In season and out of season

These are close to the last words of a man who knew he was going to be executed, and he begins them with a courtroom formula.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. That is an oath formula, and Paul uses it to introduce one instruction.

Preach the word.

Two words. Everything else in the paragraph modifies them.

Be prepared in season and out of season. Which is a strange pair, because we would expect the instruction to be about being ready when the moment comes.

Paul says both seasons. When it is welcome and when it is not. When the room wants it and when the room has made clear it does not.

Then three verbs: correct, rebuke and encourage — and a qualifier that governs all three: with complete patience and teaching.

And then the reason, which Paul states without softening:

A time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine but will gather teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. That is the situation Paul is preparing Timothy for, and the instruction for it is not a new strategy. It is the same one: preach the word.

So thirteen weeks come to a working conclusion, and it is a job description.

The Book has been shown to be God-breathed, living, active, settled in heaven, tested like silver, sweeter than honey, worth more than gold, a fire, a hammer, a lamp, a sword, seed, milk, a mirror, a goad, a nail, dew, a stone men trip over, and a fire a man could not hold in. Thirteen threads have been walked from Genesis to Revelation. Its writers have testified in their own words. God says He stays awake beside it until it happens.

And what a man is supposed to do with all of that, according to a prisoner writing his last letter, is say it out loud — in the seasons when people want it and the seasons when they do not, correcting and encouraging, patiently, and teaching while he does.

Paul’s next sentences are about his own end: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Then he asks Timothy to bring his cloak, and the scrolls, especially the parchments.

And the two seasons cut both ways, which is worth saying. Out of season does not license bad manners or bad timing at a funeral; Paul’s own practice was to reason, persuade and adapt his approach to every audience. What it rules out is silence chosen because the moment is unfavorable — the calculation that this room, this family, this year is not one where the thing can be said.

A man three verses from the end of his last letter still wanted his books.

The verb kerusso, to preach, means to herald — to announce publicly on behalf of someone else. It is the same word used of the town crier and, in the Greek Old Testament, of official proclamations. The messenger formula from Week Eight is behind it: the herald does not compose the message.

The phrase rendered in season and out of season is two adverbs, eukairos and akairos, and the second is simply the first negated. The Greek is blunter than most translations: opportunely and inopportunely.

The word for itching in verse 3 describes an ear that wants to be scratched. Paul’s diagnosis is that the problem will not be a shortage of teachers but a surplus of them — people will accumulate teachers to suit their own desires, which is a description of a market rather than a famine.

Verse 5 adds the practical charge: keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. It is an ordinary list, and it follows immediately after a prediction of widespread appetite for something else.

The charge is given in the presence of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom. Paul frames an instruction about ordinary weekly preaching with the largest possible horizon, which is how the letter ends too.

Look it upG2784 κηρύσσω kerusso, to herald, proclaim · G2122 εὐκαίρως eukairos, in season, opportunely · G171 ἀκαίρως akairos, out of season · G3115 μακροθυμία makrothumia, patience, long-suffering

Where this touches2 Timothy 4:1–8, 13 · 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (Week Two, Day Six) · Acts 20:26–27 (Week Seven, Day Seven) · 1 Timothy 4:13 · Titus 1:9. The earlier turns were James 1, Ezra 7:10, the two builders, the Bereans, Colossians 3:16, Psalm 119:11, Acts 20:32, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, 2 Timothy 2:15, Deuteronomy 6, John 8:31 and Luke 11:28.