NOTES for Ti2 1:13

Paul seems to be saying something absurd: “I thank God that without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day.” Who is praying—Paul or God? Why does Paul thank the Lord for his own prayers? Precisely because our prayer is impossible without God acting within us! In C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan says: “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.” We cannot call upon His name unless He first calls us. And so every prayer of ours is His gift to us, for which we can be grateful...

As he begins his second letter to Timothy, Paul again reminds him of what forms the foundation of Christianity, not as a new religion, but as a new life in the Kingdom, to which Timothy is called to bear witness just as Paul himself does, imprisoned for that witness (vv. 8-11). As we can see, for the apostle Christianity is not a new teaching, but a new witness, which nevertheless turns out to be witness to what God had planned from the beginning of time. Here too Paul remains faithful to the traditional ideas about the Messiah and the people of God, ideas that supposed that both the Messiah and the people were part of God's plan even before the creation of the world. But now the apostle especially emphasizes what constitutes the meaning of God's design for the people of God: the sanctification of the faithful and, through them, of the whole world (v. 9; the corresponding Greek expression can mean not only "a holy calling," but also "a call to holiness," that is, to sanctification and to a sanctified life).

This idea of the mission of the people of God was part of the rabbinic tradition of the Gospel era. Paul extends it to the Kingdom and to the new people of God, linking it with the ideas, going back to the later prophets, of the messianic remnant, which for him is the Church. It is no surprise that witness to the Kingdom is inseparable for the apostle from the action of that breath ("spirit") of God which gives a person power, love, and chastity, freeing him from fear (v. 7). Of course, in this case Paul is speaking about the spiritual gifts Timothy received through the laying on of hands. Yet on the other hand, he also recalls the spiritual upbringing Timothy received in his own home, and the efforts to which the apostle calls his disciple so that he may not lose the gifts received from God (vv. 3-6).

As we can see, witness is a divine-human work: God gives a person what he needs for it, and the person in turn takes responsibility for receiving and preserving God's gift, allowing it to appear in all its fullness. It must appear under any circumstances, even when witness is connected with confession or martyrdom. For the life of the Kingdom is greater than the life of our world, which has not yet been transformed, and every true witness knows this.