The charge to preach the gospel
Chapter 4
The Charge to Preach the Gospel
This chapter contains some of the very last words spoken or written by the apostle Paul. They are certainly the last which have survived. He is writing within weeks, perhaps even within days, of his martyrdom. According to a fairly reliable tradition he was beheaded on the Ostian Way. For about 30 years without intermission he has laboured as an apostle and an itinerant evangelist. Truly, as he himself here writes, he has fought a good fight, finished his course and kept the faith (7). Now he awaits his reward, ‘the crown of righteousness’ which has been laid up for him in heaven (8). So these words are Paul’s legacy to the church. They breathe an atmosphere of great solemnity. It is impossible to read them without being profoundly stirred.
The early part of the chapter takes the form of an impressive charge. ‘I charge you in the presence of God,’ he begins. The verb diamartyromai has legal connections and can mean to ‘testify under oath’ in a court of law or to ‘adjure’ a witness to do so. It is used in the New Testament of any ‘solemn and emphatic utterance’ (MM). Paul’s charge is addressed in the first instance to Timothy, his apostolic delegate and representative in Ephesus. But it is applicable in a secondary sense to every man called to an evangelistic or pastoral ministry, even to all Christian people.
There are three aspects of the charge to be studied, namely its nature (precisely what Paul is commissioning Timothy to do), its basis (the arguments on which Paul grounds his charge) and a personal illustration of it from Paul’s own example in Rome.
1. The Nature of the Charge (verse 2)
Omitting verse 1 for the moment and passing to verse 2, the essence of the charge is in the three words ‘Preach the word’. We observe at once that the message Timothy is to communicate is called a ‘word’, a spoken utterance. Rather it is the word, God’s word which God has spoken. Paul does not need to specify it further, for Timothy will know at once that it is the body of doctrine which he has heard from Paul and which Paul has now committed to him to pass on to others. It is identical with ‘the deposit’ of chapter 1. And in this fourth chapter it is equivalent to ‘the sound teaching’ (3), ‘the truth’ (4) and ‘the faith’ (7). It consists of the Old Testament Scriptures, God-breathed and profitable, which Timothy has known from childhood, together with the teaching of the apostle which Timothy has ‘followed’, ‘learned’ and ‘firmly believed’ (3:10, 14). The same charge is laid upon the church of every age. We have no liberty to invent our message, but only to communicate ‘the word’ which God has spoken and has now committed to the church as a sacred trust.
Timothy is to ‘preach’ this word, himself to speak what God has spoken. His responsibility is not just to hear it, and to believe and obey what he hears; nor just to guard it from every falsification; nor just to suffer for it and continue in it; but now to preach it to others. It is good news of salvation for sinners. So he is to proclaim it like a herald in the market-place (kēryssō, cf. kēryx ‘a herald’ in 1:11). He is to lift up his voice without fear or favour, and boldly to make it known.
Paul goes on to list four marks which are to characterize Timothy’s proclamation.
a. An urgent proclamation
The verb ephistēmi, ‘be urgent’, means literally to ‘stand by’, and so to ‘be ready, be on hand’ (AG). But here it appears to take on the flavour not just of alertness and eagerness, but of insistence and urgency. ‘Never lose your sense of urgency’ (JBP). Certainly it is no good preaching in a listless or lackadaisical manner. All true preaching conveys a sense of the urgent importance of what is being preached. The Christian herald knows that he is handling matters of life and death. He is announcing the sinner’s plight under the judgment of God, the saving action of God through the death and resurrection of Christ, and the summons to repent and believe. How can he treat such themes with cold indifference? ‘Whatever you do,’ wrote Richard Baxter, ‘let the people see that you are in good earnest … You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or patching up a gaudy oration. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasures upon a drowsy request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks, or to care much whether his request be granted.’1
Such urgent preaching, Paul adds, must continue ‘in season and out of season’. ‘Press it home on all occasions, convenient or inconvenient’ (NEB). This injunction is not to be taken as an excuse for the insensitive brashness which has sometimes characterized our evangelism and brought it into disrepute. We have no liberty to barge unceremoniously into other people’s privacy or tread clumsily on their corns. No. The occasions Paul has in mind are probably ‘welcome or unwelcome’ (JB) not for the hearers so much as for the speaker. The translation of the NEB margin emphasizes this: ‘be on duty at all times, convenient or inconvenient’. This takes the verb ephistēmi in its alternative sense, which is found sometimes in the papyri. It seems, then, that what we are given here is not a biblical warrant for rudeness, but a biblical appeal against laziness.
b. A relevant proclamation
The herald who announces the word is to ‘convince, rebuke and exhort’. This suggests three different ways of doing it. For God’s word is ‘profitable’ for a variety of ministries, as Paul has already stated (3:16). It speaks to different men in different situations. The preacher must remember this and be skilful in his use of it. He must ‘use argument, reproof, and appeal’ (NEB), which is almost a classification of three approaches, intellectual, moral and emotional. For some people are tormented by doubts and need to be convinced by arguments. Others have fallen into sin, and need to be rebuked. Others again are haunted by fears, and need to be encouraged. God’s word does all this and more. We are to apply it relevantly.
c. A patient proclamation
Although we are to be urgent (longing for people to make a ready response to the word), we are to be ‘unfailing in patience’ in waiting for it. We must never resort to the use of human pressure techniques, or attempt to contrive a ‘decision’. Our responsibility is to be faithful in preaching the word; the results of the proclamation are the responsibility of the Holy Spirit, and we can afford to wait patiently for him to work. We are to be patient in our whole manner as well, for ‘the Lord’s servant must … be … kindly to everyone, … forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness’ (2:24, 25). However solemn our commission and urgent our message, there can be no possible justification for a brusque or impatient manner.
d. An intelligent proclamation
We are not only to preach the word but to teach it, or rather to preach it ‘with all teaching’ (kēryxon … en pasē … didachē). C. H. Dodd has made the whole church familiar with his distinction between kērygma and didachē, the former being the proclamation of Christ to unbelievers with a summons to repent, and the latter the ethical instruction of converts. The distinction is helpful and important. Yet, as has already been suggested in the comment on 1:11, it can be pressed too rigidly. At least, this verse shows that our kērygma must itself contain much didachē. Whether our proclamation is intended primarily to convince, rebuke or exhort, it must be a doctrinal ministry.
The Christian pastoral ministry is essentially a teaching ministry, which explains why candidates are required both to be orthodox in their own faith and to have an aptitude for teaching (e.g. Tit. 1:9; 1 Tim. 3:2). There is an increasing need, especially as the process of urbanization continues and standards of education rise, for Christian ministers to exercise in the teeming cities of the developing world a systematic expository preaching ministry, to ‘proclaim the word … with all teaching’. This is precisely what Paul had himself done in Ephesus, as Timothy well knew. For some three years he had continued to teach ‘the whole counsel of God’ both ‘in public and from house to house’ (Acts 20:20, 27; cf. 19:8–10). Now Timothy must do the same.
Such is Paul’s charge to Timothy. He is to preach the word, and as he announces the God-given message to be urgent in his approach, relevant in his application, patient in his manner and intelligent in his presentation.
2. The Basis of the Charge (verses 1, 3–8)
It has already become apparent in early chapters of this letter both that Timothy was diffident by disposition and that the times in which he lived and worked were—to say the least—unpropitious. He must have quailed as he read the apostle’s solemn charge to him to keep preaching the word. He would be tempted to shrink from such a responsibility. So Paul does more than issue a charge; he adds incentives. He bids Timothy look in three directions—first at Jesus Christ the coming judge and king, secondly at the contemporary scene, and thirdly at him, Paul, the aged prisoner approaching martyrdom.
a. The coming Christ (verse 1)
Paul is not issuing his charge in his own name or on his own authority but ‘in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus’ and therefore conscious of the divine direction and approval. Perhaps the strongest of all incentives to faithfulness is the sense of a commission from God. If Timothy can only be assured that he is the servant of the most high God and an ambassador of Jesus Christ, and that Paul’s challenge to him is God’s challenge, then nothing will deflect him from his task.
The main emphasis of this first verse, however, is not so much on the presence of God as on the coming of Christ. It is evident that Paul still believes in Christ’s personal return. He wrote of it in his earliest letters, especially those to the Thessalonian church. Although he now knows that he will die before it takes place, yet still at the end of his ministry he looks forward to it, lives in the light of it and describes Christians as those who love Christ’s appearing (8). He is sure that Christ will make a visible ‘appearing’ (the word is epiphaneia in verses 1 and 8), and that when he appears he will both ‘judge the living and the dead’ and consummate ‘his kingdom’ or reign.
Now these three truths—the appearance, the judgment and the kingdom—should be as clear and certain an expectation to us as they were to Paul and Timothy. They cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on our ministry. For both those who preach the word and those who listen to it must give an account to Christ when he appears.
b. The contemporary scene (verses 3–5)
Notice the word ‘for’ or ‘because’ (gar) which introduces this paragraph. Paul is giving a second basis on which to ground his charge. It is another future event, not now the coming of Christ but, before that end point, the coming of dark and difficult days. Although the apostle seems to be anticipating that the situation will deteriorate, it is also plain from this paragraph and from what he has written earlier that such a time has already begun for Timothy. It is in the light of this contemporary scene that he issues further directions.
What are these times like? One characteristic is singled out, namely that people cannot bear the truth. Paul expresses it negatively and positively, and states it twice: They ‘will not endure sound teaching, but … accumulate … teachers to suit their own likings’ (3). They ‘will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths’ (4). In other words, they cannot stand the truth and refuse to listen to it. Instead, they find teachers to suit the speculative fancies into which they are determined to wander. It all has to do with their ears, which (in the Greek sentence) are mentioned twice. They suffer from a peculiar pathological condition called ‘itching ears’, ‘an itch for novelty’.2 AG explain that the expression is a figure of speech for that kind of curiosity which ‘looks for interesting and spicy hits of information’. Further, ‘this itching is relieved by the messages of the new teachers’. In fact what the people do is stop their ears against the truth (cf. Acts 7:57) and open them to any teacher who will relieve their tickle by scratching it.
Notice that what they reject is ‘the sound teaching’ (3) or ‘the truth’ (4), and what they prefer is ‘their own likings’ (3) or ‘myths’ (4). They thus substitute their fancy for God’s revelation. The criterion by which they judge teachers is not (as it should be) God’s word but their own subjective taste. Worse still, they do not first listen and then decide whether what they have heard is true; they first decide what they want to hear and then select teachers who will oblige by toeing their line.
How is Timothy to react to this? One might guess that such a desperate situation should silence him. If men cannot bear the truth and will not listen to it, surely the prudent course will be for him to hold his peace? But Paul reaches the opposite conclusion. For the third time he uses those two little monosyllables su de, ‘but as for you’ (5; cf. 3:10, 14). He repeats his call to Timothy to be different. He must not take his lead from the prevailing fashions of the day.
Now follow four staccato commands which seem to be deliberately framed in relation to the situation in which Timothy finds himself and to the kind of people to whom he is called to minister.
1. Because the people are unstable in mind and conduct, Timothy is above everything else always to ‘be steady’. Literally, nēphō means to be sober, and figuratively to ‘be free from every form of mental and spiritual drunkenness’ and so to ‘be well-balanced, self-controlled’ (AG). When men and women get intoxicated with heady heresies and sparkling novelties, ministers must keep ‘calm and sane’ (NEB).
2. Although the people will not listen to the sound teaching, Timothy must persist in teaching it and so be prepared to ‘endure suffering’ on account of the truth he refuses to compromise. Whenever the biblical faith becomes unpopular, ministers are sorely tempted to mute those elements which give most offence.
3. Because the people are woefully ignorant of the true evangel, Timothy is to ‘do the work of an evangelist’. It is not clear whether the reference is to a specialist ministry such as is implied in the only other New Testament passages where the word occurs (Acts 21:8; Eph. 4:11). The alternative is to interpret it of anybody who preaches the gospel and witnesses to Christ. In either case Paul is bidding Timothy: ‘make the preaching of the Good News your life’s work’ (JB). The good news is not just to be preserved against distortion; it is to be spread abroad.
4. Even if the people forsake Timothy’s ministry in favour of teachers who tickle their fancy, Timothy is to ‘fulfil’ his ‘ministry’. The same verb is used when Paul and Barnabas had completed the relief work which they went to Jerusalem to do. ‘They had fulfilled their mission’, Luke writes (Acts 12:25). Just so Timothy must persevere until his task is accomplished.
Thus Paul’s four words of command, although different in detail, convey the same general message. Those difficult days, in which it was hard to gain a hearing for the gospel, were not to discourage Timothy; nor to deter him from his ministry; nor to induce him to trim his message to suit his hearers; still less to silence him altogether; but rather to spur him on to preach the more. It should be the same with us. The harder the times and the deafer the people, the clearer and more persuasive our proclamation must be. As Calvin puts it, ‘the more determined men become to despise the teaching of Christ, the more zealous should godly ministers be to assert it and the more strenuous their efforts to preserve it entire, and more than that, by their diligence to ward off Satan’s attacks’.3
c. The aged apostle (verses 6–8)
The third ground of the apostle’s charge is yet another coming event, namely his own martyrdom. The link between this paragraph and verse 5 which precedes it is plain. Paul’s argument runs like this: ‘But as for you, Timothy, you must fulfil your ministry, for I am already on the point of death.’ It is all the more vital for Timothy to continue and complete his ministry because the apostle’s life-work has reached completion and is about to close. As Joshua had followed Moses, and Solomon David, and Elisha Elijah, so now Timothy must follow Paul.
The apostle uses two vivid figures of speech to portray his coming death, one taken from the language of sacrifice and the other (probably) of boats. First, ‘I am already on the point of being sacrificed.’ Or ‘Already my life is being poured out on the altar’ (NEB). He likens his life to a libation or drink offering. So imminent does he believe his martyrdom to be that he speaks of the sacrifice as having already begun. He goes on: ‘the time of my departure has come’. ‘Departure’ (analysis) seems to have become a regular word for death, but we need not necessarily conclude from this that its metaphorical origin had been entirely forgotten. It means ‘loosing’ and could be used either of striking a tent (which Lock favours,4 because of the soldier’s ‘I have fought a good fight’ in the following verse) or of ‘release from shackles’ (which Simpson mentions),5 or of untying a boat from its moorings. The last is certainly the most picturesque of the three possibilities. The two images then to some extent correspond,6 for the end of this life (outpoured as a libation) is the beginning of another (putting out to sea). Already the anchor is weighed, the ropes are slipped, and the boat is about to set sail for another shore. Now, before the great adventure of his new voyage begins, he looks back over his ministry of about 30 years. He describes it—factually not boastfully—in three terse expressions.
First, ‘I have fought the good fight’. The words could equally well be translated ‘I have run the great race’ (NEB), for agōn denoted any contest involving exertion, whether a race or a fight. But since the next phrase clearly alludes to the race or course he has finished, it seems probable that Paul is again combining the soldier and athlete metaphors (as in 2:3–5), or at least the wrestling and running metaphors.
Next, he writes, ‘I have finished the race’. Some years previously, speaking to the elders of the very Ephesian church over which Timothy was now presiding, Paul had expressed his ambition to do just this. ‘I do not account my life of any value,’ he had declared, ‘nor as precious to myself, if only I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus …’ (Acts 20:24). Now he is able to say that he has done so. Both the verb and the noun he uses are the same. ‘What had been a purpose was now a retrospect,’ comments N. J. D. White.7 He could use the perfect tense in each of these three expressions, as Jesus had done in the upper room,8 because the end was so clearly in sight.
Thirdly, ‘I have kept the faith’. This may conceivably mean ‘I have kept faith with my Master’.9 But in the context of this letter, which emphasizes so strongly the importance of guarding the deposit of revealed truth, it is more likely that Paul is affirming his faithfulness in this respect. ‘I have safely preserved, as a guardian or steward, the gospel treasure committed to my trust.’
So the work of the apostle, and to a lesser extent of every gospel preacher and teacher, is pictured as fighting a fight, running a race, guarding a treasure. Each involves labour, sacrifice and even danger. In all three Paul has been faithful to the end.
Now nothing remains for him but the prize, which he terms ‘the crown (or better ‘garland’) of righteousness’, which is ‘laid up’ for him and which will be given him at the winning post ‘on that Day’. Though intrinsically valueless, being made of evergreen leaves rather than of silver or gold, the garlands won by victors in the Greek games were greatly prized. ‘Many a little town in those days’, writes Bishop Handley Moule, ‘took down a piece of its white wall in order that its son, crowned with the crown of the isthmus or of Olympia, might enter it by a gate unused before.’10 The crown which Paul anticipates he calls ‘righteousness’ (dikaiosynē). From his pen the word would most naturally mean ‘justification’. But perhaps here it has a slightly different legal connotation, and is in deliberate contrast to the sentence he is expecting any day to receive from a human judge in a human court. The Emperor Nero may declare him guilty and condemn him to death, but there will soon come a ‘magnificent reversal of Nero’s verdict’11 when ‘the Lord, the righteous judge’, declares him righteous.
The same vindication by Christ also awaits ‘all who have loved his appearing’. This is not, of course, a doctrine of justification by good works. It is hardly necessary to emphasize Paul’s continuing conviction that salvation is a free gift of God’s grace, ‘not in virtue of our works but in virtue of his own purpose and … grace’ (1:9). The crown of righteousness is awarded to all those who ‘have set their hearts on his coming appearance’ (NEB), not because this is a meritorious attitude to adopt but because it is a sure evidence of justification. The unbeliever, being unjustified, dreads the coming of Christ (if he believes in it or thinks about it at all). Being unready for it, he will shrink in shame from Christ at his coming. The believer, on the other hand, having been justified, looks forward to Christ’s coming and has set his heart upon it. Being ready for it, he will have boldness when Christ appears (1 Jn. 2:28). Only those who have entered by faith into the benefit of Christ’s first coming are eagerly awaiting his second (cf. Heb. 9:28).
This then is ‘Paul the aged’, as he has described himself a year or two previously in his letter to Philemon (verse 9). He has fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith. His lifeblood is on the point of being poured out. His little boat is about to set sail. He is eagerly awaiting his crown. These facts are to be Timothy’s third spur to faithfulness.
Our God is the God of history. ‘God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year.’ ‘He buries his workmen, but carries on his work.’ The torch of the gospel is handed down by each generation to the next. As the leaders of the former generation die, it is all the more urgent for those of the next generation to step forward bravely to take their place. Timothy’s heart must have been profoundly moved by this exhortation from Paul the old warrior who had led him to Christ. Who led you to Christ? Is he growing old? The man who introduced me to Christ is now living in retirement (though an active one!). We cannot rest for ever on the leadership of the preceding generation. The day comes when we must step into their shoes and ourselves take the lead. That day had come for Timothy. It comes to all of us in time.
So then, in view of the coming of Christ to judgment, of the contemporary world’s distaste for the gospel and of the imprisoned apostle’s imminent death, the latter’s charge to Timothy had a note of solemn urgency: Preach the word!
3. An Illustration of the Charge (verses 9–22)
Paul does more than issue Timothy, from what might seem the safe distance of his prison cell, with an apostolic charge to preach the word; he gives him an illustration of it from his own example. For he himself has preached the word, not just throughout his ministry but very recently, boldly proclaiming the gospel in court when on trial for his life before imperial Rome.
Before we are ready to consider the details of this remarkable proclamation, however, we must understand the circumstances in which it took place.
From his majestic survey of the past (‘I have fought the good fight …’) and his confident anticipation of the future (‘henceforth there is laid up for me the crown …’) Paul returns in thought to the present and to his personal predicament. For the great apostle Paul was also a creature of flesh and blood, a man of like nature and passions with ourselves. Although he has finished his course and is awaiting his crown, he is still a frail human being with ordinary human needs. He describes his plight in prison, and expresses in particular his loneliness.
Several factors contributed to his sense of isolation, and these he openly describes. He had been deserted by his friends (9–13); he had been opposed by Alexander the coppersmith (14, 15); and he had been unsupported at his first defence (16–18).
a. Deserted by his friends (verses 9–13 and 19–21)
It is quite true that Paul has not been left entirely friendless. This becomes clear if at this point we glance on to the end of the chapter. Paul mentions here, first, his friends overseas (19), and he sends them a message of greeting. Prisca and Aquila, whom he has called his ‘fellow workers in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 16:3) and with whom he stayed in Corinth (Acts 18:2; 1 Cor. 16:19), are evidently still in Ephesus where we last heard of them in the Acts record (18:26). So is ‘the household of Onesiphorus’, although, as was suggested in the comment on 1:16–18, it seems that Onesiphorus himself is still separated from his family and in Rome.
Paul next sends Timothy items of news about two other mutual friends (20). Erastus, he says, ‘remained at Corinth’. It may well be right to identify him with the Erastus who is described as Corinth’s ‘city treasurer’ (Rom. 16:23) and with the Erastus whom Paul sent with Timothy into Macedonia (Acts 19:22). The fact that Paul needs to inform Timothy that he had stayed in Corinth suggests that after Paul’s re-arrest he may have accompanied the prisoner as far as Corinth on his way to Rome. The other news item concerns Trophimus, who was a native of Ephesus and had been one of Paul’s companions during his third missionary journey at least in Greece and Troas and on the voyage to Jerusalem (Acts 20:1–5; 21:29). We do not know the circumstances in which Paul left him ill at Miletus, the port near Ephesus.
In these final verses of the letter the apostle also mentions some Christians in Rome, who send their greetings to Timothy. He gives the names of three men—Eubulus, Pudens and Linus (the latter just possibly the Linus whom Irenaeus and Eusebius mention as the first Bishop of Rome following the martyrdom of Peter and Paul)—and of one lady, Claudia, and then mentions ‘all the brethren’. It seems likely, since Paul knows some of their names and can send greetings from them to Timothy, that they have visited him in prison.
Nevertheless, the apostle feels himself terribly cut off and abandoned, exiled from the churches he founded and from the people in them he knows and loves. More poignant still is the fact that a number of his close circle of travelling companions have—for a variety of reasons—left him or become separated from him. It is their fellowship that he misses more than anybody’s. In verses 10 and 12 he mentions four in particular, Demas, Crescens, Titus and Tychicus.
The desertion of Demas is obviously extremely painful to Paul. He was previously one of his close associates or ‘fellow workers’. In the two other New Testament verses in which he is mentioned his name is coupled with Luke’s (Col. 4:14; Phm. 24). But now, instead of setting his love on Christ’s future appearing (8), he has fallen ‘in love with this present world’ (literally, ‘age’). The details are not divulged. Bishop Moule may have been right to guess that he was ‘smitten with cowardice in that reign of terror’.12 The other three are not censured for their departure. Crescens, whose name does not appear elsewhere in the New Testament, has ‘gone to Galatia’ (perhaps here meaning Gaul), and Titus, who must by now have finished his task in Crete, has travelled to Dalmatia on the Eastern Adriatic coast. No reason is given for these movements. Of Tychicus, however, Paul says: ‘I have sent’ him ‘to Ephesus’ (12). Twice described as ‘a beloved brother and faithful minister … in the Lord’, he has been sent on several responsible missions before, apparently carrying Paul’s letters to the Ephesians, to the Colossians and to Titus (Eph. 6:21, 22; Col. 4:7, 8; Tit. 3:12). It looks as if he is now being entrusted with the last of all Paul’s letters, this one to Timothy. It may be that Paul also intends him to replace Timothy in Ephesus while the latter is absent visiting Paul in Rome.
Here, then, are four intimate and trusted fellow-labourers whom Paul sorely misses, although (except Demas) their absence is on the Lord’s legitimate business. He goes on: ‘Luke alone is with me’ (11). It is a touching testimony to the unflinching loyalty of the apostle’s companion and ‘beloved physician’ (Col. 4:14). Apart from this solitary exception of Luke, however, for various reasons good and bad Paul is alone in prison. He feels it keenly. He longs and asks for three things: first, for people to keep him company; secondly, for a cloak to keep him warm; thirdly, for books and parchments to keep him occupied.
First, companions. He bids Timothy: ‘Get Mark and bring him with you’ (11). Mark had been a deserter on the first missionary journey (Acts 12:25; 13:13; 15:38, 39). Later, however, he was restored (Col. 4:10; Phm. 24; 1 Pet. 5:13), and now he could be ‘very useful in serving’ Paul.
But above all Paul yearns for Timothy himself. ‘Do your best to come to me soon’, he writes (9). ‘Do your best to come before winter’ (21). If he is ever to see Timothy again and enjoy his friendship, then Timothy must come soon (while he is still alive) and in any case before winter (when navigation would be impossible). So twice he urges him to do his best to come. We must not play down the urgency of Paul’s affectionate desire to see Timothy. The same apostle who has set his love and hope upon the coming of Christ (8), nevertheless also longs for the coming of Timothy. ‘I long night and day to see you,’ he has written at the beginning of his letter, ‘that I may be filled with joy’ (1:4). The two longings are not incompatible. One sometimes meets super-spiritual people who claim that they never feel lonely and have no need of human friends, for the companionship of Christ satisfies all their needs. But human friendship is the loving provision of God for mankind. It was God himself who said in the beginning: ‘it is not good that the man should be alone’ (Gn. 2:18). Wonderful as are both the presence of the Lord Jesus every day and the prospect of his coming on the last day, they are not intended to be a substitute for human friendships.
Warm clothing is necessary to Paul, as well as companionship. So he urges Timothy: ‘When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas’ (13). It seems probable that the phailonēs (‘cloak’) was the equivalent of the Latin paenula, ‘an outer garment of heavy material, circular in shape with a hole in the middle for the head.’13 It was no doubt in anticipation of the coming winter (21) that Paul felt the need of the extra warmth it could give him. But who Carpus was and why Paul left his belongings with him in Troas, we can only guess. Bishop Moule conjectures that it was in the house of Carpus at Troas both that the ‘memorable Eucharist’ was held (Acts 20:1 ff.) and that years later Paul was arrested and carried off, with no opportunity to gather his possessions together.14
The third necessity Paul mentions is ‘the books, and above all the parchments’ (verse 13). The difference between the two is probably that the former were made of papyrus rather than parchment. These papyrus rolls may have been writing materials or his correspondence or some official documents, even perhaps his certificate of Roman citizenship. The parchments may conceivably have been unused (NEB, ‘my notebooks’). But it seems more probable that they were ‘books’ of some kind, and the most likely guess is ‘Paul’s version of the Old Testament in Greek, no small burden to carry around’,15 and/or ‘possibly official copies of the Lord’s words or early narratives of his life’.16
These, then, were Paul’s three conscious needs. Later he says that during his first defence in court ‘the Lord stood by me and gave me strength’ (17), and no doubt he enjoyed the companionship and strength of the Lord Jesus in his dungeon as well. Yet the help he obtained from his Lord was indirect as well as direct. He did not despise the use of means. Nor should we. When our spirit is lonely, we need friends. When our body is cold, we need clothing. When our mind is bored, we need books. To admit this is not unspiritual; it is human. These are the natural needs of mortal men and women. As Bishop Moule wisely says, man is ‘never for one moment denaturalized by grace’.17 We must not, then, deny our humanity or frailty, or pretend that we are made of other stuff than dust.
Of course some Christians today scorn reading and study altogether, and assert that they would not feel the need of books at any time, let alone in prison. Let Calvin answer them: ‘Still more does this passage refute the madness of the fanatics who despise books and condemn all reading and boast only of their enthusiasmous, their private inspirations by God. But we should note that this passage commends continual reading to all godly men as a thing from which they can profit.’18
Several commentators point out the historical parallel between Paul’s imprisonment in Rome and William Tyndale’s in Belgium nearly fifteen centuries later. Here is Handley Moule’s description of Tyndale and quotation from his letter:
‘In 1535, immured by the persecutor at Vilvorde in Belgium, he wrote, not long before his fiery martyrdom, a Latin letter to the Marquis of Bergen, Governor of the Castle: “I entreat your lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I must remain here for the winter you would beg the Commissary to be so kind as to send me, from the things of mine which he has, a warmer cap; I feel the cold painfully in my head. Also a warmer cloak, for the cloak I have is very thin. He has a woollen shirt of mine, if he will send it. But most of all, my Hebrew Bible, Grammar and Vocabulary, that I may spend my time in that pursuit.” ’19
b. Opposed by Alexander the coppersmith (verses 14, 15)
The second contributing factor to Paul’s ordeal was the fierce opposition he had sustained to himself and his message from a man named Alexander. We know that his trade was that of a ‘coppersmith’, or worker in bronze, for Paul so describes him. But we do not know his identity. It is improbable that Alexander the coppersmith was the same person as Alexander the heretic (1 Tim. 1:20) or Alexander the orator (Acts 19:33), for the name was a common one. Nor do we know what the ‘great harm’ was which he had done to the apostle. A. T. Hanson points out that, literally translated, Alexander ‘informed many evil things against me’ and that ‘the regular word for an informer is connected with this verb’.20 So some commentators suggest that Alexander was the informer responsible for Paul’s second arrest. If this happened at Troas, it might explain why Timothy, who will pass through Troas on his journey to Rome (13), is warned: ‘beware of him yourself’. But Alexander did more than inform: ‘he strongly opposed our message’. We may be quite sure that it was Paul’s concern for the truth of the message, and not personal pique or vindictiveness, which led him to express his belief (it is a statement according to the best mss, not a wish or a prayer): ‘the Lord will requite him for his deeds.’
c. Unsupported at his first defence (verses 16–18)
Some have thought that Paul’s ‘first defence’ is a reference to his first imprisonment and that the proclamation of the word to the Gentiles (which he mentions in the following verse) was due to his release from this imprisonment.21 The context seems, however, to require a reference to some more recent event. So most commentators understand his first defence to have been the first hearing or prima actio of his case, ‘the preliminary investigation preceding the formal trial’.22
Now Roman law would have permitted him to employ an advocate and call witnesses. But, as Alfred Plummer puts it, ‘among all the Christians in Rome there was not one who would stand at his side in court either to speak on his behalf, or to advise him in the conduct of his case, or to support him by a demonstration of sympathy’.23 ‘At my first defence no one took my part; all deserted me.’ Yet if ever an accused man needed help it was now. We are not told what charges had been laid against him. But we know from Tacitus, Pliny and other contemporary writers the kind of allegations which were being made against Christians at that time. They were supposed to be guilty of horrid crimes against the state and against civilized society. They were accused of ‘atheism’ (because they eschewed idolatry and emperor-worship), of cannibalism (because they spoke of eating Christ’s body), and even of a general ‘hatred of the human race’ (because of their supposed disloyalty to Caesar and perhaps because they had renounced the popular pleasures of sin). It may be that some of these charges were being levelled against Paul. Whatever the case for the prosecution, he had no-one to defend him but himself. Either because Christian friends could not or would not, he was unsupported and alone.
This moment, one might cautiously say, was Paul’s Gethsemane. Of course his agony was different from Christ’s. Yet like his Master before him he had to face his ordeal alone, for at the time of his greatest need he could say ‘all deserted me’, as it is written of Christ ‘they all forsook him and fled’ (Mk. 14:50). Lock goes even further and, noting nine verbal similarities between Psalm 22 and verses 10 and 16–18 of this chapter, asks: ‘had St. Paul, like his Master, been saying this Psalm in the hour of his desertion?’24 Certainly, again like his Master, he prayed that their sin might ‘not be charged against them’. There is no need, incidentally, to make out that there is an irreconcilable discrepancy between this prayer and the statement about Alexander two verses previously. The cases were quite different. For Alexander had actually spoken against the gospel from deliberate malice, whereas Paul’s friends in Rome had failed to speak at all, and their silence was due not to malice but to fear.
Nevertheless, once more like his Master, Paul knew that he was not alone. In anticipation of the coming desertion, Jesus said, ‘the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me’ (Jn. 16:32). Similarly Paul could say that, although ‘all deserted me’ (16), yet ‘the Lord stood by me and gave me strength’ (17) Christ’s presence at Paul’s side and his gift to him of inward strength (the verb is endynamoō as in 2:1 and Phil. 4:13) both fortified him to preach the gospel to all the Gentiles present and led to his rescue (at least temporarily) ‘from the lion’s mouth’.
There is much speculation about the identity of the ‘lion’. We can be certain that there is no reference to the lions of the amphitheatre, for as a Roman citizen there was never any question that this might be his fate. The early Greek commentators believed that Paul was referring obliquely to Nero, ‘on account of his cruel nature’,25 and A. T. Hanson points out that, according to Josephus, the news of the Emperor Tiberius’ death in AD 37 ‘reached Herod Agrippa in the cryptic form “the lion is dead” ’.26 Other guesses are that the lion is Satan (as in 1 Pet. 5:8), or Paul’s human prosecutor in court, or death, or, more generally still, the great danger in which his enemies had placed him (as in Pss. 22:21; 35:17). At all events Paul emerges from this incident as a New Testament Daniel for whose protection the Lord shut the lion’s mouth. In the future too, Paul goes on confidently, ‘the Lord will rescue me’, not indeed from death (for he is expecting to die, 6), but ‘from every evil’ outside God’s permitted will. He will also ‘save me for his heavenly kingdom’, though Nero may soon dispatch me from my earthly kingdom.
We are now in a position to see what a superb illustration the apostle is giving Timothy of his charge to ‘preach the word’. Paul is on trial for his life. He has been deserted by his friends (who have left him in the lurch or been unable to help him), opposed by his enemies and unsupported in his trial by any barrister or witness. So he is alone. Surely now he will think of himself for a change? Surely now he will betray at least a little self-pity? Surely now he will defend himself and plead his cause? Perhaps he did answer the charges laid against him, for he refers to the trial as his ‘defence’ (16). Yet even now, although in grave personal danger, facing the probability of a death sentence, his overmastering concern is not himself but Christ, not to be a witness in his own defence but a witness to Christ, not to plead his own cause but the cause of Jesus Christ.
In one of the highest tribunals of the empire, before his judges and perhaps before the emperor himself, no doubt with a large crowd of the general public present, Paul ‘preached the word’. Or, as he himself expresses it: ‘the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it’. If ever there has been a sermon preached ‘out of season’, this was it!
All he tells us about its content is that he ‘fully preached the kērygma’. That is, he took the opportunity to expound the gospel in its fullness, the good news of Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, reigning and coming again. Only because of this could he claim as he has done ‘I have finished the race’ (7).
Alfred Plummer gives a graphic description of the scene as he envisages it:
‘It is quite possible that this event, which the Apostle of the Gentiles regards as the completing act of his own mission and ministry, took place in the forum itself … But at any rate it would be held in a court to which the public had access; and the Roman public at this time was the most representative in the world … In that representative city and before that representative audience he preached Christ; and through those who were present and heard him the fact would be made known throughout the civilized world that in the imperial city and before the imperial bench the Apostle of Christ had proclaimed the coming of his kingdom.’27
This, then, is to be Timothy’s model. He has in past days followed Paul in his doctrine, conduct and sufferings (3:10, 11); he could safely follow Paul’s example in this also. For in issuing the solemn charge to Timothy to preach the word, and do it urgently, Paul has not evaded the challenge himself. On the contrary, he has enforced his charge, not only from Christ’s coming, the contemporary scene and his impending death, but also by the shining example he has himself just set in the imperial court at a moment of great personal loneliness and peril.
d. Conclusion
Underlying this whole letter is Paul’s basic conviction that God has spoken through his prophets and apostles, and that this unique revelation—‘the faith’, ‘the truth’, ‘the word’, ‘the gospel’, ‘the sound teaching’—has been committed to the church as a sacred treasure or ‘deposit’.
Now the apostle, who throughout his three decades of active ministry has faithfully delivered to others what he himself had received, is on his death bed. He is on the very point of being sacrificed. He seems to have caught a glimpse with his mind’s eye of the gleaming steel of the executioner’s sword. So he burns with a passionate longing that Timothy, his young but trusted lieutenant, will step into his shoes, carry on from where he has had to stop, and pass on the torch to others.
Paul is fully alert to the difficulties, however, both internal and external. Timothy himself is inexperienced, infirm and shy. The world’s opposition is strong and subtle. And behind these things stands the devil, bent on ‘taking men alive’ and keeping them prisoner. For the devil hates the gospel and uses all his strength and cunning to obstruct its progress, now by perverting it in the mouths of those who preach it, now by frightening them into silence through persecution or ridicule, now by persuading them to advance beyond it into some fancy novelty, now by making them so busy with defending the gospel that they have no time to proclaim it.
So then, knowing the sacred deposit entrusted to him, the imminence of his own martyrdom, the natural weaknesses of Timothy, the opposition of the world and the extreme subtlety of Satan, Paul issues to Timothy his fourfold charge regarding the gospel—to guard it (because it is a priceless treasure), to suffer for it (because it is a stumbling-block to the proud), to continue in it (because it is the truth of God) and to proclaim it (because it is good news of salvation).
Timothy was called to be faithful in his generation; where are the men and women who will be faithful in ours? They are urgently needed. No doubt our response will be: ‘who is sufficient for these things?’ If so, we need to consider two brief expressions in the final verses of the letter, which I have so far passed by.
First in verse 22: ‘The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.’ These are the very last recorded words of the apostle. If he has been dictating thus far (perhaps to Luke), possibly now he takes the pen himself and writes this as his autograph. May ‘the Lord be with you’ (singular), he prays, as he has been with me during my trial (17). And may ‘grace (the word in which all Paul’s theology is distilled) be with you’. This time the pronoun ‘you’ is plural, which ‘recognizes that the letter was in fact destined for public use’.28 It was directed to the whole church. It is directed to us today.
Then in verse 18 we read, ‘To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.’ It would be difficult to find a better summary than these two sentences of the apostle’s life and ambition. First, he received grace from Christ. Then he returned glory to Christ. ‘From him grace; to him glory.’ In all our Christian life and service we should desire no other philosophy than this.