NOTES for Ti2 1:1-18
Addressing his disciple Timothy with a letter, Paul reminds him of the gift of God that he received during prayer with the laying on of hands, and which he now has to renew constantly within himself. Evidently, during that prayer Timothy experienced a kind of spiritual initiation, that renewal of life, inner and outer, which really makes a person different, new, opening to him a new life and new possibilities. But such influences are never one-time events.
The change of a person is a long and gradual process; one meeting with God, one outpouring of God's breath, even a strong and bright one, almost never limits the matter. Such an outpouring can start the process of spiritual change, but afterward the person will have to work himself, and first of all he will have to understand what happened to him, the new thing that entered his life, the new possibilities God opened to him, and the new tasks He set before him. It is this work that the apostle reminds his disciple about.
Moreover, Paul describes the spirit that Timothy received, and even earlier Paul himself, as a spirit of "power, love, and integrity," not of fear or timidity. At the center here, as can be seen, stands love, accompanied by "power" and "integrity." The "power" mentioned by the apostle is that divine energy which sustains the being of the universe from the very beginning of its existence and which can manifest itself in a special way where God wants to mark His presence in a special way.
Thanks to it, God's miracles do not remain purely spiritual phenomena, gaining the ability to act also on the natural processes taking place in the world. By "integrity," or more precisely by the corresponding Greek word, Paul means not simply "innocence" in the sexual sense in which it is understood today, but the inner wholeness of a person on all his levels: wholeness of will, wholeness of inner life, and finally wholeness of outer life too, without which a person is not complete.
Such wholeness makes a person a bearer of God's power, which otherwise will not manifest itself in him. But at the center stands not power and not wholeness, but the love that permeates the Kingdom and that there, in the Kingdom, is the environment for all relationships existing in it, including the main ones - the relationships between the Father and the Son, thanks to which the Kingdom exists. It is within and in the context of the relationship of the Father with the Son, within the Kingdom, that both wholeness and any manifestations of God's power are possible. But God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, can exist in a person only in the process of constant renewal: breath cannot be stopped; it exists only in dynamic. It is these foundational things for Christian life that the apostle reminds his disciple about.