary for our salvation. So really, it’s optional.

It’s true that we are not saved by living a life of discipleship; we’re saved by the grace of Christ alone. However, we have to see that the Christian life is a life of discipleship. That’s what Christianity is. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Only he who believes is obedient. Only he who is obedient believes.”

This isn’t optional; this is what life with Christ looks like. So we must invest ourselves in this life.

So we see the first means of discipleship in v. 10-13: we live as disciples by living our lives in Christ together, observing one another, imitating one another when we live faithfully, finding younger Christians and letting them observe us, finding more mature Christians and watching how they live and learning from them. The first means of our discipleship is our life together.

But it’s not the last.

The Fuel for True Discipleship (v. 14-17)

The second means of discipleship Paul gives to Timothy is the most basic, the simplest, and the most important: it is God’s Word. V. 14:

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

V. 16-17 are the famous verses of this passage; these are the verses you see on t-shirts, this is the part we memorize.

For good reason. This is the clearest description in the entire Bible of what exactly happened when the Bible was written. All Scripture, all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, are “breathed out by God”. The words we have in the Bible are exactly the words God wanted written, all while maintaining the styles and the personalities and the particularities of the people holding the pen.

Now I know that some of you may have questions about the Bible itself: Do we have all the books of the Bible? Are there any in here that shouldn’t be in here? How do we know that these books in particular were really inspired by God, and not modified over time by someone with other agendas? Those are big questions, and good ones, and we’ve talked about them: way back in 2015, we did a workshop on exactly these questions, and I’ll put the link in Slack tonight if you’re interested in digging further.

For now, we’ll be content to affirm as a church that the books contained in the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, the main means by which God speaks to us today.

And because all Scripture is breathed out by God, it is profitable for us—it is the motor of our growth, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The breathed-out Word of God is profitable to us because God is still breathing. Every time we sit in front of an open Bible, and we ask God for help to understand and integrate and live it, the same Holy Spirit who inspired these words animates them in us and feeds us.

It’s just incredible: every time we come to God’s Word in faith, God himself speaks to us through that Word.

This is why the Bible is the center of everything that we do as a church. The Bible is God’s Word, given to us in order that we might hear God’s voice, learn God’s will, and grow to love what God loves. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

However, our insistance on v. 16-17, while very good, is often missing something. It’s often missing its context.

The context of v. 16-17 is v. 14-15, in which Paul tells Timothy to remember what he has learned, and to remember from whom he learned it.

Timothy wasn’t sitting in a library all by himself, studying the Bible. He was taught the Bible. In chapter 1, Paul thanks God for how Timothy’s faith got its start: by listening to and observing his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Their work was picked up by Paul later on.

This is how Timothy came to know the Scriptures and live out the Scriptures. He didn’t do it alone. It was through faithful men and women, coming alongside him and helping him understand Scripture, and modeling Scripture for him, that he grew to know and love and live Scripture himself.

Application

It’s pretty easy to see how God calls us to respond to what he says through Paul here.

Firstly, keep a close eye on your life.

Paul wasn’t worried about Timothy, but God knew what he was doing when he inspired Paul to write this. In v. 1-9, he gives us a clear warning of the dangers of not following Christ, of being lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And he also gives us indicators to look out for in others, because he tells Timothy: “Avoid these people.” Of course we want to be very careful before making a decision like that (it’s only happened a couple of times in our ten years as a church), but we can’t miss Paul’s bigger point—that calling yourself a Christian and neglecting true discipleship causes ravages in the church, and we need to be on our guard against such ravages.

Secondly, follow Christ together.

The example of Paul and Timothy is so precious, because it shows us how much we can benefit from simply being together. Timothy went where Paul went, he listened to what he said, he watched how he lived, and he did the same. Just like a little kid learning to walk or talk; it’s not easy, but it is simple.

What’s not so simple is the question, Whom do I follow? If you look around, you may notice that there are quite a few young people here. There are more people over forty than there used to be (and thank the Lord for that, because we need you), but we are still in the minority. All of you young folks just can’t closely follow someone over forty, because there aren’t enough of us to go around.

So whom do you follow, if most of you are about the same age, and in the same stage of life?

The answer is simple: You still have models to follow. Even if everyone around you is the same age as you, in the same basic life situation as you, you still have models to follow.

Age isn’t everything. Spiritual maturity varies at all ages. I know it’s tempting to feel inadequate or illegitimate, to feel like you need to be trained in order to walk in discipleship with someone. There is definitely value in that kind of training, and we want to get something up and running in this area in the coming year.

But can you do it, with just your Bible and your presence together? Absolutely.

There are people around you who know Christ better than you, and follow Christ better than you, and are more mature in Christ than you are. Find those people, and stick to them. Read the Bible with them. Pray with them. Watch how they live.

Single people, hang out with married people. Married people, hang out with single people. Parents, disciple your kids. Make sure the gospel is present in your home. We read it earlier, in Deuteronomy 6—talk about it, memorize it, show your kids what it looks like when talking about the gospel is natural.

Older people (and I’m including myself in this group), seek out your younger brothers and sisters, because we learn from them just as much as they learn from us. Paul said this to Timothy in his first letter, in 1 Timothy 4.12: Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Timothy was the young one, and yet he was the model.

You all have things the people around you lack, and you build each other up. We learn to follow Christ by following Christ, together.

And finally: listen to God speak through his Word.

Paul is writing this last letter to Timothy, and he knows he’s going to die soon. In a short time, Timothy will be deprived of his mentor.

But ultimately, Timothy doesn’t need Paul; he needs Christ. Paul was a tool in God’s hand, to train Timothy in the Word, and God’s Word, the witness of Christ, come alive through the power of the Holy Spirit, is what truly transforms.

Don’t follow someone so much that Jesus becomes eclipsed. Dig deep into God’s Word, when you’re together and when you’re alone. Pray that God would speak to you through his Word. Listen to what he says in his Word. And when you hear it, obey.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

We have everything we need to grow, right here.