Promises, Promises!  I have a tendency to get frustrated quite quickly with promises and guarantees that are filled with conditions, loopholes, and fine print.  You know what I mean, don’t you?  It’s not that I’m against a conditional if . . . then . . . — if you do this, then this will happen.  I understand those and realize that if I fail to meet the “condition”, then I will also fail to see the desired result.  Consequences, we call it.  If you step off of a roof, you’ll fall and get hurt.  If you stick a metal object in a live electrical outlet, you will get shocked. 

But we’ve been trained to say, “Are you sure?”  We push the limits.  We test the resolve of the person issuing the condition.  Will I really be grounded if I don’t do my homework?  “Click-it or ticket” — How will they know if everyone is wearing their seatbelt?  Surrender to God or else face judgment and condemnation?  He can’t mean that, can He?  I’ll just tag along with good people and still keep control of most of my life.  I think I can get by with it.  I think I can slip by unseen.  I don’t think they are serious.  God’s love couldn’t seriously pass judgment on a person and condemn them to hell, could it?

Paul writes the second chapter of 2 Timothy, encouraging Timothy to remain faithful in passing along the gospel of Jesus.  A gospel message for which Paul is suffering and chained as a criminal.  Timothy is told to keep his relationship with Jesus and the proclamation of the resurrection as his utmost priority.  The battle he is in and the suffering he will face is real but it is not without hope.  The salvation that is in Christ Jesus is worth the single-minded, wholehearted devotion to God.  And it is not all “doom and gloom”.  Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2:11-13,

“Here is a trustworthy saying:
  If we died with him,
     we will also live with him;
  if we endure,
     we will also reign with him.
  If we disown him,
     he will also disown us;
  if we are faithless,
     he remains faithful,
     for he cannot disown himself.”

Paul gives us some conditional if/then’s to consider.  In the first, Paul addresses our death to sin.  He uses “died” in the past tense — something he and his readers have already done, not something that may or will happen to them in the future.  Paul uses this language often in his writings.  He wrote in Romans 6:4, “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”  Part of this “trustworthy saying” that Paul is giving to Timothy is that when we died to self and sin in the waters of baptism, we were raised to live with Christ.  If we died, then we will live.

He also goes on to state the condition of continued obedience — of faithfulness on our part.  “If we endure . . .”; if we persevere and continue on in the life of service God has called us to, “we will also reign with him.”  This goes along with Paul’s charge to Timothy a few verses earlier to “join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”  The obedient following of Jesus will not be easy, but our endurance is met with a promise of reigning with Christ.  If we endure, we will reign.

The negative possibility of our reaction is covered as well.  “If we disown him . . .”; if we choose to ignore the example of Jesus in living out the command of God, we can be assured that “he will also disown us”.  As Paul writes to Timothy, and to us, he wants it to be known that we cannot make the cares of the world, the pleasures of life, our primary concern if we want to please the one we have committed to serve.  We must be faithful to both the task at hand and the One who called us to it, if we want to be “claimed” and not “disowned”.  If we disown Him, we will be disowned.

But, thanks be to God!  Paul concludes this “trustworthy saying” with an unconditional if/then.  “If we are faithless, he remains faithful.”  God’s faithfulness doesn’t depend on you or me.  God will not snag you with complicated conditions, loopholes, or fine print.  He won’t say, “Sorry, you are my loophole.  Since you failed, I don’t have to keep my promises.”  We have a God that is faithful by His nature.  A God who gives an unconditional if/then.  If you and I are faithful, fine; God will be faithful as well.  If you and I are faithless, that doesn’t change God; He will still be faithful.

May you and I serve Christ in confidence, knowing that God is not looking for the fine print to let Him out of His promises.  God is faithful yesterday, today, and forever.  May we trust in a faithful God who is faithful beyond imagination because His faithfulness does not depend on my actions or reactions.