You learn a lot about someone when you take everything away from them. I’ve been learning a lot about myself lately, and I haven’t even lost that much compared to Paul. One day all of us have to face the question: what’s left when everything is stripped away? It’s happening to all of us in small ways right now, but it will happen to all of us one day. One day we’ll leave behind everything: every relationship, every accomplishment, every possession.

Imagine if everything you’re normally used to was taken away from you.

Imagine losing your job. If you’re working, I know you’ve worked hard to get that job. You’ve spent years gaining the qualifications and experience. Imagine one day getting notice, being called into a meeting with your supervisor, or even worse, getting that email, and being told you’re no longer needed. Talk about a blow. For a lot of us, a big chunk of our identity comes from our jobs. It would be very tough to lose our jobs.

Imagine losing your health. Imagine getting a phone call from the doctor’s office. The tests had come back, and they need to see you. Imagine hearing your doctor tell you bad news: that you have a condition, that you need treatment, and that she couldn’t guarantee how well the treatment would go. There are few things as important as our health, and it’s hard to imagine losing that.

Imagine losing everything. It’s hard to imagine, but I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen people lose their marriages, lose their jobs, friendships, and have to rebuild their lives from nothing. It would be devastating.

Why am I saying this? My intention isn’t to depress you. My intention is to focus your intention on an important question: if everything is stripped away from you, what do you have left? If you lose the ordinary things that you’re used to — your job, your health, your marriage, your friendships, your standard of living — who are you? What do you have left?

I came across a poem this week that asks this very question in the light of the current pandemic. It’s called “We’ve All Been Exposed.”

We’ve all been exposed.
Not necessarily to the virus
(maybe…who even knows ).
We’ve all been exposed BY the virus.

Corona is exposing us.
Exposing our weak sides.
Exposing our dark sides.
Exposing what normally lays far beneath the surface of our souls,
hidden by the invisible masks we wear.
Now exposed by the paper masks we can’t hide far enough behind.

Corona is exposing our addiction to comfort.
Our obsession with control.
Our compulsion to hoard.
Our protection of self.

Corona is peeling back our layers.
Tearing down our walls.
Revealing our illusions.
Leveling our best-laid plans.

Corona is exposing the gods we worship:
Our health
Our hurry
Our sense of security.
Our favorite lies
Our secret lusts
Our misplaced trust.

Corona is calling everything into question:
What is the church without a building?
What is my worth without an income?
How do we plan without certainty?
How do we love despite risk?

Corona is exposing me.
My mindless numbing
My endless scrolling
My careless words
My fragile nerves.

We’ve all been exposed.
Our junk laid bare.
Our fears made known.
The band-aid torn.
The masquerade done.

So what now? What’s left?
Clean hands
Clear eyes
Tender hearts.

What Corona reveals, God can heal.

Come Lord Jesus.
Have mercy on us.

I can relate to that. Who are we when everything has been stripped away, when the condition of our heart has been exposed? What’s left? It’s an important question to ask. It’s a question many of us are being forced to answer right now. It’s a question all of us will eventually face if we aren’t already.

And it’s why we’re starting to look at a letter written by a man who had to face this question. Let me introduce him to you. His name was Paul. He was one of the most important leaders in the early Christian church, a man who started out opposing Jesus, but who then helped spread the news of Jesus across the Jewish ethnic barrier throughout the whole Roman world at the time.

By the time that Paul writes this letter around 67 A.D., he’s lost everything.

Imagine for a moment an old man who is alone. He is in failing health. He is isolated from family and friends. And he is so poor he cannot afford a winter coat. He changed careers in mid-life, but there is no pension plan or medical benefits with his own start-up organization. Not only that, his new enterprise seems to be faltering. Oh, and one more thing: he is incarcerated under capital charges. If found guilty, he could lose his life. And it looks like he will be found guilty. (Mark Dever)

That’s his situation as he writes this letter. He lost everything: his freedom, his comfort, many of his friends, and soon after he wrote this letter, his life. Shortly after writing this letter, he was executed as a martyr in Rome. Legend has it that Nero had him decapitated.

Paul’s writing to his protégé, Timothy. And verse 8 gives us part of his agenda: “Do not be ashamed.” Why would Timothy be ashamed? I can think of a couple of reasons.

• Paul had been unfriended. Have you ever been friends with someone who’s lost everything? It’s amazing how many friends disappear. Paul had lost most of his friends. Later on in this letter, Paul says, “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me” (2 Timothy 4:16). This man who had built into the lives of so many people was now abandoned by many of them.
• His faith was culturally unacceptable. Sometimes it’s cool to say you’re a Christian. Sometimes it makes you stand out like a freak. Sometimes it can even cost you your life. Paul was in the latter category. He was about to lose his life for believing in Jesus. It takes a lot of guts to stand up beside someone who’s about to lose their life and say, “I’m with them.”

Timothy had some very good reasons for being ashamed of Paul, because Paul had everything stripped away from him. He had nothing left except for one thing, and that one thing made everything worth it.

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