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9 He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ~ 2 Timothy 1:9-10
Martin Luther once said, “Where the battle rages, there, the loyalty of the soldier is proved.” We come back to the book which has as its theme: Faithful til the end. In order to remain faithful to the end, we must recognize truth for what it is; sometimes it is pleasant, and, at others, it is the hardest thing to embrace. One thing is for sure, the truth is the only thing that we can count on in this fallen world and our lack of faithfulness to it is not wise.
Once we embrace the truth, we must learn to look at life as a voyage of discovery, all the while running the risk of disappointment, fear and failure. As C.S. Lewis once said, "You can't have the love without the pain." Those who find a way to be defined by God's truth will be more faithful to it than those who hide behind the less substantive things of this world. To be faithful is to be filled with faith. When we are not defined by the truth, we will struggle at discovering our true identity.
In v.9 we read, "He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time."
God made the choice to call us to Himself by His grace “before the beginning of time.” He is transcendent which means He is not bound by time and space as we are. Given our fallen state, He had to allow pain and suffering to be part of His sovereign plan, otherwise we would have been programmed, and, where is the love in that? It is difficult to understand that the bad things that have happened to us throughout our lives are useful in the loving hands of this One who love us more than we can fathom.
The emphasis in this verse is on grace. God had to sacrifice His Son in order to make it possible for mankind to be saved because we lack the ability to save ourselves. He called us to Himself, not on the basis of our good works, but totally on the basis of His favor that we can never merit. And, our pain and suffering enables our ears to hear His gracious call. Once we hear, we discover that it is His purpose that we wisely want, and if these purposes include suffering, then we can accept it by faith and know that God’s will is best. All of this grace was given to us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Notice the reason God saved us by His grace: So that we might experience His holiness. His holiness lacks nothing. Unlike Him, mankind lacks, and, this is the root to all of our problems, we lack. This is why we covet. My mother died when I was five years old and I desperately lacked the affection that I did not get from her. That lack defined me so deeply that I made many bad and destructive choices until I came to the place of understanding His holiness.
When God's holiness defines us, our lack problem will increasingly be addressed until the point where we will experience His wholeness. His wholeness will never be perfect in us this side of heaven, yet, it gradually murders our insecurities, if we let it. And, the freedom that comes to the once shackeled soul is as liberating as when Frodo dropped that ring into the pit of fire at Mount Doom.
There have been times in my life when it was as if I could hear the chains clang in my mind as they fell to the floor of my existence and I was freed from my own demise. It wasn't the demise of God or my mother, it was my demise. I came to understand that ninety percent of life is how I respond to the ten percent that happens to me.
In v.10 we read, "but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel."
Through His resurrection, Christ has defeated our last and ultimate enemy: death. He not only destroyed death, He revealed life and immortality. In the Old Testament the doctrines of eternal life, death, and the resurrection were kept in the shadows. Then, the Lord Jesus Christ came shining His light on all that is really real, and, through His teachings, He has pulled back that stiff curtain that separated us from all that is substantive, enabling us to see the real which garners for us assurance of the life to come.
“Immortality” is “incorruptibility” which will be the believer's eventual condition and experience. Our present bodies are corruptible thus they will die and decay. But our eventual bodies will be like His, never again subject to decay or death. The grave and the terror death has held over us all of these years will be vanquished, and, we will know our heavenly inheritance in an upclose way.
We must fight against allowing the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus to become mechanical and indifferent to us. These are at the heart of the Christian faith. We must live so close to the cross that we find ourselves in danger of getting splinters in our noses. This is why, by the way, God gave us the Lord' Supper. As often as we remember Him on that cross, the more our hearts will possibly be engulfed in His.
When the Lord Jesus destroyed the power of death, He eliminated it. The word destroyed is the Greek word that means "to bring to nothing." But the practical aspects of a destroyed death is yet to be realized by us. There will come a day when we will know nothing but life, death will be a thing of the past.
Our text today ends with, "immortality to light through the gospel." The Old Testament does not give a lot of information on what lies beyond, but when the Lord Jesus came, He made clear that our long dark struggle with sin and death will soon be over. Then, we will live life to its fullest, permanently enjoyed into our everlasting future.
The word "life" here is a reference to the change that will take place when we are given new bodies, but it also refers to that which occurs in our hearts when we are invaded by God's presence. The new quality of life that was imparted to us was delivered by the Lord Jesus. He made it visible to us through the paradox of His death and resurrection.
It is the power of God that brings that kind of certainty and hope into our lives, if we choose to be defined by it. It is the gospel, and it is the answer to the deepest longings of people everywhere. We live in a world of the superficial. When we allow it to define us, we find ourselves trapped by the fallen devices of the enemy. The reality is, when we examine what is real, we are left with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus which not only rescues us from death but frees us from the obnoxious lack that has plagued us from birth.
