What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

2 Tim 1:13, 14

Paul is passing on his learnings, purified through the years, to young Timothy whom Paul is preparing to continue the good work that he has been doing for twenty or so years.

Keep as the pattern of sound teaching – with the emphasis on the “keep.”  I gather Paul is warning Timothy to neither add nor subtract from the essential message of the Gospel.  In this letter Paul notes that some who had received the simple message have done just that.  Some spiritualized the Resurrection, making it some sort of spiritual experience detached from its historical reality, probably because bodily resurrection is so difficult to comprehend and even harder to believe, unless enlightened by the Spirit..

Paul refers to the Gospel as a “good deposit.”  We are entrusted with it, to keep it central and essential, because all else hangs on it. He writes – “guard it.”  Not revise it.  Not update it. Not tinker with it to make it palatable to human conjecture. And, by all means, do not add to it, polluting the simple message with doubt.

Paul further noted the centrality of faith, not reason alone, but with faith – believing what might seem impossible.  Allow for mystery or for the fact that we see through a glass darkly.  Our certainty is in God, not in our beliefs about him.

He then posits everything on the love of Jesus Christ.  Jesus loves, eternally, and so should we.  This is made possible by the Holy Spirit who lives in us.  I find it interesting that Paul and Timothy had the same “deposit.”  This makes them one in the Gospel though of two generations.

Lord, rest our spirits on the truth of the Gospel.