We should not assume every believer to be a man of God. Even in the days of Timothy, many bore the Christian name who did not live as God’s men. Thus we find in 2 Timothy ample provision for the man of God in a perilous day, when all who will live godly must keep their eye steady on Christ—His name, person and Word—if they are to overcome. The epistle is also intensely individual. Its opening address is characteristic: “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day.”
The Apostle felt chilling influences fast creeping over the professing church. He himself had been deserted by many who had once walked with him in his service for the Lord. They had not abandoned the Christian profession, but they had left him—ashamed of “the testimony of our Lord” and of “his prisoner.”
Under such circumstances, the heart seeks individual faithfulness and affection. When surrounded by a large army of “good soldier[s] of Jesus Christ,” one is not so dependent upon individual fellowship. But as the general condition lowers—the majority proving faithless—individual grace and true affection are specially valued.
In 2 Timothy, it is interesting to notice that, both in reference to his own history and that of his beloved Timothy, Paul goes back to facts in their own individual paths—before they met one another—prior to their church associations. Paul had served God from his forefathers with pure conscience before he had known a fellow Christian. Now, deserted by his Christian companions, he continues on. So with Timothy: “I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”
We see the “pure conscience” of Paul and the “unfeigned faith” of Timothy, indicating two grand moral qualities which all men of God must possess. A “pure conscience” leads us to walk before God while “unfeigned faith” enables us to walk with Him. Together, both are indispensable in forming the character of the true man of God.
Keeping a pure conscience before God in all our ways is vital. It leads us to refer everything to God and keeps us from being tossed hither and thither by every wave and current of human opinion.
If you take your tone from fellow man, being formed in a merely human mold, if your faith stands only in the wisdom of man, or if your object is to please men, then instead of being a man of God, you will become a member of a sect.
Many who might have proved useful workmen in His vineyard have failed by not maintaining the integrity of their individual character. They started on their course in the exercise of a pure conscience before God, pursuing the path marked out by a divine hand. They drew near to the fountain of holy Scripture and drank for themselves. But then, getting under human influence, truth was received secondhand and they became vendors of other men’s thoughts. Instead of supplying “rivers of living water,” they dropped into cold, systematized religion.
To maintain a “pure conscience” we must walk in communion with God and in a sense of our own personal responsibility to Him. This will not lessen real fellowship with all those who are true to Christ. If every “man in Christ” were acquitting himself thoroughly as “a man of God,” what blessed fellowship there would be!
The term “fellowship” is commonly used and little understood. Often it means nominal membership in a religious denomination, a fact which gives no guarantee of living communion with Christ or personal devotedness to His cause.
What is fellowship? It is having one common object with God—Christ known and enjoyed through the Spirit. What privilege, dignity and blessedness! To be allowed to have a common object with God Himself! To delight in the One in whom He delights! There can be nothing higher or more precious than this. It is now, as it shall be then, “with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
Regarding fellowship one with another, it is, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)). We can only enjoy such fellowship as we walk in the presence of God. When we individually walk in communion with God, true fellowship one with another, in real heart enjoyment of Christ as our one common object and portion, is the happy result.
Fellowship is not discussing favorite doctrines or associating only with those who think and feel with us in some favorite dogma. It is delighting in Christ, in common with all those who are walking in the light. It is joint consecration of heart and soul to that blessed One who “loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,” and thus, bringing us into the light of God’s presence, we walk with Him and one another. This is true Christian fellowship.
The man of God has to work amid all sorts of difficulties, sorrows and controversies. He has his niche to fill and, come what may, he must serve. The enemy may oppose, the world frown and the church be in ruins—still the man of God must move on regardless of all this. He must work in the sphere in which God has placed him and according to the gift bestowed upon him. How is this to be done? By listening to the exhortation, “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.”
The gift must be stirred up, else it may become useless. There is great danger of letting the gift drop into disuse through various discouraging circumstances. But a gift unused will become useless, while a gift stirred up grows and expands. It is not enough to possess a gift; the man of God must cultivate it and exercise it.
C. H. Mackintosh (adapted)