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In 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul charges Timothy to preach the Word “with complete patience.” What does it mean to preach and teach with “complete patience,” and why is such patience necessary?
To explore this matter, we’ll consider three things: the scope of the message, the heart of the message (and the conflict it brings), and the promised fruit that comes from such patient preaching.
When Paul charges Timothy to preach the Word, it is clear that Paul is convinced that Timothy should preach all of Scripture. He writes in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching.” In Acts 20:27, Paul told the Ephesian elders that he proclaimed to them the “whole counsel of God.” In this, Paul is clearly following the Lord Jesus Christ, who in Luke 24 taught His disciples from “Moses and all the Prophets, . . . interpret[ing] to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27). Later in the same chapter, Jesus reminded His disciples of the words He spoke with them while He was still with them, “‘that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (vv. 44–45).
According to the pattern of Paul and Jesus, the gospel preacher is not simply to repeat a few choice slogans as the content of his teaching, but he is called to engage in comprehensive Bible instruction with his listeners. This takes time. Paul labored daily with the Ephesians for three years, as Jesus did with His disciples, and even after this time, the listeners still had much to learn. Such comprehensive scriptural instruction certainly calls for “complete patience” on the part of the teacher, because the mere scope of the project takes time to execute it faithfully.
Another reason that this teaching calls for “complete patience” has to do with the heart of its message and the inevitable conflict it produces. At its heart, the message of Scripture calls for repentance from sin and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only source of salvation.
It is interesting that while both Jesus and Paul recognized the vast content of their teaching (nothing less than “all Scripture”), they also spoke very clearly of the message that lay at the heart of their teaching. Jesus said in Luke 24 that “all Scripture” set forth the necessity “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (vv. 46–47).
Paul echoes Jesus’ words throughout the book of Acts when he summarizes the heart of his message. In Acts 20, he said that he not only preached the whole counsel of God but also testified of “repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 21). When he stood before Agrippa in Acts 26, he summarized his message as declaring that all should “repent and turn to God” (v. 20). It is because of this fundamental character of the message that Paul describes faithful teaching in 2 Timothy 4:2 as consisting of reproof, rebuke, and exhortation. The faithful gospel teacher is necessarily calling people out of their sin, and calling them to press on in repentance, faith, and new obedience. Such a calling is hard—dare I say, impossible—to obey apart from the miraculous intervention by the Holy Spirit. By nature, people simply will not heed such teaching, and not only will they oppose it personally, but they will set up systems of opposition against it. As Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:3–4 (right after his call for complete patience), “People will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” If faithful gospel teaching simply called people to affirm what they already believed and to keep doing what they were already doing, it would not require patience. But because the gospel is a confrontational message that calls all people out of their sin through repentance and faith in Christ, it calls for nothing less than “complete patience.”
Finally, we consider the fruit that God has promised to gospel preachers and teachers as the result of their “complete patience.” Because of the broad scope of the message and the specific heart of the message, faithful biblical teaching will inevitably be misunderstood, opposed, and rejected by many. Yet the gospel preacher/teacher is to engage not in “complete resignation” but in “complete patience,” for God has promised that through the consistent, faithful, and patient preaching and teaching of the gospel, He will do a mighty work of salvation in the preacher and his hearers. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4 that Timothy should consistently practice the public reading of Scripture, teaching, and exhortation, immersing himself in these things so that all may see his progress (vv. 13, 15). He is to keep a close watch on himself and the teaching, persisting in this, “for by so doing [he] will save both [himself] and [his] hearers” (v. 16). What a promise. This faithful teaching, though it takes a great deal of labor and is opposed and rejected by many, is the very means that God uses to bring about the salvation of His people. The preacher is not to engage in “complete resignation,” as if he had a hard task that would amount to nothing yet he must do it anyway. No, he is to teach with “complete patience,” knowing that such labors will most certainly lead to the full and complete salvation of all of God’s people. This, then, is the call of the gospel preacher and teacher: patiently teaching Christ in all of Scripture, calling all to repentance and faith in the face of great opposition, unto the ultimate and sure salvation of all of God’s people.