God’s Word for You
2 Timothy 1:4 Your tears
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, May 30, 2026
4 I remember your tears. I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.
I take this to mean that when Paul and Timothy last saw one another, perhaps when Paul left Ephesus, or perhaps as Paul was arrested and taken to Rome for the last time. Whenever it was, the younger man wept for Paul. If only Paul could see him once more, he would overflow with joy. Professor Habeck said, “Friendship rooted in a common faith in the Savior is always a precious gift from our God.”
Tears were commonly allowed to flow freely in ancient times. After being separate for most of their adult lives, Jacob and Esau wept to see one another (Genesis 33:4). Joseph, on meeting his brothers and having revealed his identity to them, wept and embraced Benjamin and all of the rest (Genesis 45:14-15). Naomi, Ruth and Orpah wept when they were going to part (Ruth 1:9,14). And when Paul parted company with the Ephesian elders, everyone wept and embraced the Apostle (Acts 20:37).
What shall we make of emotions and their place in our religion?
When we preach, we are taught to touch the emotions, but it’s also wise not to trust them. Why? Because they differ from one person to the next, and emotions are not the platform on which to build doctrine or faith.
Like human reason, and like science, emotion concludes: If there is a God and if he wants something from us, or if he wants a relationship with us, then he has to reveal himself to us. Reason can’t figure God out. Emotion is fickle. Science can be useful but can only have competence when there are things that it can observe and test. “The author of reason, the one above all fickle emotion, and the creator of everything that science can observe or investigate must be altogether above and beyond reason, emotion, and science.” Those tools (reason, emotion and science) even on their best day have to confess that they are incapable of answering with any degree of certainty the great questions of life. Those are the questions that religion proposes to answer.
St. Paul captures this thought when he says, “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:34).
But there are many religions in the world. Almost all of them reject Christ, which means that they did not have the revealed knowledge of God, but only the natural knowledge of God. What’s the difference? The natural knowledge of God is what we can lean about God from nature. And there are some things that can be learned this way. A rational human being can deduce that there is a God, at least up to a point. “For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything” (Hebrews 3:4). And from the things God has created (nature), people can discover that God is kind, wise, eternal, powerful, and divine. Paul proves this: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).
In addition to this, the human conscience can discover that God must hate sin, and that he must be holy. “They know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death” (Romans 1:32). But neither nature nor reason nor the conscience can tell us what we must know to be saved. Those things cannot tell us who God is, or what he has done to save us. Only the revealed knowledge of God (that is, the Holy Scripture) tells us these things, “For no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). A jail-keeper asked the Apostle one night, “What must I do to be saved?” And Paul and his companion replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved—you and your household” (Acts 16:31-32).
This leaves us with the Holy Scriptures, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, as the true and only source for all Christian doctrine. In the Old Testament, “God foretold through all the prophets that his Christ would suffer” (Acts 3:18), and in the New, that “Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free” (Hebrews 9:15).
I have not said all of this to belittle or to dismiss Timothy’s tears over Paul, but to help us put emotion into its proper context, along with reason and science. These things have a place, but they are servants. They are not the ones in charge. This we leave to the Holy Scriptures, which point us always to Jesus, to the cross, and to the empty tomb.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.