God’s Word for You

2 Timothy 4:1-2 Preach the word

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, July 9, 2026

In the final chapter of his final letter, Paul urges Timothy to take every single opportunity and every single moment to carry out his ministry, to preach earnestly and eagerly whether it seems to some to be the right moment or not. Eighteen hundred years later, the British Admiral Horatio Nelson would make a similar statement with his personal motto, “Waste not an hour!”

There is always the need for the Word of God, so that Christians will believe and hold up under crosses and temptations. The Church is constantly waiting for the moment when Christ our Lord will return, and when he comes it will be at a time when no one expects. Therefore we watch and pray. We must rebuke those who are sinning and threaten God’s holy judgment on those who have hard hearts, we must proclaim the gospel to those who are hurting, and we must urge the godly to keep on living out their faith in joy and thankfulness.

4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is about to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom: 2 Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage, with every bit of patience and teaching.

Paul begins with the formula of an oath: “I (thoroughly) charge you!” Similar language appears from Moses in Deuteronomy 4:26, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you,” and in Psalm 81:8, “Hear, O my people, and I will warn you…” This is now the last chapter of the letter; these are the last of Paul’s last words.

Paul commands Timothy with same seriousness as if Timothy were taking another oath. Notice the element of the oath, the item upon which Paul swears. It is God and Christ Jesus “who is about to judge the living and the dead.” Most often, Old Testament believers thought of Christ’s first coming, his advent and physical presence among the Israelites, judging what he saw personally, and setting things to rights, as indeed he so often did, even making a whip to drive the wicked out of the temple (John 2:15)! But here Paul describes the second coming of Christ. He uses a certain grammatical construction to say “He is about to judge…” The arrival of Christ on the Last Day is something that Christians anticipate as being imminent. We are able to make plans for the future of the church as if Christ’s coming won’t be for another hundred years or more, but we repent and we behave daily as if he will come this very afternoon. Or sooner.

Paul says: Preach the word of God. Whether he is “on duty” or not, “in season and out of season,” he must be ready to proclaim the gospel. In verse 2, the two words “rebuke and encourage” appear together, which we have discussed before. In this verse, they show the most important division of the Bible: Law and Gospel. We can divide the Bible in other useful ways, Old and New Testament, Hebrew and Greek texts, books that point ahead to Christ and those that point back to Christ. These divisions end up being just about the same groups with different names. But Law and Gospel is the more important division, useful in every way, and dividing not just halves of the Bible, nor books from books, but verses within books, and even portions of verses, one from another, where the law puts sin on display, but then the gospel sets up Christ as the answer to sin clearly and without a doubt. When Timothy is before his church, standing and preaching or sitting before them and teaching, he must correctly distinguish law from gospel, so that the people will clearly see both the need for the Savior, and the truth that the Savior has come. He must not miss the mark with his preaching and teaching.

Or, even if Timothy is just out to dinner with friends, if the opportunity arises, he should be ready to proclaim Christ and the whole counsel of God if necessary. Now, this might cause his friends to roll their eyes and mutter, “Oh, that Timothy—there he goes again. Doesn’t that guy even take an hour off?” But we would hope that Timothy had better friends than that. What we would hope is that his people would think, “You know, I’ll bet that my pastor Timothy would know how to answer this or that question. He’s always ready to answer; he knows the Scriptures like he knows his wife’s smile and laugh.”

Whenever someone asks, that’s the moment to be ready with an answer. Some of the Bible’s clearest answers are in the stories it tells; these are often the way that people will see that Jesus loves them. I was new to ministry, still a student, when a woman came to me at a gathering in a church basement and said that she had a special problem she didn’t think that God would understand, but she asked if I would pray for her. And I did. Then she told me that she was suffering because her menstrual bleeding didn’t stop (menorrhagia). She had been bleeding for many years. I told her that I understood (my stepmother had suffered from this) but that God also understood. I reached down and picked up a Bible from the table and opened it. It opened right to the page I was thinking of, which was Mark chapter 5. There was the story of a woman who suffered from bleeding who came to Jesus hoping to touch his cloak, believing that she would be healed. He found her and said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering” (Mark 5:34). The woman was amazed and began to cry. Not only did I understand, but I showed her that Jesus understood, and that there was hope for her. I had never before met anyone who was so grateful just to know that there was hope. It was a lesson I never forgot, and God had done all of the work. This is the power of the Gospel.

The last phrase of verse 2 is something we should take to heart. Paul urges Timothy to do these things “with every bit of patience and teaching.” Jesus told Peter to keep on forgiving a repentant brother “seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). And when Jesus met a young man who struggled with his love of wealth, the Lord did not get angry or impatient. “Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:20). What awaits those who do not know the gospel of Christ? Nothing but “the eternal valley which lies forever blind in darkest night.” But God gives us hope, hope to proclaim when sinners are caught in fear and shame, hope that raises the quivering chin, wet with tears, and shows them the kindness and compassion in the eyes of Jesus our Lord, who gave himself as the sacrifice to cover the blame for every sin of every person, believer or not. For “when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Colossians 2:13). So we preach the gospel to people who are already forgiven; some simply don’t know it yet. They only lack faith, and faith is a gift given through the same gospel (Ephesians 2:8). And like the woman who was caught in adultery, where the heart is crushed and broken by shame over sin, there is forgiveness without any blame and without any cost, through Jesus our Savior. “Does anyone condemn you? I don’t condemn you either. Go and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11). His forgiveness is a bath that washes the guilt, the shame, the scars, and even the doubt that sin brings. He brings us into his banquet hall with the rich robe of his own righteousness. “Wear this, and join me.” These are the words of the gospel. This is why we preach the word.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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