A Vessel unto Honour.
St. Paul is giving his dying counsels to his dear Timotheus; dictating them, probably, to Luke, in the Roman dungeon, from which he was to be released only by his martyrdom. As ever, as in his earliest discourses and epistles, so here, while the topics are many, the topic is Christ; Christ in His personal and saving glory, and the relation of believing man to Him. On the verge of the eternal state he writes as practically as possible on the holy theme. He leaves behind him, not a rhapsody of farewell, but a grave, tender, last reminder to his beloved disciple how to believe aright in the unchangeable Saviour, and how to serve that Saviour's purposes day by day in trial and in duty. The man who has found Christ, and is found in Him, is not the man to be disturbed, certainly not the man to be bewildered in the prospect of death. He belongs already to both worlds, belonging to Him to whom they both belong. For him the things seen and temporal are just the present field of his Master's work, and the things unseen and eternal are but the extension of that vast field into another climate, but under the same owner and lighted by the same sun. So the dying Apostle is full of the thought of his younger fellow-labourer's continued labour. The Church visible is a great house, and every member of it, every one who is registered under the Christian name, is, in some sense, a vessel, a σκε ῦος in it, and used for some purpose by the Master of it. But the qualities and uses of the vessels immensely vary; and there are those which are used only for purposes of dishonour; that is to say, for the whole context makes us sure of this, they are not used for purposes obscure and humble, but for purposes conditioned by evil; purposes, for example, of the warning, of the beacon.
I. What does a vessel to honour mean? The vessel which is hallowed so as to be usable by the master thatis the vessel unto honour. Its capacity may be large or small; its workmanship may be homely or elaborately magnificent.
II. "A vessel unto honour." It is a term glorious with that rare honour which cometh from God only, and which falls impartially, where it falls at all, upon the greatest and the least, as man counts great and little. A vessel is a thing which is altogether not its own. Its idea is that it is a thing for use, for the use of an agent who is not itself. It originates nothing; it only carries, conveys, transmits. It is not its own motor; it is carried; it is for a hand which is not itself to lift, to grasp, to bear away and about where it would and where it would not. It is doubly not its own; it carries what is not itself, the wine or the water, for the sake of which it is employed; and it is carried by what is not itself, the Possessor, who may do what He will with His own, and who knows what the vessel does not know His plan and aim in all the carrying.
H. C. G. Moule, Christ is All,p. 227.
Reference: 2 Timothy 2:21. S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 161.