Following Paul with WTBC - Rightly Dividing Denying Christ

Few words trouble a tender conscience more than the Lord's: "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Believers who have stumbled, who have stayed silent when they should have spoken, who fear they have somewhere along the way "denied" Him, read that verse and tremble for their souls. And when they turn to Paul and find what sounds like the same threat — "if we deny him, he also will deny us" (2 Timothy 2:12) — the fear is sealed.

But the fear is born of confusion, and the confusion is cured by a single tool: "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). When these passages are rightly divided, the terror dissolves, and what remains is not a threat against our salvation but a sober word about our reward.

Two Passages People Collide

Set the two side by side.

The first is the Lord Jesus speaking to the twelve as He sends them to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:6): "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 10:32-33).

The second is the apostle Paul, writing to Timothy and through him to the church which is the body of Christ: "It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:11-13).

They sound alike. They are not alike. They were spoken by different speakers, to different people, under different programs, with different consequences in view. Reading them as one message is the root of the trouble.

Matthew 10 Belongs to the Kingdom Program

The Lord's words in Matthew 10 were not addressed to the body of Christ, which was not yet revealed, but to Israel under the gospel of the kingdom. The whole chapter is saturated with that program. The twelve are sent only to Israel, forbidden to go to the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5-6). They are to preach, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 10:7). And the enduring required of them is the enduring of the tribulation: "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

This is kingdom ground — conditional, prophetic, looking forward to the time of Jacob's trouble when confessing the King under persecution will be the line between faithfulness and apostasy. It is the same kind of word the Lord gives in the Olivet discourse and the same kind John records in the Revelation. He speaks it again in the synoptic parallels — "he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke 12:9), and "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words... of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38) — each framed by the King's coming in glory. In that program the denial is a grave matter: the one who finally denies the King under persecution — who, in the day to come, takes the mark and worships the beast rather than confess Him — forfeits his place in the kingdom, for there salvation belongs to "he that endureth to the end" (Matthew 10:22). That is what the Lord's warning guards in its own program — and even there, as Peter will show, a stumble met with repentance found mercy. It is not the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), and it was never written to us.

The clearest proof that Matthew 10:33 does not consign a stumbling believer to perdition is the man who stumbled hardest under it. Peter, one of the very twelve who heard those words, denied his Lord three times — "with an oath, I do not know the man" (Matthew 26:72), and at the last he "began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man" (Matthew 26:74). If ever a man fell under Matthew 10:33, it was Peter. Yet the Lord restored him, and used him. Even within the kingdom program there was mercy for the one who denied. How much more, then, under the gospel of grace, where we stand not by our faithfulness but by the finished work of Christ.

2 Timothy 2 Is Written to Us — and Verse 13 Interprets Verse 12

Now to the passage that is written to us. The key to it is that verse 13 will not let verse 12 be misread. Watch the structure break on purpose.

Paul lays down a series of "if" clauses. "If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him" — that is our standing, true of every believer. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him" — that is reward, and we will come to it. "If we deny him, he also will deny us" — the warning. And then, just when the parallel would have us bracing for the worst, Paul refuses to leave it there: "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself."

The four clauses do not all operate on the same level. The first and the last speak of what cannot be lost; the middle two speak of what can be gained or forfeited. And the last clause is the floor beneath the whole passage: even our faithlessness cannot move Him, because our security never rested on our faithfulness in the first place. He cannot deny Himself — and we are members of His body, "sealed unto the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). For Him to cast us off, He would have to deny His own body, His own blood, His own word. He cannot. So whatever "he also will deny us" means, it cannot mean the loss of a salvation that verse 13 has just declared untouchable.

What, then, does it mean? It is answered by the clause directly before it: "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." The denial of verse 12 is the loss of the reigning, not the loss of the life. It is the reward forfeited, not the standing revoked.

Standing and Reward, Rightly Divided

The confusion clears the moment we stop flattening everything into one category. The believer's blessings sort into two kinds: what is his by standing — freely and unconditionally in Christ — and what is added as reward for faithful service. Three things are in view here: salvation, glory, and reigning. The first two belong wholly to standing. Reigning, strikingly, appears on both sides at once — and missing that is the very root of the trouble.

Salvation is standing. It rests on His faithfulness, not ours — "he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." We were saved "by grace... through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). What works did not earn, unfaithfulness cannot unearn.

Glory is standing. That every believer will share the glory of Christ is stated flatly, with no condition attached: "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4); and the Lord "shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21). It is guaranteed by an unbroken chain — "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Romans 8:30) — from which no one drops out.

Now Romans 8:17 does attach a condition — "if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together" — but it is one of Paul's settled conditions, the kind he assumes is already met. The very same construction appears eight verses earlier: "ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Romans 8:9), where Paul plainly does not doubt that the Spirit indwells them — he settles it in the next breath, "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." There "if so be that" means since indeed. And the verb confirms the same here: "we suffer with him" is present and ongoing, a thing already true of us, not a hazard hanging over us — for the suffering in view is "the sufferings of this present time" (Romans 8:18), the groaning of the whole creation and of every believer in a mortal body "waiting for... the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). Since indeed we all suffer with Him in this groaning creation, we shall all be glorified together. Universal suffering, universal glory. This too is standing.

Reigning is inherited — and rewarded. Here is the distinction most often missed. In one sense every member of the body already reigns, by position, the moment he is in Christ. We are "raised... up together, and made... [to] sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6); those who "receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17); and Paul can tell even the carnal Corinthians, "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" (1 Corinthians 6:3) — a judging that is theirs not by merit, for their works were to be burned (1 Corinthians 3:15), but by inheritance. That reign is standing, ours by being joint-heirs.

But there is a further reigning — reigning with Him — that Scripture conditions on suffering with Him: "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:12). Paul makes the same point to the Corinthians, who were behaving as though they reigned already: "ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you" (1 Corinthians 4:8) — the true reign is future, and it comes by the road of apostolic suffering he describes in the very next breath, "we are made a spectacle... we both hunger, and thirst" (1 Corinthians 4:9-11).

This is the reward, and the suffering it rests on is not the groaning common to all but suffering for Christ — "the fellowship of his sufferings" (Philippians 3:10), enduring "hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3). Paul presses the manner of that service on Timothy with three figures in the same chapter: the soldier who does not entangle himself with the affairs of this life, the athlete who must "strive lawfully," and the husbandman who labours before he is "partaker of the fruits" (2 Timothy 2:4-6) — each illustrating the disciplined, wholehearted service the reward attends. It is reward "according to... labour" (1 Corinthians 3:8), assessed at "the judgment seat of Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Read in its setting, Colossians 3:24 is gentler still. Paul is addressing bondservants — "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh" (Colossians 3:22) — men who under Roman law could inherit nothing from an earthly master. To them he says, work heartily, "as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24). Mark what kind of recompense it is: not a servant's wage but an inheritance — and an inheritance is a son's, never a slave's. "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Galatians 4:7). These are servants in this present life who are, in Christ, sons of God, and what they receive is the son's portion. The "for" is causal, not conditional: they serve heartily because the Master they truly serve is Christ, and the inheritance is sure to His own — grace, not a wage scaled to output (the recompense for wrongdoing is the separate next verse, "But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done" — Colossians 3:25). So this is not the service weighed at the judgment seat; it is the inheritance that is ours by sonship. You reign because you are a son; you reign with Him because you suffered with Him.

So "with Him" carries two senses. We are already made to sit together with Him by grace — a co-seating that is position, true of every member, and never lost. We shall reign with Him as the reward of having suffered with Him — a co-reigning that is the nearness of those who shared His reproach now sharing His rule. And there we must stop where Paul stops. The picture he gives is a limited one — that we shall reign with Him, but not what we shall govern, or how, or in what measure — and we should not fill in what he left unsaid. His eye is not on a future itinerary but on who we already are by grace: sons, heirs, raised and seated together in Christ. That is where he fixes the believer's gaze, and so should we.

Is Suffering for Christ a Choice?

It is, and Paul frames it beautifully: "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake" (Philippians 1:29). The word "given" means graciously granted — suffering for Christ is a privilege handed to the believer, set right alongside the privilege of faith. It is not a punishment; it is a gift.

But what is granted is the privilege, the opportunity — not an experience forced on every believer regardless of his walk. The suffering of Philippians 1 arises from a chosen posture: it is bracketed by "striving together for the faith of the gospel" and being "in nothing terrified by your adversaries" (Philippians 1:27-28). The conflict comes because they stand and contend for the gospel. And Paul makes the embracing of it an open pursuit, a race: "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:14). One does not press toward the automatic.

The counter-example settles it. The privilege of suffering for Christ was as much Demas's as Paul's — for Demas was a true fellowlabourer, named among Paul's own companions: "...Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers" (Philemon 24; see also Colossians 4:14). Yet of him Paul later wrote, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world" (2 Timothy 4:10). A saved man and a co-worker, he declined the gift. And Paul's summary rule names the choice plainly: "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). Those who will — who desire, who choose — to live godly draw the persecution; the suffering attaches to a chosen manner of life.

So the gift is the granted privilege; the response is ours; and the response is what is rewarded. Embrace the fellowship of His sufferings, and you reign with Him. Forsake it for the love of this present world, as Demas did, and you forfeit the reigning — never the salvation, never the glory, only the reward.

What "He Will Deny Us" Really Costs

Put it all together and the warning of 2 Timothy 2:12 stands plainly, and harmlessly to the soul. "If we deny him, he also will deny us" — a denial answered at the judgment seat, where the faithful have "praise of God" (1 Corinthians 4:5) and the unfaithful do not. The believer who shrinks back, who loves this present world, who will not own Christ in the day of testing, will find himself denied there — not denied his place, for that is his by sonship, but denied the co-reigning reserved for those who suffered with Him. What he keeps is the seat every member has in Christ; what he forfeits is the rule he might have shared. He will be like the man whose works are burned: "If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15). Loss of reward — real loss, loss worth fearing as a steward fears it — but not loss of self, not loss of life, not loss of glory.

And Matthew 10:33 stands outside the whole question. It was never about our salvation, our glory, or our reigning in the body of Christ. It is a word to Israel under the kingdom program, awaiting fulfillment in the day when confessing the King under persecution will mark the faithful remnant.

A Word to the Trembling Believer

If you have read Matthew 10:33 and feared for your soul, hear it rightly: that word was not written to you. And if you have read 2 Timothy 2:12 and feared the same, read on one verse: "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." Your salvation does not hang on the steadiness of your grip on Him, but on the faithfulness of His grip on you. He cannot deny Himself, and in Christ you are part of what He will not deny.

What is left to you is not a threat but an invitation — the high and gracious privilege of suffering for His sake, that you may reign with Him. Do not waste it. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him."