Timothy.
I. Martyrdom may come soon; if it comes, the apostle will welcome it with joy; IF HE LIVES, HE WILL SEND TIMOTHY.
1. He hopes to send Timothy almost immediately; he trusts himself to come shortly. Observe, he hopes in the Lord, and He trusts in the Lord. "Behold how he refers all things to the Lord," says St. Chrysostom. He submits his hopes and desires, even where the spiritual welfare of his converts seems to be concerned, wholly to the higher will of God. His life was Christ. "Christ liveth in me," he said. Therefore his desires were the desires of Christ, whose abiding presence filled his heart. He hopes in the Lord, in conscious communion with the Lord; his hopes are guided and quickened by the indwelling Savior. "Only in the Lord" is the rule of the highest Christian life.
2. He hopes to send Timothy, not for their sakes only, but for his own also. His own happiness is bound up in the spiritual welfare of his converts; like St. John, he had no greater joy than to hear that his children were walking in the truth. Mark the depth of his Christian affection; how fully he had learned the lessons of his own sweet psalm of love in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 :!
II. THE CHARACTER OF TIMOTHY. He had his faults; he was timid, nervous, shrinking from opposition. But:
1. He was a man of God, a man he of unfeigned faith and deep Christian he love. Of all St. Paul's companions none was so dear to him as Timothy, "mine own son," as he calls him.
2. He is like-minded with St. Paul. St. Paul can trust him wholly; he will act as the apostle himself would have acted; the Philippians should regard his presence as equivalent to the apostle's presence; he is a second Paul. He will seek no selfish ends; he will have a true, genuine anxiety for their welfare. He will be really anxious to do all he possibly can to help the Philippians in their religious life. And that anxiety will be real and sincere, not in words only, not merely official, but deep-seated in the heart, genuine. Timothy was a true Christian; the Philippians knew him; he had already worked among them; he had been proved, he had labored with St. Paul, and that for the gospel's sake. Others have selfish aims—they seek their own interests; he will seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, the interests (so to speak) of Christ, that is, the salvation of souls. It is the character of a true Christian minister.
III. ST. PAUL'S LONELINESS. Timothy is the only true friend at hand; Luke and others are absent; those present with him, except Timothy, are half-hearted; all of them, he says, seek their own. St. Paul's whole nature craved for sympathy; his one earthly comfort and support was the sympathy, the love of Christian friends. Once he bitterly felt being left at Athens alone (1 Thessalonians 2:1). Now his anxiety to hear the state of the Philippians, his love for them, makes him willing to part with Timothy, and to be left alone in his Roman captivity. We may well wonder at the intensity of his love, the completeness of his self-sacrifice.
LESSONS.
1. The great aim of the Christian life should be to live wholly in the Lord, in his presence, in the constant effort to please him in all things.
2. Communion of Christians with Christians is one of the greatest helps, as it is one of the greatest comforts, in the religious life.
3. Pray to be genuine, absolutely truthful and real; to be, not to seem.
4. A true saint of God can endure isolation. "Who hath the Father and the Son, may be left, but not alone."