guard

This week we begin worship with:

2 Timothy 1:13–14

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith

and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard

the good deposit entrusted to you.

Only Paul used the word “deposit” (parakatathēkē) and he only used it in his letters to Timothy. Not in any other letter.  It is what Paul entrusted to Timothy.  What he said and wrote. For that he would need the Holy Spirit:

John 14:26

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

But Paul did not simply mean the “faith”; he also instructed Timothy to guard the “love”.  It is the Holy Spirit that will prompt us to love, when we let our own guard down.

James 4:17

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”