GRACE & PEACE
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:6-7)
God both initiates and sustains. But the relation we have to what He does in both instances is quite different. When He first bestows on us, His action is unilateral, monergistic. But when He walks with us through the course of our Christian lives, He bestows and we respond. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in us to will and to do for His good pleasure. We work out what He works in. This is not what Paul cautioned the Galatians against, the error that thinks God does His part and then we do ours. Rather, God does His part unilaterally, and then God continues to work in us and that work is manifested in what we do. It is like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. First He spoke and Lazarus came alive. God then continued to give Lazarus the gift of life, which was expressed in what Lazarus did.
In Timothy’s case, Paul reminds him that God had given him a gift, and that it was Timothy’s responsibility to fan that gift into flame. The gifts of God are not to be taken for granted on the assumption that He will do everything. He does do everything, but He does so through us. Timothy had been given this particular gift through the imposition of Paul’s hands. The reason Paul gave for fanning the gift back into flame was that God gave us a spirit of power and love and self-control, and not a spirit of fear. This indicates that Timothy was neglecting this gift because of some measure of timidity. The gift, whatever it was, had a tendency to get Timothy into trouble — as power, love and self-control frequently do.