SUMMARY
At the center of the good news for which PaulThe Apostle Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was the author of several New Testament letters and the founder of many Christian communities. More suffers is JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God's saving act for humanity. More, “raised from the dead, a descendent of DavidSecond king of Israel, David united the northern and southern kingdoms. More.”
ANALYSIS
Here the author names two data points about Jesus: “raised from the dead, a descendent of David,” and calls these points “my gospel, for which I suffer hardship” (2:8-9). This encapsulation of the gospel hits the same points that Paul uses to sketch the gospel in Romans 1:3-4. In Romans as in 2 TimothyThe companion on Paul's later journeys for whom two pastoral epistles are named. More, he says that Jesus is descended from David; that is, Jesus is a Jew in the royal line of King David, and Jesus was raised from the dead. These two statements are, of course, only a tiny portion of what the New Testament Gospels reveal about Jesus. No mention is made here of Jesus as a teacher, a wonder worker, a storyteller, a healer, or even of him having died on a cross. In 2 Timothy, the absence of these descriptors of Jesus in Paul’s rehearsal of the gospel may indicate that only Jesus’ royal Jewish lineage and his resurrection were under dispute when 2 Timothy was penned, or only his proclamation of these elements of the story resulted in the persecution that 2 Timothy reports.
