Guard the Good Deposit: Faith, Fatherhood, and the Next Generation

I recently became a father. As I write this, my son is two months old, but I remember a wave of emotions rushing through me when I held him for the first few times. I was ecstatic and felt love to a depth I didn’t think possible. I also remember being deathly afraid and feeling this massive sense of responsibility. There is something about having your first child that completely changes your perspective. 

One of the main changes has been my forward focus. I think about the future, and about future generations now, more than ever. Recently, while rocking that beautiful baby boy to sleep, I thought about the state of the faith my son would inherit. The need is not only to train up my own son with a biblically accurate worldview, but also to ensure that he receives the tools to contend for the faith of his time and for subsequent generations. 

I immediately thought of Jude 3. How Jude, the brother of Jesus, in writing his epistle, was moved to contend for the faith. 

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  (Jude 3, ESV)

I love this text, and I believe that it’s close to the heart of all who feel a call to apologetics because we can feel his burden. Jude wanted to write about lovely things; he uses the phrase “about our common salvation,” but he felt burdened to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” I feel that burden; that’s why I write, but I feel a new sense of devotion to it because of my son. Another text that absolutely jumped off the page at me was 2 Timothy 1:14 and 2:2; I combined them because they were within the same immediate context.

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.  (2 Timothy 1:13–14, ESV)

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:1–2, ESV)

I love Paul’s letters to Timothy. They are among my favorite books of the Bible. There is such theological depth contained in these, but what I love most is how charged yet supportive that Paul sounds. For those who may not be aware, 2 Timothy is Paul’s final epistle written before his martyrdom. You can feel it when you read it. There is such a richness that this added context gives to not only the excerpt above, but to both epistles in their entirety.

Throughout the letters, Paul exhorts Timothy to preach the word, despite false teaching, a lesson that we need to hear all too often today. In the final verses of the first chapter, he tells Timothy to follow his sound words and to guard the deposit entrusted to him. This only adds to the weight of his words that would follow. Paul, a few sentences later, tells Timothy to entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others, what he has heard from Paul. 

Now, this is the verse that most would turn to as evidence for Apostolic succession, and that is not far from the truth. This verse is about passing down the faith and the charge to teach the faith to leaders within the local body. Still, it’s not a stretch to apply that out to a more generational view. In the same way that Timothy was to find and pass on to other elders, we are to pass the faith on to the next generation. 

As believers, we should feel a call to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. It is the responsibility of the current generation to ensure that the next generation is equipped to understand, accept, and pass down the truth of the gospel. I write this because we are in a time when people have lost sight of the fact that there is an objective truth. Many within the church do not endure sound doctrine and have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their own passions because of their itching ears. (2 Timothy 4:3) It’s the responsibility of all who call Christ their Lord to defend Him and spread His gospel within their ability and to those who are within their reach.

Takeaways

Train up a child in the way he should go;

even when he is old he will not depart from it.  (Proverbs 22:6, ESV)

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:14–15, ESV)

I leave these two scriptures as the takeaways because they are how I plan to raise my son. We have a responsibility to train up the next generation, and that begins with our children, but it does not end there. All of the youth that you have within your reach require grounding in the gospel and the word of God. The world is already speaking to them loudly; we must root them within a worldview that is biblically accurate and honoring to God.