2 Timothy 1:7
“For God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.”
Where this sits
Paul's last surviving letter, written from prison to a younger man he had trained. He has just reminded Timothy to stir up the gift that is in him.
Reflection
This is not a general statement about fear. It is written to one particular young man who appears, from the surrounding verses, to have been struggling.
Paul keeps telling him to stir up his gift, not to be ashamed, to hold on to what he has heard. You do not write like that to someone who is thriving. Timothy seems to have been temperamentally cautious, physically unwell, and leading a difficult church while his mentor sat in a Roman prison waiting to die. Fear was a reasonable response to his situation.
What Paul says is not that fear is sinful. He says its source is not God — which leaves open that it has a source, and that the source is worth identifying. Fear here is described as a spirit, something with a character and a direction, not a mood that arrives from nowhere.
Then the three things that were given, and they are an odd trio until you look at them as a set. Power, for what is beyond you. Love, so the power has an aim — power without love is what most people are actually afraid of. And self-control, so it has a limit. The word behind it suggests a sound, disciplined mind: the ability to govern yourself.
Fear tends to produce either paralysis or wild action. The three gifts, taken together, are the exact antidote to both.
- Theme:
- Fear
- Book:
- 2 Timothy