It Came Through His Grandmother and Then It Was His

He can date the exact evening he first suspected the whole thing might be secondhand.

He was twenty. Somebody at work, entirely without malice, asked him whether he believed all that because it was true or because of where he was born, and it was a fair question and he had no answer, and he has not had one since.

Because the honest facts are these. He believes it. He would say so. And every single component of it arrived through people: his grandmother, mostly, and then a building, and then a language, and by the time he was old enough to evaluate anything he was already fully inside it, which means he has no version of himself to compare against.

He has never doubted the content. What he doubts is whether he owns it.

Paul writes to a young man in exactly that position and does something unexpected: he names the women it came through, by name, in writing, and then says it is his.

He names the route and does not apologize for it

Here is the sentence, and it is worth noticing how comfortable it is.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5, King James Version)

Unfeigned. That is the first word he uses about it, and it means unhypocritical, genuine, without pretense. He establishes the authenticity before he says anything about where it came from.

And then, immediately, the route: which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.

He names them. He gives the order. He says plainly that this thing was in two other people before it was in Timothy, and there is not a syllable of qualification anywhere in the sentence. The route does not embarrass Paul in the slightest.

You are able to have the route named and the faith called unfeigned in the same sentence. 2 Timothy 1:5 puts both in one verse without any qualification, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness about a person is borne directly rather than inherited.

The word dwelt is used about all three

Look at the verb, because it is the same one for everybody in the sentence.

Which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois... and I am persuaded that in thee also.

Dwelt. It is a housing word, about taking up residence, and it is applied identically to Lois, to Eunice, and to Timothy. Nobody in that verse has a lesser tenancy.

Which answers the question at the top of this article more precisely than any argument could. The faith is not described as being handed from one person to the next like an object, where each subsequent owner has a weaker claim. It is described as dwelling, three times, in three people, and dwelling is not diminished by having dwelt somewhere before.

And first is a word about sequence rather than about quality. Lois was earlier. She was not more.

You have the same word used about you as about the one it came through. 2 Timothy 1:5 applies dwelt to all three without distinction, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:9, whose dwelling in a person is named as the mark of belonging to Christ.

And then he tells him to stir it up

The next verse is the instruction, and it is not what you would expect if the worry were about ownership.

Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (2 Timothy 1:6)

Stir up. The word is about rekindling, fanning a fire that is present but low.

Notice what Paul does not tell him to do. He does not tell him to go and get something. He does not tell him to verify anything, or to test whether it is really his, or to have an experience that would settle the question.

He tells him to fan what is already there, which is only a sensible instruction if the thing is genuinely present.

You are told to stir up something already in you rather than to go and acquire it. 2 Timothy 1:6 says stir up the gift of God which is in thee, and the very next verse names what God hath given us: not the spirit of fear, but His Spirit of power and love and a sound mind.

Paul says how long Timothy had known it

There is a detail two chapters later that makes the inheritance even earlier and Paul treats it as a strength.

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:15)

From a child. Paul knows Timothy had no adult moment of discovery. He knows it arrived before evaluation was possible, and he raises it as an asset rather than a complication.

That is worth sitting with, because the modern instinct, and the instinct of the man at twenty, is that something arrived at before you could weigh it is therefore suspect.

Paul's instinct is the opposite. He treats early and thorough exposure as an advantage, and the reason is in the verse: the scriptures are described as able to make thee wise, and their ability is not affected by how young somebody was when they met them.

You are not disqualified by having known it before you could evaluate it. 2 Timothy 3:15 raises from a child as an asset, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 2:12, that the things freely given of God are known rather than deduced.

What actually settles ownership

The question of whether it is his does get answered in Scripture, and the answer is not an argument and not an experience.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. (Romans 8:16)

Beareth witness with our spirit. Two parties testifying to the same thing, and one of them is God.

That is the mechanism, and it is worth noticing what it is not. It is not a feeling, though it may produce one. It is not a memory of a moment. It is a testimony being given, and the question of whether a faith arrived through a grandmother has no bearing on whether that testimony is being given now.

And it is present tense. Beareth. Continuous. It is happening while a man is at work having no answer to a colleague's fair question.

You have a witness being borne about you in the present tense. Romans 8:16 says the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, and it is that Spirit named in the verse doing it rather than a person establishing it.

And the tension does not resolve

I want to say the honest thing, because this site does not tidy anything up.

The man at twenty is not going to get an answer to his colleague's question in a form the colleague would recognize. There is no experiment available. He cannot run a version of his life in which he was born somewhere else, and anybody who tells him they have solved this for themselves is describing a feeling rather than a proof.

What he can have is what Timothy had: a faith that came through named people, that Scripture calls unfeigned anyway, that dwells in him with the same verb it dwelt in her, with a witness being borne about it continuously, and an instruction to fan it rather than to verify it.

That is not a resolution of the question. It is a place to stand while the question stays open, which is what he actually needs, because the question is going to stay open.

You are able to stand somewhere while the question stays open. 2 Timothy 1:6 gives an instruction to stir rather than to settle anything, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness continues while nothing is proved.