6/26/19 

II Timothy 1:7

He gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and sobriety.

Paul was a wordsmith.  He was both conscious of this and very careful in doing it.

1.       He took ordinary words from everyday life and made them important technical terms.  One illustration is the word “redemption”, an important term in the doctrine of salvation.  But this was a very ordinary term of the marketplace.

2.      He would take words and practically change their meanings to fit them for the use he intended.

3.      He would use a word in different meanings according to the context  The two most important of these are “law” and “spirit”.  “Law most often means the ten commandments.  But it can mean any law, or law in general.  Or he uses it to mean the law of cause and effect, as in Romans 8:2.

In the verse for today is an illustration of one of the ways he used the word “spirit”.  Most often when Paul uses the word spirit he means the Holy Spirit.  But here it refers to the common rational spirit that we possess, quickened and educated by the Holy Spirit and the good word of God.  The spirit of knowledge which we have does not produce fear.  That has another origin.