Paul’s Place

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Throughout the year I have a done a week of devotions here and a week there looking at 2 Timothy – Paul’s lovely letter to his spiritual son. This week I want to wrap it all up by looking at the last chapter in this letter.

It’s a beautiful section of Scripture, where Paul is typically practical to begin, but then he suddenly gets a little personal. And he bears his heart a little, giving us a sense that this great man of God is not a spiritual giant that we cannot ever measure up to, but he’s a frail man of God, aware of his impending death, but still committed to living his life well to the end.

Modern Christianity’s Debate

Now, before we get into it, I want to address a picture I once saw on Facebook that said “Modern Christianity is not the religion of Jesus. It is a Pauline sect. It has lost the teachings of Jesus and replaced them with Paul’s understanding of Jesus.”

I know people who have landed there and rejected all the works of Paul as misguided, and detracting from the ministry and teaching of Jesus.

I disagree.

And it seems to me that the apostles themselves, who spent all that time with Jesus, disagreed, and held Paul up as an example of a Christlike man and considered his writing to be scriptural. Peter actually referred to Paul’s letters as Scripture, in one of his own letters.

Paul’s Christlike Life

Paul was a man of Jesus! In fact John Piper recently wrote a book called Why I Love the Apostle Paul, and in the intro he writes these words:  “I deeply appreciate Paul’s life-giving teaching, and I have huge admiration for the extraordinary traits of excellence in his life. His words have been my salvation, and his life has more than warranted those words. I owe my life to the gospel of Jesus—and no one has taken me deeper into the mysteries of the gospel than Paul. After the Lord Jesus himself, no one has won my appreciation and admiration more.”

I want to be clear as we start the week. We don’t exalt Paul. We don’t worship Paul. We don’t look to Paul as our salvation.

But we find in Paul a man who points us to Jesus! When we look to Paul and his words and his life, we see a man so deeply committed to Jesus Christ, that we get swept up in Paul’s passion, and we get drawn to the feet of Jesus alongside him.

We get led to Jesus himself through Paul. It’s the same with Peter. The same with John. The same with Luke who wrote Luke’s gospel and Acts. They are not our Saviours. But God uses them to point us to the Saviour.

Paul lived life well. He lived his life so committed to Christ that everybody could see Christ in him.

So let’s look at Paul this week, not so that we can make much of Paul, but so that we can make much of Jesus just like Paul did.