In 2
Timothy 2 the believer is presented in seven characters. He is called a son
(verse 1), a soldier (verse 3), an athlete (verse 5), a husbandman (verse 6),
a workman (verse 15), a vessel (verse 21), and a servant (verse 24).
With each of these characters there is a well-suited exhortation. As a son,
Timothy is exhorted to be strong in grace. Grace goes with sonship, just as
law goes with servitude-as we learn from Galatians. Then, as a soldier, Timothy
is exhorted to endure hardness and to avoid worldly entanglements; these are
right elements of good soldiership. As a vessel, he is to be cleansed, separated;
as a servant, gentle, patient, meek; and so of each of these seven aspects of
his life as a Christian.
In 2 Timothy 15 he is told what is required of him as a workman: "Study to show
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing the word of truth."
The Word of truth, then, has right divisions, and it must be evident that, as
one cannot be "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed" without observing them,
so any study of that Word which ignores those divisions must be in large measure
profitless and confusing. Many Christians freely confess that they find the
study of the Bible weary work. More find it so, who are ashamed to make the
confession.
The purpose of this pamphlet is to indicate the more important divisions of
the Word of truth. That this could not be fully done short of a complete analysis
of the Bible is, of course, evident. But it is believed that enough is given
to enable the diligent student to perceive the greater outlines of truth and
something of the ordered beauty and symmetry of that Word of God which, to the
natural mind, seems a mere confusion of inharmonious and conflicting ideas.
The student is earnestly exhorted not to receive a single doctrine upon the
authority of this book, but, like the noble Bereans (Acts 17: 11), to search
the Scriptures daily whether these things are so. No appeal is made to human
authority. "The anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and
ye need not that any man teach you" (I John 2:27).