Lesson 13: Response to suffering – faithfulness to Him
2 Timothy 2:11-13 (ESV)
11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—

Another response we need to have to suffering is faithfulness to God. Verse 12 above says if we endure our suffering we will reign with Him.

What does it mean to be faithful to God? Jesus answered that many times during His days here on earth. First, He defined faithfulness as friendship when He said, “You are My friends if you do what I ask of you” (John 15:14). A study of His commands to us, in every book of the New Testament, is very helpful to our Christian life.

Second, He defined faithfulness in a parable He told in Matthew 25:14-30. A man who was leaving on a long journey gave his servants some of his money for them to care for and use to good effect while he would be gone. To the first employee he gave five units, to the second he gave two, and to a third he gave one. In Jesus’ time, the word used here is about a year’s wage for a man, but in our time the word is used for an ability we have, a gift of doing something. It doesn’t matter which Jesus meant because the same principle is true in both instances – what we have or what we can do.


The first two servants used what had been given to them wisely, and they increased the value of what their master had given them. Faithfulness means we do what He asks with what we have been given. It doesn’t matter if we have been given little or much, we make the most of all we have been given.

The third servant, however, was not faithful. Maybe he was upset that he’d not received as much as the others, or maybe he didn’t want to spend his energy increasing the value of his master’s property – he was more interested in working for himself. Whatever his reason, he was not faithful to his master.

In the above verses, we are told that if we deny Him, He will deny us. In the worst suffering we might ever face, we can still choose not to deny Him. And if we make that choice, the next verse above is great comfort for us – even if we are tempted to think of giving up on God sometimes and thus become unfaithful to Him, He remains faithful to us. That means we must choose to remain true to Him no matter what trials we will face, and in those trials, even when we are at our weakest He will see us through. Our heart’s cry to Him will remain: we choose to be faithful even when our weakness might make that very difficult.

*Looking back on your seasons of suffering, when and where have you chosen to be faithful to the Lord no matter what?
*How are you encouraged by God’s promise that He will always remain faithful, even when we aren’t faithful to Him?