The Usual

preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction.  2 Timothy 4:2  NASB

The word – A Christian website sent me a story about instructing pastors.  The elder wrote:

I thought about Paul’s instruction to the young preacher, Timothy, as he spoke in 2 Timothy 4:2 (NASB) “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction.” Has God not already provided more than anyone of us will ever be able to preach?

In our discussion, one of the pastors mentioned that he hadn’t decided on the subject matter and was just trying to decide. Not able to hold back, I asked, “Why not preach the gospel message? How about telling folks about the need to repent of their sins, accept God’s grace offered through Jesus Christ or not, and go to hell.”[1]

I remembered how many times I’ve heard this message.  I thought about the spiritual terrorism it uses threatening people to repent for fear of Hell.  I thought about the shallow appreciation of those whose understanding of the gospel is limited to a salvation experience.  And I thought about how bored it made me feel listening to this all those years in the pews.

Is that what Paul meant?  To repeat and repeat and repeat in order to “save” people.  When did the exegesis of Scripture devolve into the threat of Hell?  When did the whole Bible (or at least the New Testament) become nothing more than an evangelical tool?  Let’s take a closer look at Paul’s Greek text.

“Preach the word” is kēryxon tov lógon.  We should remember that the verb kērýssō means something more akin to the role of the town crier before the invention of the printing press.  He brings the daily news—audibly.  His task is not to repeat and repeat but rather to herald, like a trumpet player upon the arrival of the king.  Paul amplifies this task with the following string of verbs, but what he amplifies is the declaration of the lógos.  To understand what that meant in the first century, we need to turn to Boyarin.  Paul is instructing Timothy to announce the logos message.  In the first century this is the equivalent of the Jewish idea of “Two Powers in Heaven.”[2]  Boyarin notes:

“Logos theology . . . is constituted by several variations of a doctrine that between God and the world, there is a second divine entity, God’s Word (Logos) or God’s Wisdom, who mediates between the fully transcendent Godhead and the material world.  This doctrine was widely held by Jews in the pre-Christian era and after the beginning of Christianity was widely held and widely contested in Christian circles.  By the fourth century, Jews who held such a doctrine and Christians who rejected it were defined as ‘neither Jew nor Christian’ but heretics.”[3]

This does not entail that Yeshua is the pre-existent Christ nor that he is the equivalent of YHVH.  It only suggests that the Messiah was elevated to the status of “divine” (as were others in the first century) as a result of his faithfulness, and as such he plays a special, unique role in the mediation between God and Man.  Boyarin shows that this idea was popular among Jews in the first century as one option for understanding God’s Messiah.  Paul is instructing Timothy to articulate this view, to make it known to his audience.  If Boyarin’s analysis of the religious history of the first century is correct, then Paul is not instructing Timothy to preach a message of salvation.  Rather, he is instructing Timothy to make plausible an already-existing Jewish theological view.  “Preaching the word” is a completely Jewish idea; a long way away from our modern evangelical reading of Paul’s verse.

Perhaps this history lesson will inspire us to hear the message again—from a different perspective.

Topical Index: Logos theology, preach, kērýssō, herald, salvation, 2 Timothy 4:2

[1] Bro Mike’s Kneeology

[2] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 31.

[3] Ibid., pp. 30-31.