Knowing Whom We Have Believed

 

Knowing Whom We Have Believed

For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.

2 Timothy 1:12

Our faith rests upon great certainties.  As Paul came to the latter days of his earthly journey, he had, humanly speaking, many reasons to be downcast.  He was in prison, having had many of his former associates forsake him.  He was suffering the effects of the harm done to him by Alexander the coppersmith.  He was facing a state-sponsored execution. In the midst of all of this his resolve was unshakeable.  For the life he had lived as ‘a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles’ he was obliged to ‘suffer these things.’  Yet his attitude was that he was ‘not ashamed.’  Why not?  His answer to such a question centered in the Person of Christ and in Paul’s personal knowledge of Him.

So must it be for us if we are to face whatever we must for the sake of the Gospel.  Our knowledge of Christ must be personal.  It cannot be secondhand, but must be what we ourselves have experience of Him.  It cannot be a knowledge of Him based upon our conception of Him after our own estimation; rather, it must be a right understanding based upon what He has taught us of Himself through the Spirit by the Word.

Also, our faith in Christ must be absolute.  We must be persuaded not just of the facts regarding His Person, nor even more of His ability to do all that He has promised.  We must be persuaded that His promises pertain to us personally.  We must be persuaded ‘that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him.’

Having said that, what we have committed unto Him must be total.  The whole of my soul, the whole of my life, the whole of my labors, the whole of my past, present, and future must be His.

As well, our anticipation of Christ must be continual.  What we have committed unto Him must be kept until the final day.  That is the day we anticipate, because it will bring us face to face with the altogether Lovely One.  With these things before us, we can, with joy, endure the difficulties of the hour.

O Christ,

our whole existence is Thine.

Get glory for Thyself

with all of it.

Where the Bush is Burning

Tomm Tice