The command to 'remember Jesus Christ' at first sight seems extraordinary. How could Timothy ever forget him? Yet the human memory is notoriously fickle: it is possible to forget even one's own name! The epitaph over Israel's grave was 'they soon forgot', and it was to overcome our forgetfulness of Christ crucified that he deliberately instituted his supper as a feast of remembrance, a fragrant 'forget-me-not'. Even so the church has often forgotten Jesus Christ, absorbing itself instead now in barren theological debate, now in purely humanitarian activity, now in its own petty, parochial business.
John Stott, Guard the Gospel, p.61
