Paul was older; Timothy was young. Their lives were closely linked, as were the lives of Timothy and his parents. Whether we fall into the older or younger or parent or son or daughter category, we have much to learn and benefit from in considering God’s record of Timothy’s life and his interactions with his spiritual father and natural parents. We each have things to receive from those in the generation before us and things to pass on to the generation after us, for it’s part of God’s chosen way of passing on His truth from generation to generation.
J. G. Bellett has well said, “It is beautiful to see the ‘unfeigned faith’ dwelling in one generation after another of the same family, as in the grandmother Lois, the mother Eunice, and the child Timothy, but it is beautiful also to read in the third of those family generations the tears and the affections which give the full persuasion that their religion is not a mere imitative or educational one — the mere catching of a family influence — but the precious inwrought power of a kingdom which God Himself has set up in the soul.”