"No pain, no gain" — do you agree? Most of us live by some version of it. Exercise is hard work, but it's good for us. Good parenting decisions often come at a cost, and we hope that cost buys something better down the track. Someone once told me that when it comes to preaching, somebody has to suffer — either the preacher or the congregation. Put in the hard yards, and it's easier for everyone else to listen. The principle runs all through life: we accept discomfort when we decide the payoff is worth it. So here's the question this passage puts to us — what is worth it?
No pain, no gain
We submit to pain for a payoff all the time — dental work, serious medical treatment, the exhausting and costly business of childbirth. We walk plenty of hard roads gladly, having weighed the suffering against the glory on the other side and chosen to pay. The real question is never whether something costs us; it's whether what we're buying is worth the cost.
Strong in grace
In his last letter before execution, written from a Roman prison, Paul lifts the hood on what matters most and writes to Timothy, his young apprentice: "You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." Slow that down. Be strong — in grace. It can sound like a nice Christian saying until you dig in. Grace is a free gift, an undeserved blessing, the life that comes through Jesus and could never be earned. And yet that free gift is where our strength comes from — which I need, because my own strength only goes so far. So whatever happened to no pain, no gain? Why do we get strength for nothing? The truth is it isn't for nothing. It's Jesus' pain, our gain. There was an enormous cost to the strength we enjoy — it just wasn't ours to pay.
Join me in suffering
Out of that strength, Paul calls Timothy to pass the gospel on to reliable people, who will pass it on again — the work handed down the ages until it reaches us. But it's not smooth sailing. "Join with me in suffering," Paul says, "like a good soldier of Christ Jesus." When we hear "suffering" we picture illness, threat, imprisonment. But notice how Paul frames it: suffer like a soldier. A soldier's suffering isn't mainly being wounded; it's the whole shape of the life — discipline, hard training, long stretches of boredom, and then the crunch point where you step into danger because something matters more. An ex-special-forces friend told me that in those moments you don't do it for your country in the abstract; you do it for the people beside you. The hard road is walked together. Paul adds two more pictures: the athlete who only wins the crown by competing according to the rules, and the farmer who gets the first share of the crop. What ties them together is hard work for something worth it.
What's actually worth it
So what is worth it? Paul spells it out: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God's word is not chained." As a summary of the good news in nine words, that's hard to beat. "Descended from David" plants Jesus in the long history of God's promises; "raised from the dead" declares his victory over death and the hope of all who belong to him. Even his name carries it — Jesus means rescuer, Christ means God's appointed king. If he is who he says he is, his existence is good news: God come to save his people. And people need to know it. Paul will endure anything, he says, "for the sake of the elect" — the chosen, God's own people — "that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." Sitting in a cold cell, facing the end, Paul weighs the cost and says: worth it.
The cost of discipleship
Then Paul pushes deeper. Beyond the ordinary cost of being alive, he points to a particular cost that comes because we follow Jesus, and especially because we make him known. Does our commitment to sharing Jesus actually cost us anything — our time, our money, our comfort, our relationships? This isn't guilt-Christianity, as if an easy season meant your faith was fake; there are genuine stretches lived on the peaks rather than in the valleys. But it's worth asking which it is. Is my faith costing me nothing because I'm in a smooth season — or because I don't yet have a heart like Paul's, that counts some cost worth it for the sake of people being saved? If people aren't worth it to us, we'll never willingly feel the cost. Picture the alternative: not the soldier but the spectator waiting to see which side wins; not the athlete straining for the line but the one who'll jog if it isn't raining; not the farmer working for the harvest but the person opening the fridge, hoping someone else has filled it.
Because people are worth it
We don't manufacture this; we can't simply talk ourselves into feeling that people matter. As always, we look to Jesus — and see how worth it we were to him. He is the soldier who stepped into the firing line for us, the athlete who endured to the end, the farmer who gathers in his harvest. Jesus' pain, our gain. There's a line in our church's vision that puts it well: we walk with our neighbours through the peaks and valleys, knowing that Jesus has walked this path already and is always with us. We aren't promised a life free of suffering — only that we never walk it alone, and that the road leads to glory: "If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him... if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself." It's only when we grasp how deep his love runs — and how much we ourselves needed saving — that we begin to see how much the people around us need him too. So here's the honest question to carry into the week: if someone looked at your life, could they tell that the people who don't yet know Jesus are worth it to you?
This post is adapted from a sermon preached by Murray Colville at St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba on 2 Timothy 2:1–13, as part of our Vision Month 2026: We See a Church... series through 2 Timothy. Visit us at www.katoomba.church.
