Who shall judge the quick and the dead.—These words must have sounded with strange power in the ears of men like Timothy, and must have impressed them with an intense feeling of responsibility. The Apostle in his divine wisdom was charging these teachers of the Church to be faithful and zealous in their work, by the thought, which must be ever present, that they—either alive on the day of the Coming of the Lord, or, if they had tasted death already, raised from the dead incorruptible (comp. 1 Thessalonians 4:17)—must stand before the Judge and give an account of their stewardship; on that awful morning must every man and woman render up, before the Judge who knows all and sees all, a strict account of the deeds done in the body. The looking forward to the judgment morning must surely be a spur to any faint-hearted, dispirited servant of the Lord disposed to temporise, or reluctant to face the dangers which threaten a faithful discharge of duties.
At his appearing and his kingdom.—The older authorities here—instead of the preposition “at”—read “and.” The rendering then would be: “I charge thee in the sight of God and Jesus Christ, who will judge quick and dead (I charge thee) by His appearing (epiphany) and by His kingdom,” the construction in Greek being the usual accusative of adjuration, as in Mark 5:7; Acts 19:13. So, too, Deuteronomy 4:26 (LXX.): “I solemnly charge you to-day by heaven and earth.” The passage, by this restoration of the ancient, and, at first sight, more difficult reading, gains, as we shall see, immeasurably in strength and power. “By his appearing,” or by His manifestation or epiphany, refers, of course, to the Lord’s coming a second time to judge the earth in the glory of the Father with His angels. (Matthew 16:27; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.) “And by His kingdom:” His kingdom, that kingdom is here meant which, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “shall have no end.” This glorious sovereignty of Christ is to succeed what Pearson (Creed, Article VI., p. 529, Chevallier’s edit.) calls “the modificated eternity of His mediatorship,” which will end when all His enemies shall have been subdued, and He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father. The “kingdom” here spoken of is to commence at Christ’s glorious epiphany or manifestation, when “the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). Timothy was conjured by the “appearing” of Christ when he would have to stand before Him and be judged; he was conjured, too, by “His kingdom,” in which glorious state Timothy hoped to share, for was it not promised that His own should reign with Him? (2 Timothy 2:12.) There seems in this solemn ringing adjuration something which reminds us of “a faithful saying.” The germs at least of one of the ancient creeds are apparent here, where allusion is made to God (the Father) and to Jesus Christ, the judge of quick and dead, to His coming again with glory and then to His kingdom.
Verse 2
(2) Preach the word.—The language of the original here is abrupt and emphatic, written evidently under strong emotion and with intense earnestness. St. Paul charged his friend and successor with awful solemnity, as we have seen, “preach,” or proclaim. loudly and publicly, as a herald would announce the accession of his king. The exact opposite to what St. Paul would urge on Timothy is described by Isa. (Isaiah 56:10), when he speaks of God’s watchmen as “dumb dogs, who cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.”
Be instant in season, out of season.—Some difference exists between commentators respecting the exact meaning to be given to the Greek word translated “be instant.” Some would give it the sense of drawing nigh to, and as it is not specified in the text to whom Timothy should draw nigh, they supply from the context “the brethren,” those to whom the word is preached: “draw near to Christian assemblies.” It seems, however, best to understand this rather difficult word as an injunction to Timothy to be earnest and urgent generally in the whole work of his ministry: “Press on, in season, out of season.”
In season, out of season.—In other words, “For thy work, set apart no definite and fixed hours, no appointed times. Thy work must be done at all hours, at all times. Thy work has to be done not only when thou art in church, not merely in times of security and peace, but it must be carried on, in the midst of dangers, even if thou art a prisoner and in chains, even if death threaten thee.”
So Chrysostom—who also uses St. Paul’s words here as an urgent call to ministers to labour on in spite of discouragement and apparent failure—telling them in his own bright, eloquent way, how fountains still flow on, though no one goes to them to draw water, and rivers still run on, though no one drinks at them.
Augustine asks and answers the question to whom “in season” and to whom “out of season” refers: “in season” to those willing, “out of season” to the unwilling. This, however, only touches a portion of the thought of St. Paul, who urges on God’s true servants a restless, sleepless earnestness, which struggles on with the Master’s work in spite of bodily weakness and discouragement, in face of dangers and the bitterest opposition.
Reprove.—Not merely those erring in doctrine, but generally those who are blameworthy: “Was tadelnswerthist.”
Rebuke.—A sharper and more severe word than the preceding. It is used by St. Jude 1:9, in his report of the words addressed by St. Michael to the devil: “The Lord rebuke thee.” It frequently occurs in the Gospels. (See, for instance, Matthew 17:18, “And Jesus rebuked the devil.”)
Exhort.—Not only is he to remember ceaselessly to watch over the flock, and to reprove and rebuke the erring and sinners, but also with no less diligence to speak comfortable words of encouragement and hope to all, especially the dispirited and sad-hearted.
With all longsuffering and doctrine.—The word translated “doctrine” signifies, rather, teaching. He must reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all gentleness and patience; and in all this he must take care that “teaching”—the teaching which is right, and true, and full of hope—accompanies his rebuke and his words of comfort.
Verse 3
(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.—Timothy must bear in mind that things in the Church of Christ on earth will not change for the better. The great drag-net of the Church, in its wide sweep, would keep drawing into its meshes something of every kind. Errors now just apparent, he must remember, would attain more formidable dimensions. The thirst for novelties in doctrine, the desire for a teaching which, while offering peace to a troubled conscience, would yet allow the old self-indulgent life to go on as before, would increase. In full view of this development of error, in sure expectation of a future full of anxious care, Timothy and his brother teachers must indeed be wakeful, watchful, and earnest in their preaching and ministrations. And the thought that more and ever more of the so-called Christians would dislike the preaching of the “sound doctrine,” as taught by the Apostle, the very knowledge of this growing unpopularity, must serve as an incentive to greater labour, more interest, and more loving activity on the part of Timothy and his companions.
But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers.—“Their own lusts:” this expression gives us some insight into the reason which led to this future apostasy of so many, concerning which St. Paul warned Timothy. “Their own lusts,” which, at all risks, they would gratify, would serve to alienate them from that severe and strictly moral school of Apostolic teaching, in which the sternest morality was bound up with purity of doctrine, to which school St. Paul’s pupils—men like Timothy and the presbyters of Ephesus—belonged. These worldly ones to whom St. Paul referred, reluctant to part with the hope Christianity taught, and unwilling to live the life which St. Paul and Timothy insisted upon as necessary to be lived by all those who would share in that glorious hope, sought out for themselves more indulgent teachers, who would flatter and gratify their hearers with novelties in doctrine, and would, at the same time, lay comparatively little stress on the pure and saintly life.
Verse 4
(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth.—This was the punishment of those who would only listen to what was pleasing to them, and which flattered instead of reproved their way of life. They became involved in the many various errors in doctrine which were then taught in the schools of the heretics, and they ended by turning away from every Christian truth. On the “fables” which they substituted for those great and eternal truths, see 1 Timothy 1:4.
Verse 5
(5) But watch thou in all things.—“But do thou,” continued St. Paul, “do thou be watchful.” The Greek word translated “watch thou,” signifies literally, be sober. It has been well paraphrased, “Keep thy coolness and presence of mind, that thou be not entrapped into forgetfulness, but as one ever wakeful and ready, be on the watch.” The word, as it were, sums up all those last directions of St. Paul, from 2 Timothy 2:14, in which St. Paul charged Timothy to abstain from vain arguments and confine himself to the simple word of truth, to avoid discussions which would be likely to lead to strife, and to be patient and gentle with all—to separate himself from merely nominal Christians, and to keep steadily to the old paths in which the Apostles had walked. He was to be ever watchful in all these things.
Endure afflictions.—And in his watch must Timothy be ready to suffer. He would remember what had been said before respecting a true Christian suffering (2 Timothy 2:3-12), and what was the high reward purposed for such brave endurance. He would remember, too, the hard and faithful life of his master, St. Paul (2 Timothy 3:10-12).
Do the work of an evangelist.—The “evangelists” of the early Church seem to have been preachers of the Gospel: in the first place, assistants to the Apostles and missionaries under their direction. The especial functions of a preacher and public teacher seem always to have been allotted to Timothy, and, no doubt, a peculiar persuasive power of oratory was one of the chief gifts conferred on this eminent follower of St. Paul. In the midst of the many grave and absorbing duties of his charge of the Ephesian Church, he must be mindful not to neglect this great power which he possessed. It is here especially termed “the work of an evangelist,” to remind him that to perform rightly this duty, needed zeal, close work, much study, thought, and prayer; and it was by worthily performing the duties of an evangelist that the many who were turning from the truth to fables, would be best won back, by hearing the great facts of the Gospel placed side by side with the tables of the false teachers.
Make full proof of thy ministry.—In other words, “Fully carry out the many duties imposed upon thee by thy great office.” The office of Timothy, it should be remembered, in Ephesus, included far more than merely those of a preacher or evangelist. He was the presiding presbyter of the Church, to whom its government was intrusted: in fact, the many-sided life of St. Paul was now to be lived by Timothy.
Verse 6
(6) For I am now ready to be offered.—What, in the Philippian Epistle (Philippians 2:17), was alluded to as a contingency likely enough to happen here is spoken of as something which was then absolutely taking place. In his first imprisonment at Rome St. Paul looked on to a martyr’s death as probable. In his second captivity at Rome he writes of the martyrdom as already beginning. The more accurate, as well as the more forcible, translation would be, For I am already being offered. The Greek word rendered “I am being offered,” points to the drink offering of wine which, among the Jews, accompanied the sacrifice. Among the heathen this wine was commonly poured upon the burning victims—the allusion here is to St. Paul’s bloody death. So convinced was he that the dread moment for him was at hand, that as he thus speaks he feels as though it was even then taking place, and sees—in his present suffering, in his harsh treatment—the beginning of that martyrdom in which his life-blood would be poured out. But he would not allow Timothy or the many Christians who revered and loved him to be dismayed by his sufferings or shocked at his painful death. He would show them, by his calm, triumphant language, that to him death was no terror, but only the appointed passage to glory. So he speaks of his life-blood being shed, under the well-known peaceful image of the wine poured out over the sacrifice, the drink offering, the sweet savour unto the Lord. (See Numbers 15:1-10; compare John 12:24, where the Master of St. Paul, too, speaks of His approaching death of agony and shame also under a quiet, homely image.)
And the time of my departure is at hand.—“My departure:” that is. “from life,” from this world to another. The moment of my death, so long looked for, is now close at hand, is all but here. The Greek word rendered “departure,” among other meanings, signifies the raising of the ship’s anchor and the loosing of the cables by which the vessel was hindered from proceeding on her destined voyage.
Verses 6-8
The Crown of Righteousness
For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing.—2 Timothy 4:6-8.
These are among St. Paul’s last words, and they are bathed in unutterable pathos. The old man, his hair whitened with age, his face furrowed with care, his body worn with disease and damaged by brutal persecution, is a captive in a miserable dungeon in Nero’s Rome; and although his speech breathes the calm of heaven, yet the wretchedness of his imprisonment makes him regret that he left “a cloak at Troas” that would have warmed him in the winter’s biting cold, or shielded him from the dungeon’s perilous damp. Still more keenly does he regret that he has to face his loneliness without the tender solace of his son Timothy’s presence, and the cheering companionship of his “books and papers.” It is a hard lot for the aged Crusader; but he is a hardy and chivalrous knight, who has braved a thousand perils in love for his Divine Leader, and therefore he is not cast down.
I
St. Paul’s Present State
“I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.”
1. Notice, first, the quiet courage which looks death full in the face without a tremor. The language implies that St. Paul knows his death hour is all but here. “I am already being offered”—the process is begun, his sufferings at the moment are, as it were, the initial steps of his sacrifice—“and the time of my departure is come.” The tone in which he tells Timothy this is very noticeable. There is no sign of excitement, no tremor of emotion, no affectation of stoicism in the simple sentences. He is not playing up to a part or pretending to be anything which he is not. If ever language sounded perfectly simple and genuine, this does. With an unforced courage St. Paul fronts his fate and looks death in the eyes. The anticipation does not dull his interest in God’s work in the world, as witness the warnings and exhortations of the context. It does not withdraw his sympathies from his companions. It does not hinder him from continuing his studies and pursuits, or from providing for small matters of daily convenience. If ever a man was free from any taint of fanaticism or morbid enthusiasm, it is this man waiting so calmly in his prison for his death.
Perhaps nothing in the memory of this generation has touched the hearts of the English-speaking race, and indeed of the whole world, like the pathos and the courage of those last letters of Captain Scott’s, written in the Antarctic solitudes, with Death at his very elbow. The world has been thrilled to see how nobly and splendidly an Englishman can die. “We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally in the track.” It is fine. But this is finer: “For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”1 [Note: Archibald Alexander.]
St. Paul had looked too often into death’s dark face to be afraid of it now. Yet, after all, that is but a little thing to say. There are many to whom death is no longer “the shadow feared of man,” who have not St. Paul’s high hope. Some there are, indeed, who welcome death; it is for them the one door of escape from the unutterable pain and weariness of life. St. Paul welcomed death because he saw beyond death. “There is the Mainstream,” writes James Payn, “the Backwater and the Weir, and there ends the River of Life.” What is after that he does not know; with him it is from death to dark. But with St. Paul it was from death to day. “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day.… The Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will save me unto his heavenly kingdom.” What are Nero’s judgment-seat and the executioner’s flashing brand to the man who holds that faith?2 [Note: G. Jackson, The Table-Talk of Jesus, 248.]
I had a friend very ill. For three days his life hung in doubt with his physician. When he began to recover, he said to me: “Death came and looked me in the face; but, thank God! I could look him in the face without fear.” Here stands a man face to face with the last enemy in a far more terrible form. To die as a public criminal at the hand of the executioner is very different from lying down to sleep one’s self into another world—very different even from falling in the field fighting for all that is dearest to the patriotic heart. Yet the Apostle speaks of his fate as calmly as if he were only about to set out on a journey or embark for a voyage.1 [Note: J. Cross, Old Wine and New, 142.]
2. There is great beauty and force in the metaphors which St. Paul here uses for death.
(1) We have, first, that of an offering or, more particularly, of a drink-offering or libation: “I am already being poured out.” No doubt the special reason for the selection of this figure here is St. Paul’s anticipation of a violent death. The shedding of his blood was to be an offering poured out like some costly wine upon the altar. But the power of the figure reaches far beyond that special application of it. We may all make our deaths a sacrifice, an offering to God, for we may yield up our will to God’s will, and so turn that last struggle into an act of worship and self-surrender. When we recognize His hand, when we submit our wills to His purposes, when “we live unto the Lord,” if we live, and “die unto Him,” if we die, then death will lose all its terror and most of its pain, and will become for us what it was to St. Paul, a true offering up of self in thankful worship. We may even say that so we shall, in a certain subordinate sense, be “made conformable unto his death” who committed His spirit into His Father’s hands, and laid down His life, of His own will. The essential character and far-reaching effects of this sacrifice we cannot imitate, but we can so yield up our wills to God and leave life so willingly and trustfully that death shall make our sacrifice complete.
(2) Another more familiar and equally striking figure is used when St. Paul speaks of the time of his “departure.” The thought is found in most tongues. Death is a going away. But the well-worn image received new depth and sharpness of outline in Christianity. To those who have learned the meaning of Christ’s resurrection, and who feed their souls on the hopes which it warrants, death is merely a change of place or state, an accident affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty of changes before. Life has been one long series of departures. This is different from the others, mainly in that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there will be no more pulling up of the tent-pegs, and toiling across the deserts in monotonous change.
How strong is the conviction, spoken in this name for death, that the essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all! How slight the else formidable thing is made! We may change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when we leave behind the body, as a dress not fitted for home, where we are going. We but travel one more stage, though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness. Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like St. Paul and many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with slow steps and bleeding feet and fainting heart; but all may have a Brother with them, and, holding His hand, may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared, and the home from which they shall remove no more better than they hoped when they hoped the most.
In my schooldays I often put my head under the blankets and sobbed bitterly because I thought that death would some day come and snatch my father from me. Life to me then—so I dreamed—could only speak disaster, for I thought of Death as a foe who dealt out devastating blows. But the thoughts and dreams of boyhood were false. Death came not as a foe, but as a friend; and his mystic message was Life. We said, not, “God’s finger touched him and he slept,” but, “and he lives.” For that is what his passing taught us. In the days of his flesh this eager and active soul had a way of standing before you in unlikely spots and in unexpected moments. This is just what he still does, for after his soul had flown out through the window of his bedroom it came in through the front door. He had kept his biggest surprise to the end.1 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash, by his Son, 204.]
To the aged, the world beyond is no strange place. Its door has opened so often to admit now one, now another of their friends that the passage has grown familiar to them. Professor Jowett, writing to Lady (then Mrs.) Tennyson to suggest, as a subject for the Laureate’s muse, old age, quotes the words of an old lady to himself: “The spirits of my children always seem to hover about me!” Tennyson, his son tells us, had heard the saying before, and it was the germ of his poem, “The Grandmother.” It will be remembered how the aged heroine of that poem, hearing of the death of her eldest-born, stays her tears with the reflection, “What time have I to be vext?—… how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour. Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next; I too shall go in a minute.”1 [Note: P. W. Roose, The Book of The Future Life, 125.]
II
St. Paul’s Past Achievement
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”
Surprise has been expressed in some quarters that St. Paul should write of himself in what seems to be a self-righteous and boastful strain; and some textual critics have seized on this passage as furnishing some sort of suggestion or proof that this letter is not genuine, but that it was written by some admirer of St. Paul’s in the second century. Well, even if there were this self-congratulatory note we must remember that we have here a man who is always writing about himself (he is the most sublime egoist in the New Testament), because he is to himself the most amazing example of what the grace and power of God can do; also, that the letter is to a dear personal friend, and not a letter to a church, which would naturally become public property. This is probably a letter which the writer never dreamt would be preserved or seen by anybody but Timothy, to whom he is accustomed to pour out his most intimate thoughts, and to whom in a previous letter he has described himself as the chief of sinners. But when we come to look into the words, all that seems self-righteous is not there. St. Paul is not saying, “I have been a good man.” He is not even saying, “I have made a good fight of it.” The Revisers have properly put in the definite article, and have thus rather shifted the centre of thought from the Apostle to the nature of life he has lived and the ministry he has fulfilled; which, mark you, is the life and ministry he wants Timothy to fulfil. The situation is most natural. There is the old warrior, laying aside his weapons, putting off his armour, going to his reward. Here is the younger man, needing a heartening and bracing word. And this is the word that comes to him from one who would pass on the leadership, if possible, to his hands.
1. “I have fought the good fight,” says the Apostle. He is speaking in the language of the Olympian Games, and is referring to the athletic contests of the arena. “I have fought the good fight.” The term ought not to surprise us. We are continually talking of the struggle for existence, of the fight for position, the battle of life. And when we come to the highest life that man can live, the life of mastery of sin and of the world, it ought not to surprise us that it can fittingly be described only under the term fight.
(1) Where does the fight begin? Where did it begin with St. Paul? Within. Here are his words: “I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.” “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that ye may not do the thing that ye would.” Here and there we come upon a passage that surprises and comforts us in the flashes of autobiography that light up St. Paul’s writings, as: “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” We hardly knew that he had a body; he seemed a man composed of mind and spirit; but we see by the light of that passage a man at war with that which is seeking to be master, and which must be kept in the place of a servant, if life is not to be entirely spoilt. It may not have been that he was in danger of yielding to those coarser cravings which belong to the flesh, but rather that his body cried out for rest and ease and comfort, and against the labour and hardship which his spirit demanded; and what we have is a man who realizes that no outward victory could be won worthy of the name unless and until the inner victory was achieved. The Christian life is not the passive, reclining, restful experience that some have thought, sitting at Jesus’ feet, leaning on His breast. There is that side; but the battle is to get there, and to keep there. “Believe me,” wrote Samuel Rutherford to the Earl of Lothian, “I find it hard wrestling, to play fair with Christ and to maintain a course of daily communion with Him.” It takes the whole of a man the whole of his time to be a Christian. The world, the flesh, and the devil are all real enough to the earnest soul, and must be faced and fought in the pathway to spiritual success. The New Testament does not deceive anybody on this score. The strait gate, the narrow way, the much tribulation, the cross of which it speaks, as well as the hosts of darkness—all point to a strenuous conflict as the very condition of Christian life.
(2) And although the battle must begin within, it by no means ends there. There is a cause of Christ in the earth as well as in a man’s own heart; and if we take St. Paul as a model in any way, we see him the champion of truth and purity and liberty. Fighting against legalism in the Galatian letter, against impurity and sectarianism in the Corinthian letter, against idleness in the Thessalonian letter, and much more; till we find him in the Ephesian letter, the letter of the heavenlies, charging people to take unto them the whole armour of God, that they may stand and withstand in the Christian life. Of course, men can avoid the battle by making terms with the enemy both as far as the inward strife is concerned and the great moral struggles that are going on in the world. They can say, “These are no concern of mine, and I will not adventure myself in them.” But that is not living the Christian life as St. Paul understood it. It is rather the way in which a man loses his soul.
In some quarters it is taught that there is not now the same opportunity for arduous action and painful sacrifice in the cause of personal and public righteousness as existed in primitive days. Lecky writes: “The more society is organized and civilized, the greater is the scope for the amiable and the less for the heroic qualities.” We cannot think so. Our age is indeed different from that of St. Paul, but it does not less demand heroic qualities. Only as we strive and suffer for right and purity as against the baser elements have we any part or lot in the glory of the future.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, 202.]
(3) But the fight, be it within or without, is pre-eminently a good fight. If we will let the Apostle give us the full meaning of this word in English, he will tell us that it is a noble, a beautiful contest. Timothy may be shrinking from it; Demas has given it up; but it is the one fight in the world worth waging. Everybody is fighting, some for wealth, some for place and power. Many a pitiful contest is being waged in the world. Here is the one noble conflict in which the honest warrior will ultimately triumph, and in which completest satisfaction will be his. Never is man so noble in the sight of God and His holy angels as when he is fighting against the base within him and without, striving for goodness, purity, truth, and love, fighting the good fight of faith, striving to lay hold on eternal life.
She went on to develop this idea of God as Law in relation to human fate, and to those problems of “free will and necessity” which Milton thought to be inscrutable mysteries, and around which metaphysicians and logicians have for ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a hypothesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried but abandoned—the hypothesis of “a Being who, willing only good, leaves evil in the world solely in order to stimulate human faculties by an unremitting struggle against every form of it”; a Perfect Being who created a Perfectible one, and so ordered the world that its course should be a constant struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did not blink the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained. “It is evident,” she wrote, “that creation is a mystery, but God’s end and object (in creating) need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the existence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much more difficult—it is impossible—to conceive the existence of God (or even of a good man) without evil.” Good and evil are relative terms, and neither is intelligible without the other.1 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 481.]
It is a poor life that never stands above itself in some supreme moment of aspiration. But to live a life of aspiration—to stay on the lofty level, to breathe the keen air of the upper heights habitually—this is the strain of life. It is learned only by constant effort, and by many failures. But if we persevere, there is an end which will fulfil all our hopes and aspirations. In Watts’s “Happy Warrior” [the companion picture to “Aspiration”] we see what that triumphant end is. He is pictured as slain in battle. He has fallen in the thickest of the fight. Like the greatest Life ever lived, he failed as the world counts failure. But he succeeded in achieving the high end which he had set before him, beyond the range of most men’s touch and sight. And out of his saddest experiences had come the purest joy known to humanity. And now in the article of death, the pain vanishes, the darkness disappears, the fear subsides. There is a great calm in his soul. His helmet falls back from his head; and an angelic form, the fair symbol of his aspiration, as the shining heaven above him opens to receive his parting spirit, bends over him and imprints the kiss of everlasting peace upon his brow.1 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Life-Work of G. F. Watts, 185.]
2. But the Christian life is also represented as a Race. “I have finished the course.” There is a little difference here; for while St. Paul is still thinking of the Olympian Games, and therefore of strenuous and contested effort, there is something more definite and personal. We must place beside the text other words of St. Paul, spoken to the elders of the Ephesian Church; in the pathetic farewell interview recorded in Acts 20, when, speaking of the sufferings awaiting him, he said: “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus.” A course indicates not only strenuous running, but running over a marked-out and well-defined track. “If a man strive in the games, he is not crowned except he has striven lawfully.” So the words mean more than that he had run his natural earthly course: they mean that he had fulfilled his God-appointed destiny. “He has held the course, he has kept the line God bade him go.” We know his cherished ambition—to apprehend that for which also he had been apprehended by Christ Jesus; to have a life governed absolutely by the will and plan of his Master. And in Acts 16:6-10 we have a man who is searching for the track, and who, when he has found it, goes along it without any question. Nothing else mattered. It was a very inglorious course that he had run, from the point of view of the man of the world; but to the man who ran it, it was full of glory. It was God’s course for him, and in that assurance he found infinite peace.
One step more, and the race is ended;
One word more, and the lesson’s done;
One toil more, and a long rest follows
At set of sun.
Who would fail, for one step withholden?
Who would fail, for one word unsaid?
Who would fail, for a pause too early?
Sound sleep the dead.
One step more, and the goal receives us;
One word more, and life’s task is done;
One toil more, and the Cross is earned
And sets the sun.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Some Feasts and Fasts.]
3. In the third place St. Paul thinks of his past life as a Stewardship. “I have kept the faith.” He has kept the faith (whether by that word we are to understand the body of truth believed or the act of believing) as a sacred deposit committed to him, of which he has been a good steward, and which he is now ready to return to his Lord. There is much in these letters to Timothy about keeping treasures entrusted to one’s care. Timothy is bidden “keep that good thing which is committed to thee,” as St. Paul here declares that he has done. Nor is such guarding of a precious deposit confined to us stewards on earth; the Apostle is sure that his loving Lord, to whom he has entrusted himself, will with like tenderness and carefulness keep that which he has committed unto Him against that day. The confidence in that faithful Keeper made it possible for St. Paul to be faithful to his trust, as a steward who was bound by all ties to his Lord, to guard His possessions and administer His affairs. Life was full of voices urging him to give up the faith. Bribes and threats, and his own sense-bound nature, and the constant whispers of the world had tempted him all along the road to fling it away as a worthless thing, but he had kept it safe; and now, nearing the end and the account, he can put his hand on the secret place near his heart where it lies, and feel that it is there, ready to be restored to his Lord, with the thankful confession, “Thy pound hath gained ten pounds.”
(1) What is meant by a sincere and loyal keeping of the faith? It is, for one thing, to hold it in trust for the benefit of others and to always give it out. To keep the faith is to defend it, if we are able, by force of argument against all that assail it. But, above all things, to keep the faith is to live it, to exemplify it in one’s thought and speech and actions. We all know people who keep their religious creed very much as they keep their insurance policies. They have got them signed and sealed and locked up in a safe. There is no need to look at them again; they are of use only at death. You may possibly keep religious creeds in that way. You cannot keep the faith in that way. There is a beautiful old legend which tells us how two crosses were given to two young men to carry through life. One of them fastened the cross upon his breast and wore it in the open light every day before the whole world. That cross became luminous in the hour of death, and lighted his way across the dark river. The other took his cross and hid it away somewhere, and did not bring it out again until the hour of death, and that cross was just a bit of common wood and gave no light.
(2) The faith which a man has kept up to the end of his life must be one that has opened with his growth and constantly won new colour and reality from his changing experience. The old man does believe what the child believed; but how different it is, though still the same. The joy of his life has enriched his belief, his sorrow has deepened it, his doubts have sobered it, his enthusiasms have fired it, his labour has purified it. This is the work that life does upon faith. This is the beauty of an old man’s religion. His doctrines are like the house that he has lived in, rich with associations which make it certain that he will never move out of it. His doctrines have been illustrated and strengthened and endeared by the good help they have given his life; and no doctrine that has not done this can really be held up to the end with any such vital grasp as will enable us to carry it with us through the river and enter with it into the new life beyond.
Another friend, amongst other things refers to a strange and beautiful trait in my father’s character—he had no age-consciousness. He could speed down the years so as to be able to be of the same age as a young lad, and if he had met Methuselah he would have felt no disparity in years betwixt himself and this primeval ancient. He was quite young enough to say of many a student’s preaching, “He greatly blessed me,” and quite old enough to listen with glowing joy to the rich sermon of a patriarch. For this “youth who refused to grow up” had all that is most beautiful in joyous age and happy youth, and loved both, for he knew that Eternal Life folds both within its warm embrace. The same friend writes: “It cannot be an easy thing as a rule for an older man to bridge the gulf of about thirty years, and put himself alongside a younger generation. It never occurs to most men to try, and they have no idea how remote and inaccessible they are. I can’t say that your father bridged the gulf. It simply wasn‘t there; he waved his wand and it was gone. I understood better afterwards where the secret was. Strictly speaking, he did not grow old. If there was a stale thought in his mind, he never showed it. He never acquired that look of superhuman wisdom which makes many ministers so depressing, and he had no disillusioned tones. If I wanted to maintain that selfishness is always a deadening thing—slow suicide—and that love is always a vitalizing thing, I should think of your father as my shining instance of the second proposition.”1 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash, 174.]
Old,—we are growing old:
Going on through a beautiful road,
Finding earth a more blessed abode;
Nobler work by our hearts to be wrought,
Freer paths for our hope and our thought:
Because of the beauty the years unfold,
We are cheerfully growing old!
Old,—we are growing old:
Going up where the sunshine is clear;
Watching grander horizons appear
Out of clouds that enveloped our youth;
Standing firm on the mountains of truth;
Because of the glory the years unfold,
We are joyfully growing old.
Old,—we are growing old:
Going in to the gardens of rest,
That glow through the gold of the west,
Where the rose and the amaranth blend,
And each path is the way to a friend:
Because of the peace that the years unfold,
We are thankfully growing old.
Old,—are we growing old?
Life blooms as we travel on
Up the hills, into fresh, lovely dawn;
We are children, who do but begin
The sweetness of living to win:
Because heaven is in us, to bud and unfold,
We are younger, for growing old.1 [Note: Lucy Larcom.]
III
St. Paul’s Future Certainty
“Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing.”
The climax of all is the triumphant look forward. “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” In harmony with the images of the conflict and the race, the crown here is the emblem, not of sovereignty, but of victory, as indeed is almost without exception the case in the New Testament. The idea of the royal dignity of Christians in the future is set forth rather under the emblem of association with Christ on His throne while the wreath on their brows is the coronal of laurel, “meed of mighty conquerors,” or the twine of leaves given to him who, panting, touched the goal. The reward, then, which is meant by the emblem, whatever be its essence, comes through effort and conflict. “A man is not crowned, except he strive.”
It is recorded in history that Bernadotte, one of the generals of Napoleon, became a Lutheran in order that he might become King of Sweden. A fellow-officer of Bernadotte’s became a Christian, and some of his companion soldiers began to tease him on account of his change. He answered, “I have done no more than Bernadotte, who has become a Lutheran.” “Yes,” they replied, “but he became so to obtain a crown.” “My motive is the same,” said the officer, “we differ only as to the place. The object of Bernadotte was to obtain a crown in Sweden; mine is to obtain a crown in heaven.”2 [Note: J. Aitchison, A Bag with Holes, 191.]
1. “The crown of righteousness!” Does St. Paul mean that it is righteousness which is crowned, or that righteousness is the material of which the crown is made? There are two similar expressions in the New Testament to describe the reward of the blessed; they are “the crown of life,” and “the crown of glory.” In these it is plain that what is meant is, not that life is crowned, but that the crown of the blessed is life; not that glory is crowned, but that the crown of the blessed is glory. Life, glory, these are—if the word were not too rude—the very material and substance of the heavenly crown. And so it is with righteousness. “The crown of righteousness” is a crown of which righteousness is the material; this crown is of the same fabric and texture as that which it should decorate; it is a crown whose beauty is moral beauty; the beauty, not of gold and precious stones, but of those more precious, nay, priceless, things which gold and gems can but suggest to us; the beauty of justice, truthfulness, purity, charity, humility, carried to a point of refinement and high excellence of which here and now we have no experience. Once, and only once, was such a crown as this worn upon earth; and, to the eyes of men, it was a Crown of Thorns.
In December 1844, Mrs. Long, wife of an old shepherd living in Graffham, came to me and said that her husband had taken to his bed, and that his deafness, always great, was so much worse that they could hardly make him hear. I gave her a print of the Good Shepherd, and said, “Give him this book from me.” She said, “He can’t read.” I said “I knew that, but give it to him from me.” I went that afternoon and found the print on his bed. I took it up; he reached out after it, and said, “That’s mine.” I said, “Do you know what it is?” He said, “Yes, yes—the lost sheep—that’s me.” I put my hand round my head to signify the crown of thorns. He said, “Yes, the crown of thorns,” and turned his head over on the pillow and sobbed. Some days after he said to me, “I hope I shall just walk in,” that is, to the fold. Another day he took it up, and pointing to the crown of thorns said, “That’s what cuts me most of all,” and turned over and sobbed. I went to him in the January following to administer the Holy Sacrament. As I gave him the paten I saw something on his neck or throat. At last I saw it was the print. After the Holy Sacrament I asked his wife when he had asked for it. She said, “As soon as it was light.” I took it up, and he said, “I haves it most days.” He then said, “I hope He will have me like that,”—the sheep on His shoulders. I said, “He has you like that. ‘Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.’ He does not wait for the lost sheep to come to Him, but He goes oat to seek till He finds it.” He said, “No, no, He don’t wait for he to come to He, but He goes after he; and I hope I shall not give Him much trouble.” Long had been a shepherd on the South Downs all his life; and had had trouble enough in seeking the sheep that wandered and were lost. He then took up the print and said, “I shall be glad to see that Man.” That night he died.1 [Note: Life of Cardinal Manning, i. 291.]
2. Now, the crown being itself righteousness, how striking is the Apostle’s assurance! “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” St. Paul did not always write thus. In earlier years he felt and expressed anxiety lest by any means, when he had preached unto others, he himself should be a castaway. And long after he “counted not himself to have apprehended”; he could only forget those things that were behind, and reach forward unto those things that were before; he was still pressing forward to the mark of the prize of his high calling in Christ Jesus. But now he has no misgivings; now all is clear; “henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” And why? Is it not because, in the solitariness of his last trial, he has an assurance from on high which was withheld before; which was vouchsafed only when all human aid and human sympathy had failed him, and when he was thrown, without any reserve whatever, upon his hope in the Unseen and the Future? And even now, not seldom, they who fashion their lives as did St. Paul, by faith in an Unseen Saviour, do learn to know that there is for them a morally assured future of happiness in the World of Light. It is not an arrogant confidence, it is a humble yet well-grounded hope; it is a hope which grows in strength as the solitudes of the advancing years press with more and more gloom upon the natural spirits, and when, in the absence of departed or of alienated friends, the majesty and consolation of one sacred, overpowering Presence makes itself increasingly felt.
On the subject of religion George made no sign, as the years went by, resembling his brother Phillips in the reserve with which he guarded himself. After his enlistment, and just before he joined his regiment, he was confirmed at Trinity Church, September 28, 1862. That event counted with his mother for more than the victories or defeats of armies. After his confirmation, the veil of reserve removed, George spoke freely of his religious experience. The change to him had been momentous and thorough. His religious life was deepened by the events of the Civil War. In his company, a prayer-meeting was held daily morning and evening, conducted by the captain. “He told me,” said the chaplain of his company, “that he had never had full assurance of his pardon and acceptance till he became a soldier; that in the battle of Kingston, under the terrible fire of the enemy, his Saviour came to him as never before, declared His presence, revealed His love, and held his soul in His hands.”1 [Note: Phillips Brooks: Memories of His Life, 140.]
3. And observe who bestows the crown—“which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day.” It is only right that a princely hand should bestow princely gifts, and that a Divine hand should bestow immortal gifts. It is a righteous Judge that bestows a righteous crown. He will distribute the rewards of eternity justly. The rewards of heaven will not be distributed as the rewards of earth too often are. The highest rewards of earth are at times given to the undeserving and worthless. It will not be so in that day. No one undeserving will obtain a prize, and no one deserving will be without one. The judge who awarded the prize to the victor at the Grecian games might decide unjustly, whether through culpable partiality or from involuntary error; but “the Lord, the righteous judge,” is no respecter of persons, and His perfect knowledge and infallible wisdom render mistakes with Him impossible. St. Paul’s imperial judge was the very incarnation of iniquity; but Christ “shall judge the world in righteousness,” and “reward every man according to his works.”
The heathen knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest: No proud one! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you;—the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery! But this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey honour and sweet rest. Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain; these,—and the blue sky above you and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things,—may yet be here your riches; untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive (Introduction, § 16).]
4 The crown is given at a time called by St. Paul “at that day,” which is not the near day of his martyrdom, but that of his Lord’s appearing. He does not speak of the fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death, but as being henceforth laid up for him in heaven. So he looks forward beyond the grave. The immediate future after death was to his view a period of blessedness indeed but not yet full. The state of the dead in Christ was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of felicity, but also a state of expectation, for they wait for “the redemption of the body,” in the reception of which, “at that day,” their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and gleam with a more lustrous “glory.” Now they rest and wait. Then shall they be crowned.
The crown was not conferred as soon as the racer reached the goal or the gladiator gave the fatal thrust, but was reserved till the contests were all over and ended, and the claims of the several candidates were carefully canvassed and adjudicated. So the “crown of righteousness” is “laid up “to be given “at that day,” when the Lord Jesus shall come to be glorified in His saints. One says, “we must die first”; St. Paul tells us we must rise first. Blessed, indeed, are the dead in Christ; but their blessedness cannot be consummated till their Lord return from heaven and they appear with Him in glory.
5. It is no solitary blessedness to which St. Paul looked forward. Alone in his dungeon, alone before his judge when “no man stood by” him, soon to be alone in his martyrdom, he leaps up in spirit at the thought of the mighty crowd among whom he will stand in that day, on every head a crown, in every heart the same love to the Lord whose life is in them all and makes them all one. So we may cherish the hope of a social heaven. Man’s course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city. The final condition will be the perfection of human society. There all who love Christ will be drawn together, and old ties, broken for a little while here, will be reknit in yet holier form, never to be sundered more.
“Who have loved and do love his appearing.” That is the full force of the Greek perfect, which expresses the present and permanent result of past action; and therein lies the test whereby to try the temper of our Christianity. St. Paul, who had long yearned to depart and be with Christ, could not easily have given a more simple or sure method of finding out who those are that have a right to believe that the Lord has a crown of righteousness in store for them. Are we among the number? In order to answer this question we must ask ourselves another: Are our lives such that we are longing for Christ’s return? Or are we dreading it because we know that we are not fit to meet Him, and are making no attempt to become so? The Bible sets before us the crown of righteousness which fadeth not away, and the worm which never dieth. Leaning upon God’s unfailing love, let us learn to long for the coming of the one; and then we shall have no need to dread, or even to ask the meaning of, the other.
He is coming; and the tidings
Are rolling wide and far;
As light flows out in gladness,
From yon fair morning-star.
He is coming; and the tidings
Sweep through the willing air,
With hope that ends for ever
Time’s ages of despair.
Old earth from dreams and slumber
Wakes up and says, Amen;
Land and ocean bid Him welcome,
Flood and forest join the strain.
He is coming; and the mountains
Of Judæa ring again;
Jerusalem awakens,
And shouts her glad Amen.1 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]
The Crown of Righteousness
Literature
Aitchison (J.), A Bag with Holes, 177.
Banks (L. A.), Paul and His Friends, 338.
Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 101.
Boyd (A. K. H.), The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, ii. 311.
Brooks (P.), The Spiritual Man, 258.
Brown (C.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 13.
Chadwick (G. A.), Pilate’s Gift, 264.
Christlieb (T.), Memoir and Sermons, 439.
Clifford (J.), Typical Christian Leaders, 85.
Cross (J.), Old Wine and New, 139.
Dowen (Z. T.), Christus Consolator, 38.
Drury (T. W.), The Prison-Ministry of St. Paul, 69, 211.
Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 107.
Granger (W.), The Average Man, 169.
Greenhough (J. G.), The Cross in Modern Life, 219.
Jackson (G.), The Table-Talk of Jesus, 237.
Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 223.
Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Paul’s, 378.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: 2 Timothy, etc., 100.
Maclaren (A.), Leaves from the Tree of Life, 246.
Manning (H. E.), The Rule of Faith, 347.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 189.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, iii. 415.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, xi. 9.
Ryle (J. C.), Assurance, 7.
Shelford (L. E.), By Way of Remembrance, 55.
Soyres (J. de), The Children of Wisdom, 141.
Swanson (W. S.), Gethsemane, 182.
Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vi. 397.
Tyng (S. H.), The People’s Pulpit, New Ser., i. 73.
Virgin (S. H.), Spiritual Sanity, 110.
Watkinson (W. L.), Themes for Hours of Meditation, 197.
Christian Age, xlii. 53 (T. de W. Talmage).
Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 202 (J. G. Greenhough); lxii. 67 (R. Thomas); lxxxii. 394 (J. E. Wray).
Churchman’s Pulpit: Sermons to the Young, xvi. 591 (A. H. Ross).
Clergyman’s Magazine, 3rd Ser., vi. 329 (F. B. Proctor); 3rd Ser., xii. 357 (A. Irving).
Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ii. 239 (P. Brooks).
Homiletic Review, xxi. 533 (A. C. Dixon).
Verse 7
(7) I have fought a good fight.—More accurately, more forcibly rendered, the good fight. St. Paul changes the metaphor, and adopts his old favourite one, so familiar to all Gentile readers, of the athlete contending in the games. First, he speaks generally of the combatant, the charioteer, and the runner. “I have fought the good fight,” leaving it undetermined what description of strife or contest was referred to. The tense of the Greek verb—the perfect—“I have fought,” is remarkable. The struggle had been bravely sustained in the past, and was now being equally bravely sustained to the end. His claim to the crown (2 Timothy 4:8) was established.
I have finished my course.—Or “race,” for here the image of the stadium, the Olympic race-course, was occupying the Apostle’s thoughts. Again the perfect is used: “I have finished my course.” How, asks, Chrysostom, “had he finished his course?” and answers rather rhetorically by replying that he had made the circuit of the world. The question is better answered in St. Paul’s own words (Acts 20:24), where he explains “his course,” which he would finish with joy, as the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus.
I have kept the faith.—Here, again, the metaphor is changed, and St. Paul looks back on his lived life as on one long, painful struggle to guard the treasure of the Catholic faith inviolate and untarnished (see 1 Timothy 6:20). And now the struggle was over, and he handed on the sacred deposit, safe. It is well to compare this passage with the words of the same Apostle in the Epistle to the Philippians (2 Timothy 3:12, and following verses). The same metaphors were in the Apostle’s mind on both occasions; but in the first instance (in the Philippian Epistle) they were used by the anxious, care worn servant of the Lord, hoping and, at the same time, fearing what the future had in store for him and his Church; in the second (in the Epistle to Timothy) they were the expression of the triumphant conviction of the dying follower of Christ, who had so followed his loved Master in life, that he now shrank not from following the same Master in death.
Verse 8
(8) A crown of righteousness.—More accurately rendered, the crown of righteousness. St. Paul, after speaking calmly of death, the bitterness of which he was already tasting, looks on beyond death, and speaks of the crown which awaited him. The crown was the victory prize which the “good fight” of 2 Timothy 4:7 had won. It is called “the crown of righteousness,” it being the crown to which righteousness can lay claim—that is, the crown awarded to righteousness.
Which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me.—As a righteous judge will the Lord award him the crown, recognising him as one who had the prize of victory. Not improbably, the expression “the righteous judge” was written in strong contrast to that unrighteous judge who had condemned Paul, and in accordance with whose unjust sentence he would presently suffer a painful death.
At that day.—This is the third time the words “that day” are used in this Epistle (see 2 Timothy 1:12-18). The day of judgment is, of course, signified, the day when the Lord shall come again with glory.
And not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.—Then St. Paul, instead of concluding this section of his letter with the glorious words telling of his serene courage and of his confidence in a crowned and immortal life, adds a gentle reminder to Timothy: he, too, with any others who really look for the Second Coming of the Lord, might win the same glorious crown—the sure guerdon of righteousness. The Apostle specifies here exactly the persons for whom “the crown” was reserved—those who in this life have indeed longed for the appearance of the Lord in judgment. None here could in very truth desire “His appearing,” save His own, who love Him and struggle to live His life. Calvin well remarks: “(St. Paul) excludes from the number of the faithful those to whom Christ’s coming is a source of terror.”
Verse 9
(9) Do thy diligence to come shortly.—Such a request as this would—had we no other arguments—tell us that no forger ever wrote this Epistle. Who would ever have dreamed of putting into the letter such a request as this, after those solemn expressions of the last few verses, in which the Apostle spoke of himself as even then tasting the bitterness of death? He had been writing as though the martyr’s death was so imminent that the preparations were already being made for it. This request to Timothy to come to him, after he had written such thoughts down, is at first sight strange, and one certainly which no forger would have appended to the writing. But though the forger would never have thought of such a summons, St. Paul might. He still lived, and the thought of life and the hope of life even in that brave Christ-loving heart still burned; after all, the martyrdom which seemed so close at hand might be delayed. Days, months, might drag on their slow, weary length, and still find the old man languishing and solitary in his chains in that dreary prison. He longed to see some of his faithful companions once more, and for the last time to bid them with his own mouth to be faithful and brave. So, as it were, hoping against hope, he dictates on the last pages of the letter, “Do thy diligence,” or better, “earnestly endeavour to come shortly to me.” His loving wish to see Timothy again appears from the words of 2 Timothy 1:4 : “greatly desiring to see thee;” and again from 2 Timothy 4:21. “Do thy diligence to come before winter.” And some have seen in the expression, “being mindful of thy tears,” in 2 Timothy 1:4 (to which we have given, however, a different interpretation), a reciprocal anxiety on the part of Timothy to see and speak again with his old master. But St. Paul, though he begged him to hasten his journey as much as possible, and still, though all seemed so dark around him, hoped to see him again, framed the charge of the last letter in such a way that Timothy, if when he reached Rome, should find that all was over, might know what were his master’s last wishes and directions. On the natural human longing for sympathy in the supreme hour, compare our blessed Lord’s words to Peter, James, and John (Matthew 26:38): “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with Me.”
Verse 10
(10) For Demas hath forsaken me.—This once faithful companion of St. Paul had been with him during the first imprisonment of the Apostle at Rome (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 1:24); but now, terrified by the greater severity and the threatened fatal ending of the second imprisonment, had forsaken his old master.
Having loved this present world.—Chrysostom paraphrases as follows: “Having loved ease and safety, chose rather to live daintily at home than to suffer affliction, than to endure hardship, with me, and with me to bear these present dangers.” The tradition, however, which relates that he became in after days an idol priest at Thessalonica is baseless. Demas is a shorter form, probably, for the well-known and now common Grecian name of Demetrius.
The present world (aiôna): that is, the present (evil) course of things.
Is departed unto Thessalonica.—From Chrysostom’s words above quoted, Thessalonica was apparently the “home” of Demas. It has been supposed, however, by some, that Thessalonica was chosen by Demas as his abode when he left St. Paul because it was a great mercantile centre, and his business connections were there, and he preferred them, the rich and prosperous friends, to St. Paul, the condemned and dying prisoner. Thessalonica was, at this time, one of the great cities of the empire. It was the most populous of the Macedonian cities, and had been chosen to be the metropolis of that great province. Before the founding of Constantinople, it was evidently the capital of Greece and Illyricum, as well as of Macedonia. It was famous throughout the Middle Ages, and is celebrated by the early German poets under the abbreviated name of “Salneck,” which as become the Saloniki of the Levant of our days. It is singular that the name of its patron saint, “Demetrius,” martyred about A.D. 290 (identified above with Demas), whose local glory (comp. Conybeare and Howson’s St. Paul, chap. 9) has even eclipsed that of St. Paul, the founder of the Church, should be identical with that of the “forsaker” of St. Paul.
Crescens to Galatia.—Nothing is known of this friend of St. Paul. One tradition speaks of him as a preacher in Galatia, and another of his having founded the Church of Vienne in Gaul. There is a curious variation in some of the older authorities here, “Gallia” being read instead of Galatia. Whether Crescens, on his leaving St. Paul, went to Galatia or Gaul is, therefore, uncertain.
Titus unto Dalmatia.—Dalmatia was a province of Roman Illyricum, lying along the Adriatic. Nothing is known respecting this journey of Titus. It was, most probably, made with the Apostle’s sanction.
Verse 11
(11) Only Luke is with me.—The “writer” of the Third Gospel, the Gospel which, as has been stated above, was very possibly the work of St. Paul—“my Gospel.” Luke, “the beloved physician” of Colossians 4:14, of all St. Paul’s companions, seems to have been most closely associated with the Apostle. Most likely this close intimacy and long-continued association was owing to the Apostle’s weak and infirm health—to that dying body—the noble Paul ever bore about with him. Luke was with St. Paul, we know, in his second missionary journey, and again in his third missionary journey; he accompanied him to Asia, and then to Jerusalem; was with him during the captivity time of Cæsarea, and subsequently of Rome, the first time St. Paul was imprisoned in the capital (Acts 18). After St. Paul’s death, Epiphanius speaks of him as preaching chiefly in Gaul; a very general tradition includes him among the martyrs of the first age of the Church. The name is probably a contraction of Lucanus. (See Introduction to the Acts of the Apostles.)
Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.—“But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them . . . and went not with them to the work” (Acts 15:38). There is something strangely touching in this message of the aged master to Timothy to bring with him on that last solemn journey one whom, some quarter of a century before, St. Paul had judged so severely, and on whose account he had separated from his old loved friend, Barnabas the Apostle. Since that hour when the young missionary’s heart had failed him in Pamphylia, Mark had, by steady, earnest work, won back his place in St. Paul’s heart. Barnabas, we know, when his brother Apostle rejected him, took him with him to Cyprus. After some twelve years, we find him, during the first imprisonment, with St. Paul at Rome (Colossians 4:10; Philemon 1:24). He is mentioned (1 Peter 5:13) by the endearing term of “my son,” and the unanimous traditions of the ancient Christian writers represent him as the secretary or amanuensis of St. Peter. It was his office to commit to writing the orally delivered instructions and narrations of his master. These, in some revised and arranged form, probably under the direction of Peter himself, were given to the Church under the title of St. Mark’s Gospel. A later and uncertain tradition says he subsequently became first Bishop of Alexandria, and there suffered martyrdom.
For he is profitable to me for the ministry.—Profitable, according to the suggestion of Grotius, owing to Mark’s knowledge of the Latin tongue. This is possible; but it is more likely that he was profitable or serviceable as an assistant who was well acquainted with the details of St. Paul’s many sided work.
Verse 12
(12) And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus.—Instead of “and,” the Greek particle here should be rendered “but Tychicus.” “This ‘but’ appears to refer to a suppressed thought, suggested by the concluding portion of the last (11th) verse: bring Mark. I need one who is profitable (or serviceable) for the ministry. I had one in Tychicus, but he is gone” (Ellicott). Neither the period of Tychicus’ journey nor its object is alluded to here. It probably took place some time, however, before the sending of this Epistle to Timothy. Tychicus was evidently one of the trusted companions of St. Paul. He had been with him, we know, on his third missionary journey, and had, during St. Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, some six or seven years before, been charged with a mission by his master to Ephesus. In Ephesians 6:21 he is called a beloved brother and a faithful minister in the Lord. (See, too, Colossians 4:7, where he is spoken of in similar terms.) On the city of Ephesus, see Note on 1 Timothy 1:3. It has been, with considerable probability, suggested that Tychicus had been the bearer of the first Epistle to Timothy. Between the writing of these two letters, we know, no great interval could have elapsed.
Verse 13
(13) The cloke that I left at Troas.—The apparently trivial nature of this request in an Epistle containing such weighty matter, and also the fact of such a wish on the part of one expecting death being made at all, is at first a little puzzling. To explain this seemingly strange request, some have wished to understand by “the cloke” some garment St. Paul was in the habit of wearing when performing certain sacred functions: in other words, as a vestment; but such a supposition would be in the highest degree precarious, for nowhere in the New Testament is the slightest hint given us that any such vestment was ever used in the primitive Christian Church. It is much better to understand the words as simply requesting Timothy, on his way, to bring with him a thick cloak, or mantle, which St. Paul had left with a certain Carpus at Troas. Probably, when he left it, it was summer, and he was disinclined to burden himself in his hurried journey with any superfluous things. Winter was now coming on, and the poor aged prisoner in the cold damp prison, with few friends and scant resources, remembered and wished for his cloak. It is just such a request which the master would make of his disciple, who, knowing well the old man’s frail, shattered health, would never be surprised at such a request even in an Epistle so solemn. Then too St. Paul, by his very wish here expressed, to see Timothy, as above discussed, hopes against hope that still a little while for work in the coming winter months was still before him, though he felt death was for him very near; no forger of the Epistle had dreamed of putting down such a request.
And the books.—The books were, most likely, a few choice works, some bearing on Jewish sacred history, partly exegetical and explanatory of the mysterious senses veiled under the letter of the law and the prophets, and partly historical. Others were probably heathen writings, of which we know, from his many references in his Epistles, St. Paul was a diligent student. These few choice books, it has been suggested, with high probability, St. Paul “had made a shift to get and preserve,” and these, if God spared his life yet a few short months, he would have with him for reference in his prison room.
But especially the parchments.—These precious papers, above all, would St. Paul have with him. These were, most likely, common-place books, in which the Apostle—evidently always a diligent student—had written what he had observed as worthy of especial notice in the reading of either of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, or the other books bearing on Jewish or Pagan literature and history. These precious notes were probably the result of many years’ reading and study. He would have them with him as long as life remained to him. (Compare on this strange but interesting verse Bp. Bull’s learned and exhaustive sermon: Works, vol. i. p. 240, Oxford Edition, 1846.) Erasmus remarks on this request of St. Paul: “Behold the Apostle’s goods or movables: a poor cloke to keep him from the weather, and a few books!”
A suggestion has been made that the words translated “Much learning doth make thee mad” (Acts 26:24) should be rendered, Thy many rolls of parchment are turning thy brain, and that these rolls of parchment referred to by Festus as the companions of St. Paul’s captivity at Cæsarea were identical with those parchments left with Carpus. The Greek words, however, are not the same in the two passages. Of this Carpus nothing is known.
Verse 14
(14) Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil.—Most probably, the same Alexander, mentioned in the First Epistle (1 Timothy 1:20) “as delivered to Satan,” and not improbably identical with the Alexander “the Jew” put forward by the Jews in the Ephesian tumult. (Acts 19:33-34).
It has been suggested that this Alexander, an influential Ephesian Jew, had done much injury to the cause of the Christians generally, and to St. Paul personally, with the imperial authorities at Rome.
The Lord reward him according to his works.—The older authorities read, “shall reward him . . .” The works referred to were the bitter injuries he had done to the cause of Christ, rather than to the Apostle himself.
Verse 15
(15) Of whom be thou ware also.—This Alexander was evidently then at Ephesus. That he had been at Rome, and had given evidence against St. Paul, and had argued against the defence of the Apostle, is probable. “Our words” some understand as especially referring to St. Paul’s defence before the imperial tribunal. If we identify him with the Alexander of Acts 19:33-34, then he was a Jew, one of those bitter, life-long antagonists of the Gentile Apostle who crossed his path at every step, and not improbably brought about, in the end, his death. It is an interesting suggestion which refers the connection between St. Paul and Alexander back to those days when Saul and Alexander were both reckoned as belonging to the strictest Pharisee party, determined foes to the “Nazarenes.” Saul—if we adopt this supposition—became the Apostle St. Paul of the Gentiles; Alexander remained a fanatic Jew—hence the enmity.
Verse 16
(16) At my first answer no man stood with me . . .—And then, after the mention of what his enemy had done out of hatred to the cause of Christ, the old man passed on to speak of the conduct of his own familiar friends at that great public trial before—most probably—the city præfect: Præfectus Urbi, a nominee of the Emperor Nero. No one friend stood by him; no “advocate” pleaded his cause; no “procurator” (an official who performed the functions of the attorney in an English court) helped him in arranging and sifting the evidence; no “patronus” of any noble or powerful house gave him his countenance and support. The position of a well-known Christian leader accused in the year 66-67 was a critical one, and the friend who dared to stand by him would himself be in great danger. After the great fire of Rome, in A.D. 64, the Christians were looked upon as the enemies of the state, and were charged as the authors of that terrible disaster. Nero, to avert suspicion from himself, allowed the Christians to be accused and condemned as incendiaries. A great persecution, in which, as Tacitus tells, a very great multitude of the followers of Jesus perished, was the immediate result of the hateful charge. It is most probable that St. Paul, as a famous Nazarene leader, was eventually arrested as implicated in this crime, and brought to Rome. His implacable enemies among the Jews might well have been the agents who brought this about, and Alexander of the last verse was possibly principally concerned in this matter. But St. Paul, conscious of his own great peril, knew well that to stand by him now, implicated as he was in this net-work of false accusations, would be a service of the greatest danger; so he pleads for them, these weak, unnerved friends of his, who, through no ill-will to the cause, but solely from timidity, had deserted him, remembering, no doubt, his own Master, who, too, in His hour of deadly peril, had been forsaken. (See John 16:32, “Behold the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and ye shall leave Me alone.”) But like his own Master, who proceeded to say, “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me,” so St. Paul went on to tell Timothy neither was he alone, for One greater than any friend on earth stood by him.
Verse 17
(17) Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me.—Though men deserted him, yet One—even his Lord (Christ), who could do more for him than any friend, or advocate, or protector of earth—stood by him, and strengthened him by giving him courage and readiness.
That by me the preaching might be fully known.—More accurately rendered, might be fully performed: “impleatur,” as the Vulgate gives it. The strength and courage which the felt presence of his Lord gave him, enabled him on that occasion, when alone, friendless, accused of a hateful crime before the highest earthly tribunal in the capital city of the world, to plead not only for himself but for that great cause with which he was identified. He spoke possibly for the last time publicly [we know nothing of the final trial, when he was condemned] the glad tidings of which he was the chosen herald to the Gentile world. It is probable that this great trial took place in the Forum, in one of the Pauline Basilicas—so called after L. Æmilius Paulus. It is certain it was in the presence of a crowded audience. St. Paul evidently intimates this when he tells us how he spoke “that all the Gentiles might hear.” This was apparently the culminating point of St. Paul’s labours—the last stone of the laborious edifice of his life’s work. Had the courage of the Apostle of the Gentiles failed him on this most momentous occasion, the spirit of the sorely-tried Church of Rome had surely sunk, and that marvellous and rapid progress of the gospel in the West—which, in a little more than a hundred years, would make its influence felt in well-nigh every city and village of the empire—had been arrested.
And that all the Gentiles might hear.—Here alluding primarily to the crowded audience which had listened on this solemn occasion to St. Paul’s Apologia pro Christo; but there is another and deeper reference to those uncounted peoples in the isles of the Gentiles, who, by St. Paul’s work and words, would come to the saving knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.
And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.—Expositors have, in all ages, dwelt much on the question, “Who was to be understood under the figure of the lion?” The fathers mostly believe the Emperor Nero was here alluded to. Others have suggested that St. Paul was referring to the “lions” of the amphitheatre, from whom, at all events for the time, he had been delivered. It is, however, best to understand the expression as a figurative expression for extreme danger. His Master on that dread occasion stood by him, and gave him strength and wisdom over man to speak the words of life, and delivered him for the moment out of the imminent peril threatening him, allowing him, not only to speak his Master’s words there, but also thus to write this solemn farewell charge to Timothy and the Church. That such figurative language was not unusual, compare the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans, iii.:8, in which writing the prisoner describes his journey from Syria to Rome as one long “fight with wild beasts,” and speaks of himself as “bound to ten leopards,” thus designating his soldier guards.
Verse 18
(18) And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work . . .—Many commentators have explained these words as the expression of St. Paul’s confidence that the Lord not only had, in the late trial, strengthened His servant, and given him courage to endure, but that He would watch over him in the future which still lay before him, and would preserve him from every danger of faint-heartedness, from every risk of doing dishonour to his Master; but such an interpretation seems foreign to the spirit in which St. Paul was writing to Timothy. In the whole Epistle there is not one note of fear—nothing which should lead us to suspect that the martyr Apostle was fearful for himself. It reads—does this last letter of the great Gentile teacher—in many places like a triumphant song of death. It, therefore, appears unnatural to introduce into the closing words of the Epistle the thought of the Lord’s help in the event of the Apostle’s losing heart. Far better is it to supply after “every evil work” the words “of the enemies,” and to understand the deliverance which the Lord will accomplish for him, not as a deliverance from any shrinking or timidity unworthy of an apostle of the Lord, not even as a deliverance from the martyr-death, which he knew lay before him, but that through this very death, the Lord Jesus would deliver him from all weariness and toil, and would bring him safe into His heavenly kingdom. (See Psalms 23:4.) St. Paul before (Philippians 1:23 had expressed a longing to come to Christ through death. He then bursts into an ascription of praise to that Lord Jesus Christ whom he had loved so long and so well, and who, in all his troubles and perplexities, had never left him friendless. For a similar ascription of glory to the Second Person of the ever blessed Trinity, see Hebrews 13:21. (Comp. also Romans 9:5.)
Verse 19
(19) Salute Prisca and Aquila.—These were two of St. Paul’s earliest friends after he had begun his great work for his Master. Originally of Pontus, they had taken up their abode at Rome, where Aquila exercised his trade of a tent-maker.
Driven out of Rome by the decree of Claudius, which banished the Jews from the capital, they came to Corinth, where St. Paul became acquainted with them. But they were evidently Christians when St. Paul first met them, about A.D. 51-2. We hear of them in company with St. Paul at Corinth, about A.D. 52-3 (Acts 18:2); at Ephesus, about A.D. 55 (1 Corinthians 16:19); and in the year A.D. 58 St. Paul sends greetings to them at Rome (Romans 16:3).
They were, evidently, among the many active and zealous teachers of the first days of the faith. That they possessed great ability as well as zeal is evident from the fact that it was from them that the eloquent and trained Alexandrian master, Apollos, learnt to be a Christian (Acts 18:26). In this place, and in several other passages, Prisca (or Priscilla) is named before her husband, Aquila. This would seem to hint that in this case the woman was the principal worker of the two in the cause of Christ. She, in fact, was one of that band of devoted holy women which the preaching of Christ and His disciples had called into existence: a representative of the great class of noble female workers which had no existence before Christ told the world what was the true position of women—until the same divine Master taught them that they, too, as well as men, had a work to work for Him here.
And the household of Onesiphorus.—St. Paul may have been aware that Onesiphorus was absent then from Ephesus; but this peculiar greeting, taken together with the words of 2 Timothy 1:16, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that this friend of St. Paul’s was dead when the Epistle was written. (See Notes on 2 Timothy 1:16.)
Verse 20
(20) Erastus abode at Corinth.—Better rendered, remained at Corinth. An Erastus is mentioned in Romans 16:23, the “chamberlain” of Corinth, one of the Christian congregation of that city. This man was probably identical with him.
Another “Eastus” appears among those who ministered to St. Paul at Ephesus (Acts 19:22). Him St. Paul sent on missionary work into Macedonia. There were, therefore, among St. Paul’s friends two men of this name: the one a resident official personage at Corinth; the other one of that band who journeyed hither and thither for the propagation of the faith.
But Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.—Trophimus, a Gentile Christian, who was with St. Paul on his third missionary journey, and whom the Apostle was accused of taking into the Temple at Jerusalem. It was this accusation on the part of the Jews which led to St. Paul’s arrest which preceded his first long imprisonment. The event here alluded to must have taken place some time after the Apostle’s release from the first imprisonment, A.D. 63, and, probably, in the course of his last journey, shortly before his second arrest and imprisonment at Rome, about A.D. 66.
Miletus (not “Miletum”), a seaport of Caria, about thirty miles from Ephesus, once a city of great renown, whence, it is said, eighty colonies had proceeded; but in the days of St. Paul its glories were already on the wane. It is now famous only for its vast ruined theatre. (See Acts 20:15.)
It has been suggested that this mention of Trophimus was intended to clear him of any neglect. “Erastus,” wrote the Apostle, “remained at Corinth; but Trophimus’ reason for not coming to Rome was his sickness.”
Verse 21