The Art of Living: in Faithfulness

Heavenly Vision

2 Timothy 2:11-13 (ESV). 11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; 13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself. When we speak of faithfulness, two major concepts come to mind; Fidelity - loyalty and support based on a covenant or decision. (Right Doing) Consistency - the achievement of a level of performance that does not vary greatly in quality over time. (Right Doing) Verses 11 and 12 are pretty straight forward; Our relationship with Christ is based on our submission to Him Our endurance produces elevation. If we deny Christ He will respect our wishes. (Peter vs Judas) However when Paul gets to verse 13 he presents a shape dichotomy between our human propensity and Christ divine sovereignty. Paul’s presentation of our human propensity to be faithless leads us the enigma of this text; what causes us to be unfaithful? I. Pride: When you think of yourself more highly than you ought to, you render yourself incapable of being faithful to others because your too busy being faithful to yourself. / Consider the value of God and those around you. II. Passions: When our fleshly desires are stronger than our spirit man, we will be unable to remain faithful to Christ or others. We must deny ourselves while simultaneously engaging in spiritual disciplines. III. Procrastination - the root cause of procrastination is fear. We defeat procrastination through swift acts of boldness towards our destiny. Above all this, fine the ability to be faithful by submitting to the life our Christ for He is faithful!