2 Timothy 2:8

Note

Chained in Rome and expecting to die, Paul gives Timothy the gospel in a single line. What he asks him to hold on to is not an idea but a person: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.

Second Timothy is Paul's last letter, written as a prisoner. Onesiphorus, he says, came to Rome and "searched diligently until he found me" (2 Timothy 1:17), and Paul knows his end is near (2 Timothy 4:6). In the opening verses of chapter 2 he has urged Timothy to endure like a soldier, an athlete and a farmer. Here he gives the reason for all that endurance, and the next verse names its cost. This gospel is the one "for which I suffer to the extent of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God cannot be chained!" (2 Timothy 2:9).

The noun euangelion stands in the phrase kata to euangelion mou, according to my gospel, a phrase Paul also uses in Romans (Romans 2:16; 16:25). "My" does not mean a gospel of his own making. To the Corinthians he wrote, "what I received I passed on to you as of first importance" (1 Corinthians 15:3). It is the gospel entrusted to him, the one he has staked his life on. The verb "remember" (mnēmoneue) is a present imperative, a call to keep remembering rather than to recall once. "Raised" (egēgermenon) is a perfect passive participle: raised by God, and risen still. The two phrases match the summary at the head of Romans, where God's Son "was a descendant of David according to the flesh" and was declared the Son of God "by His resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:3–4). David's seed names the King God had promised; the resurrection says that this King has broken death.

The versions show two ways of hearing the command. The BSB keeps the Greek order, the resurrection first and David second, and renders "according to my gospel" as "as proclaimed by my gospel," which makes plain that the gospel is something preached. The KJV has "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel," so that what Timothy remembers is a fact. The Greek, which the BSB and the LSV ("according to my good news") follow, makes it the person Himself. Among the Korean Bibles the 흠정역 follows the KJV and the 개역한글 the Greek. The two readings do not compete: Timothy can remember Christ as living because the resurrection happened.

Wesley's note on "of the seed of David" is one line: "This one genealogy attend to" Wesley. Paul had warned Timothy against "endless genealogies" (1 Timothy 1:4); the one line of descent worth his attention is Christ's. Matthew Henry turns the verse toward believers who suffer: "Let suffering saints remember, and look to Jesus" Matthew Henry. He finds his comfort in the verse that follows: "We must not think it strange if the best men meet with the worst treatment; but this is cheering, that the word of God is not bound" Matthew Henry.

In chains, near the end, Paul did not hand Timothy a method. He handed him a name. To anyone who hears the gospel today, this verse says first whom to remember, and that He is alive.