Skip to main content

Apprentice of the Gospel

"But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel" (Philippians 2:22)

Great leaders are not always born but nurtured by people whom God had blessed with grace, wisdom and experience. However, an attitude of submission, obedience and willingness to learn is what is expected of those who would like to be used by God.

The house where my parents live was built long before I was born. However, I have memories of this house being renovated to add two new rooms: one on the first floor which later became my room. The carpentry team consisted of a father and his two sons; both sons were married and had small children. The father had the drawings and consulted my father occasionally and the sons just took instructions from their father and slogged. The father would take break from hammering the chisel on the wood occasionally, have a smoke and walk around the structure that is coming up. The sons worked silently, until their father allowed them to stop and have a break. At the end of each day, the father collected the wage for the team.

By the time we had another renovation of our house the father had died. The two sons are no living in their own houses and had their independent carpentry shops. My father had a tough time to decide to which of the two sons he should give the work. He finally chose the "best son", meaning the son he thought would do a work as efficiently as his father. Thus he became our "resident carpenter" for years. The story continues: he came with his sons, the sons took orders from their father and learnt from him and in the course became the best carpenters in our village.

The relationship of Timothy with Paul was one of "father and son". However, Timothy was not Paul's biological son. Paul had led Timothy to faith in Christ and became his "spiritual" father. However, in this passage there is a new dimension to their relationship. That is the relationship of a father and son as far as their occupation is concerned. In the gospel work that Paul had immersed himself, Timothy had served him as a son means he had been his apprentice. In the ancient world, the sons learnt a trade from their father and continued the family tradition. We call Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth because he must have (like all boys in Nazareth) learnt the trade of carpentry from his foster father, Joseph who was a carpenter.

Later on, Timothy became a bishop of a congregation and a leader on his own right. However, the beginning was as a submissive apprentice of a godly leader.

Here is an often neglected aspect of Christian ministry. Great leaders are not always born but nurtured by people whom God had blessed with grace, wisdom and experience. However, an attitude of submission, obedience and willingness to learn is what is expected of those who would like to be used by God.



--
Paulson Pulikottil
Union Biblical Seminary, PB No. 1455, Bibvewadi, Pune, 411037
Web: http://paulson.coreonline.info

Popular posts from this blog

The Days of Antipas

"The days of Antipas" means not only a period of persecution but a period of perseverance as well. It signifies the days of believers who withstood the pressures from outside to surrender. In the church in the city of Pergamum, there were some people who remained faithful to Jesus in the days of severe persecution. Apostle John calls these days of persecution "the day of Antipas" (Rev. 2:13).  The Antipas mentioned here should not be confused with Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas was a wicked ruler whom Jesus called "fox". He is the one who offered the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter to his daughter. He might have tried to kill Jesus and presided over Jesus' trial. However, the Antipas mentioned in Revelation 2 was the bishop of Pergamum, a pagan city in the first century AD. The name means "against all." There is a great con trast in the names -- Herod was against all that was good, however, Antipas th...
Read more

The Lonely Jungle Babbler

Every day it comes, and pecks at the glass panel of the window of my study. It is a Jungle Babbler, a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent. It dances flying up and down and fluttering its wings. Sometimes, three or four times a day it repeats this ritual. I thought it is trying to get  into  my room or fly through as it can see the other side. But why does it keep coming, can't it make out after three or four attempts that it can't fly through?   I told my Neighbor, whom I consider an expert on birds, about this winged visitor. She explained that the babbler is pecking at its own reflection, thinking that it is another bird. I thought of verifying her suggestion. The following day I kept the window half open, drawing one panel fully open. The babbler came as usual. Perched on the window,  looked into  my room through the open panel but did not enter the room or peck. But it moved to the side of the window where there is glass and started pecking on the gl...
Read more

The Conquering Grace

  Grace of God is hard to define. When I was making baby steps in Christian faith, mentors told me that ‘grace is unmerited favor.’ I found that helpful. But as I continued to experience God’s grace as I grew, I found that this definition is inadequate to express all that God does in my life. Now, I have come to realize that grace of God is such a thing that eludes any definition. Grace, as I understand now is what God alone and no human can do in our lives. It comes in various colors, shapes and sizes! John, the gospel writer seems to have understood the multifarious nature of grace that he talks about the ‘fullness of grace’ and ‘grace upon grace’ (John 1:17). Or the New Living Translation puts it: ‘From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.’ These expressions mean that grace is not just one-sided reality but a multi-faceted reality. Its fullness is beyond our comprehension just as God evades our understanding. One of the rare but ...
Read more