OWNERSHIP

OWNERSHIP:

Back in ‘00 I opened a small personal training fitness facility in San Antonio. It’s amazing, and shocking, how expensive fitness equipment is. Something as simple as a bench can easily cost between $250 - $1,200 U.S. When you get into cardio equipment (treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, etc.) and weight machines you’re looking at about what you might expect to pay for a used car.

Running a small business isn’t easy - especially when you have no idea what you’re doing, and just figuring stuff out as you go along. Not the idea business model, but hindsight is 20/20. Back then I was working 14-15 hour days. It was crazy hard and super stressful, but despite the stress, strain, struggles, and challenges there were times when I really loved it.

When things got really tight financially I opened up my facility to a few general gym memberships. I never had any problems with the clients I trained because they learned how to use equipment properly. Contrastingly, the folks who came in without any instruction - they would invariably misuse and abuse the equipment and the facility in general.

Sometimes I couldn’t break away from a client to go and politely correct someone, but I had to figure out a way to let everyone know two basic things: 1) how to use the equipment properly, and 2) what stuff was worth. The idea I came up with was to created some giant price tags and I placed them strategically on nearly every piece of equipment. People were amazed to find out that something as simple as a single dumbbell could cost $85 (for one!), that a bench (they used to stand or jump on) cost $1,200, or that a treadmill cost $5,000.

Then the coolest thing happened; pretty soon my clients and customers became “owners” of the facility. If a new person came in and was using something incorrectly - somebody would stop what they were doing and go over to help them. If someone was abusing a piece of equipment or not using it for its designated purpose - someone would gently correct them.

By investing in people, providing solid instruction, and letting people know the value / cost / worth of things - they became my biggest supporters and advocates; and in a very real sense they became co-owners of my vision and mission for the business.

--------------

In 2 Timothy Paul wrote to his young friend (Timothy) not only to encourage him, but to remind Timothy the value / cost / worth of the gospel, which had made its way to Timothy through his mother and grandmother. Paul wrote to Timothy from prison, which was an embarrassingly shameful place in ancient Greco-Roman culture. Meanwhile, Timothy was in the city of Ephesus - a booming metropolis of contemporary en vogue culture. The church in Ephesus was inundated with both external cultural pressures and internal forces of corruption and complacency.

Paul was concerned that young Timothy would follow the misguided pattern of so many others (Phygelus, Hermogenes, Hymenaeus, and Philetus), so Paul wrote this letter to encourage, inform, instruct, and maybe most importantly - to remind Timothy of the value / cost / worth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to own it.

In 2 Timothy 2:8-9 Paul writes something truly revelatory and incredibly powerful: “Keep in mind Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David, according to my gospel. For this I suffer, to the point of being bound like a criminal; but God’s message is not bound.” Did you catch the part where Paul refers to the gospel as “my gospel?”

The gospel of Jesus Christ wasn’t merely superficial religious education for Paul - not at all! The gospel, or Good News, became the engine that drove Paul, the North Star that guided him, and the vision and mission of his ministry. Then in v.11 Paul writes, “This is why I endure all things for the elect: so that they also may obtain salvation, which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.”

Paul uses powerful imagery (soldier, athlete, and farmer) to remind young Timothy that while the work of ministry is frequently painful, difficult, and treacherous - Christ is our unmerited and extravagant reward. For this reason the gospel is no external conception, passing philosophy, or superficial religious worldview. Instead, when the gospel is authentic it truly becomes mine. That’s why Paul referred to it as “my gospel.” The same is true for Timothy, you, and me - just as it was for Paul: ownership is essential.

Therefore, Paul reminded Timothy not to be discouraged by sufferings, dissuaded by false-teachers, surprised by difficult times, nor consumed by the people who bring them. With this in mind Paul articulated and anticipated what every pastor, servant, shepherd, and minister of the gospel would face in every place and every time; and in 2 Tim 3:1-5 Paul wrote:

But know this: difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of religion but denying its power…

Then, at the very end of v.5, Paul gave Timothy clear instruction on how to handle it: “Avoid these people!”

-----------------

If Christians today think of the Apostle Paul at all, in fact if Christians today even know who the Apostle Paul is, he is considered an anomaly or a freak - not a role model. The truth is that Christians today don’t believe what the Scriptures teach. Nobody really gives up everything to pursue Jesus. We reconcile those overly zealous people - the crazy nutjobs on street corners - are the ones who belong in mental hospitals. We reckon that commuting, working 40+ hours a week, taking kids to school, soccer, choir, and band, hitting church a few Sundays, and being consumed with life has us stretched thin enough - thank you very much. That's our gospel today.

Paul referred to these people as “lovers of self,” “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” people “holding to the form of religion but denying its power,” and those who “resist the truth, men who are corrupt in mind, worthless in regard to faith,” and Paul told Timothy “Avoid these people!”

Paul’s letter to Timothy was meant not only to encourage, but also to reminded his reader(s) of the realistic expectations for all Christians: “In fact, all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Paul wanted the gospel of Jesus Christ to be more than a good idea, a noble philosophy, or a grand worldview. Paul’s desire for Timothy - and for me and you - was for the gospel to truly become “my gospel.” Paul said it himself when he wrote, “For this I suffer, to the point of being bound like a criminal… This is why I endure all things for the elect: so that they also may obtain salvation…”

Paul’s desire for Timothy, for the saints in the churches he planted, for the ones he longed to visit, and the elect his letters would reach and impact thousands of years later - was that we would not be discouraged, dissuaded, or defeated, and that the gospel of Jesus Christ would not merely lead to our salvation, but that for us - like Paul - it would truly become “my gospel;” and neither shame, prison, threats, beatings, sickness, cold, hunger, nor any powers or principalities would ever prevent us from being heralds of “my gospel.”

Paul went to prison and died for the gospel because it truly became his.

What about you? Is the gospel of Jesus Christ truly your gospel? Is it not just something, but THE thing that shapes the vision and mission of your life in its entirety? Is it the thing that you are burdened with, living for, and suffering for?

Paul said, “In fact, all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That’s what extreme ownership of the gospel looks like.

Is there evidence in your life of genuine ownership of the gospel? Is the gospel truly yours, or, as Paul said, do you fall into the category of those “holding to the form of religion but denying its power?”

Blessings,

-Kevin M. Kelley

aMostUnlikelyDisciple.com