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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 2 Timothy 2:20 - 2:20
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Ver. 20. Here the apostle passes to another and apparently somewhat contradictory aspect of the church—from the church viewed as God’s firm foundation, all solid and compact, to the church as a house composed of various and, to a certain extent, heterogeneous materials. The distinction is simply that of the real and the professing, or the invisible and the visible church. But ( äὲ , the adversative, indicating something diverse from the preceding) in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honour, others to dishonour. That by the great house is to be understood the church as an outstanding, visible institution, is the nearly unanimous opinion of commentators, although Chrysostom insists on its being taken to mean the world, as the apostle (he says) wished everything in the church to be considered of gold and silver. But the question is as to the facts of the case, not what the apostle might wish to be such; and the whole tenor of his discourse here has respect to what in some way or another stands related to God as His household, in a religious point of view, in which respect there can be no doubt that there is a mixed condition of things—a false as well as a true. Considered in this light, there are certain obvious resemblances between it and the utensils of a large dwelling-house, accompanied, no doubt, as usual in such comparisons, with underlying differences, which require to be kept in the background. But, so far as here put, the similitude is apt and natural: the vessels of gold and silver in such a house, being in themselves of costly material, and reserved for honourable uses, differ widely, though pertaining to the same establishment, from those of wood and earthenware, which are of little intrinsic worth, and fit only for meaner services. And such relatively to each other are the two great parties in God’s professing church: the one God’s true elect, His jewels, as He elsewhere calls them, or peculiar treasure, preserved by His faithful guardianship, and destined to His eternal glory; the other, those who have but an outward standing in the household, and if capable, perhaps, of performing some inferior offices, yet never attaining either here or hereafter to the honour of God’s saints, because destitute of the spiritual life which constitutes the essential property of such. This is the highest that can be said of the latter class; for if in certain things they may do a little service to the interests of the church, in others of a more vital nature they cannot; but, as a rule, do much dis-service. In the great conflict which is proceeding between good and evil, God does not receive from them the honour to which He is entitled, and they in turn must be treated by Him with dishonour, awaking at last to “shame and everlasting contempt.” They are of Israel, yet not Israel; called, but not chosen.