2 Timothy 4

2 Timothy 4:1-22

Division 5. (2 Timothy 4:1-22.)The departure of Paul. The last division is very characteristic of the whole epistle. It brings before us explicitly that which was before the apostle himself in everything he wrote here -his own departure from that scene in which he had so well fought the fight of faith and had now finished his course. The sorrow that he might have in his soul now was only for those he was leaving, and even that is almost swallowed up in the joyful consciousness of with Whom he was leaving them. Whatever might be, in fact, the declension that had begun, and the disastrous days which were before the Church, still, even so, the One to whom he was now going was Master of every circumstance, and would know how to glorify Himself as to all that could possibly come; aye, even as to the mistakes and failure and sins of His people; and to use even the apparently triumphant power of the enemy to do this. The whole epistle is characterized in this way by the spirit of power and of joy, of which he has spoken to Timothy; and it is this that gave him, and will give us, that sound mind which is the accompaniment of such a spirit. He in no wise made light of any of the evil; he could not do that.

Evil remains evil, though God must glorify Himself about it; but, for the soul that in the consciousness of it turns to Him, there remains always a living, abiding and eternal God; and if we are with Him, there will be with us, of necessity, the joy of the final triumph all the way through. Yet this departure of Paul characterizes the state of things in which we are left; no more with apostolic power or with those whom God used as the instruments of His revelation, but in weakness, cleaving fast to that written Word only, without apparent positive intervention in our behalf.

1. But the word is, all the more, “Be strong.” The difficulties are but to summon forth the strength which must indeed be in God, or it will be all too little. But He cannot fail us; and thus the apostle exhorts the disciple here, in view of One who is about to judge the living and the dead, and to appear Himself in order to take that kingdom, which will never be right save when it is in His hands absolutely. He is to “preach the Word, be urgent in season, out of season, to convict, rebuke, encourage, with all long-suffering and doctrine;” all the more that “the time will be when men will not bear sound doctrine, but after their own lusts will heap to themselves teachers, having an itching ear, and will turn away their ear from the truth and turn to fables.” How plain that Timothy’s consolation is not to be drawn from circumstances, but from those eternal realities which we need to have ever before us, but which, as we realize them, possess and command the soul, imparting to it the abiding character of that eternity to which they belong. The judgment of the living, with many, has but little place as distinguished from that judgment of the dead, which has comparatively much less place in Scripture. The great fact kept before us is that Christ is coming; but at that coming, He will judge the living and not yet the dead, and the forgetfulness of His coming as a constant expectation is that which has, in fact, put the judgment as a whole into the far-off distance, while it has confounded saint with sinner, and lost, therefore, the distinguishing blessing of faith in Christ. The judgment of the living plainly connects with the appearing of Christ; that of the dead, with the kingdom that follows it. The apostle urges these upon Timothy as what would, amid all the difficulties of the way, be his strength and assurance. It is always according to Scripture, “yet, but a little while, and He that will come shall come, and shall not tarry.” We look back and see how long it has been, and we take this to make the distance behind us put distance into that which is before us. The apostle’s way for us would be rather that we should say, “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand.” We may, after all, go to the Lord before He comes to us, but we shall not have missed the good of having been in the meanwhile “like unto men that wait for their Lord.” The whole character of our Christianity will be affected by our “holding fast,” or practically losing sight of His coming, as our constant expectation.

With the sense of all this upon his soul, Timothy was to preach the Word, not the gospel simply, but the whole Word committed to him. How rare a thing is this!

How few, in fact, take up the Word as a whole, to put it honestly in its entirety -so far as we may be able, to bring it all before the souls of others! Even with those who are not lacking in their apprehension of the gospel, that very gospel may be taken so as to limit the truth preached, and to get rid of how much that God certainly has in His own wisdom given for our instruction! How important a thing to be able to say, as Paul could say, that we have kept nothing back, but that, in the assurance that God has given us His Word, we have preached that Word faithfully! Timothy was to do this with the utmost urgency, “in season, out of season;” that is, there was to be no season at all; any time was the right time. That, of course, does not mean that among those outside, and, alas, under the power of Satan, there are not seasons, as other texts have shown us, which have to be laid hold of in order to reach those who at other times may be inaccessible; but amongst the people of God especially (and when we speak of preaching the Word, we must, of course, take these all in) Satan has no rightful power to shut out the truth from any. We need wisdom still, of course, in ministering the Word, according to the need which we may find in souls, and according to what they may be able to bear of it; but still the Word is for all times and for all the people of God, and we cannot count those His people who have no ears to hear it. Again, we find conviction and rebuke as that which would necessarily spring -and, one may say, in the very first place -out of the preaching of the Word. Encouragement follows, but only for those who have hearts to accept whatever correction the word of God may bring. With souls that refuse the discipline of it, there can be no comfort rightly or safely given. Amid it all, there would be need of all long-suffering and constant teaching, all the more because the time would come when they would not bear sound teaching; but, on the contrary, after their own lusts, would heap to themselves teachers. Is it not true that the systems into which we have so largely got, really favor this devotion of people to teachers of their own choice, when they should have ears for every message that comes from God, whoever the messenger may be? But, ah, walls and fences shut out those who have not special liberty to come in, and permit the hearers inside to sit down undisturbed by that which, perhaps, is the very thing that God would have them hear. The general effect would be, as the apostle says here, to turn away the ears from the truth, and to turn them to fables. 2. Timothy, then, was to be sober in all things, to “suffer affliction,” and to “do the work of an evangelist,” to make full proof of his ministry in every part. Paul himself was leaving him. “I am already being poured out,” he says -his own beautiful reference, no doubt, as we find in Philippians, to the drink-offering poured out upon the sacrifice. That which was used in it was the wine of joy, and the apostle so expresses it to the Philippians. If he was poured out upon the sacrifice and service of their faith, he would joy and rejoice with them all. Here it is not exactly the being poured out upon the sacrifice of others, but there is the same joy in it, as he contemplates the time of his departure having come.

It was that “departing and being with Christ,” of which he has already told us that it was “far better.” Conflict he had had enough, but, even so, it had been a good fight. The fight was not to be regretted, but looked back upon with satisfaction.

Nevertheless, it was a joy to have finished the course, and to realize that the faith which had been committed to him he had, by the grace of God, kept from all that would assail it. The crown of righteousness was now awaiting him from the Lord, the righteous Judge; when, indeed, not only he will receive his recompense, but also, as he says here, “all those who love His appearing.” It is Christ’s appearing that in this connection is most suited to what he has before him, for it is at His appearing that He gets what is His own, and when everything will appear in its true character. And then He bestows the rewards. This is always the way in which Scripture connects these things. He comes to take us to Himself; but the rewards are put rather as in connection with the kingdom. Every one in it will receive his place in due recognition of the work that he has done.

There are, of course, things which are common to all the people of God, and which we have got to keep carefully apart from the thought of their being in this sense a reward at all. They are the reward of Christ’s work indeed; but there has been here great confusion.

The place in the Father’s house is not a place which is determined by the value of whatever work we have been enabled to do. The nearness of children to the Father is not according to the appraisal of their work, but the outflow of His own heart towards those who are begotten of His own Spirit, and all of them, in this, the mere subjects of divine grace. So, too, the belonging to Christ as members of His body is the portion of all the saints of the present time; all make part of the bride, of which the apostle speaks as that Church which He loves, and for which He has given Himself. These are things which have been more or less confounded on the part of those from whom we should have little expected it. The fruit of Christ’s work must also be, of necessity, far beyond any fruit of our own; and thus it is a comfort indeed to realize that that which we shall have and enjoy together is far beyond anything that can possibly distinguish us from one another. God’s best gifts, even in nature, are those that He bestows most widely; and yet we are not to make light of those special rewards of which Scripture certainly does not make light, and which have so much their sweetness from the fact of their coming from His hand who has Himself fought the great fight and entered into His rest. But to love His appearing goes much further than the thought of any reward that one may find at that time. His appearing is that which is to bring the Day for the whole earth. It is the time when evil is to be put down with a strong hand, but that the love of God may be able to show itself according to His desire. It is the time when Christ Himself will be glorified, and everything put in subjection under His feet. Whatever special appeal there may be to us in the thought of our being caught up to meet Him in the air, yet, if we look at Scripture, we shall find that the appearing of the Lord, or His revelation, is that which is much more dwelt upon; and we can understand it surely in this way. We shall be with Him in that Day, and how blessed will it be to see the rightful King upon His throne, the earth subject to Him whom it has refused; the wilderness at His coming breaking out into blossom and harvest, and everything in the hands of Him who is the “Father of eternity,” who is to fashion all things according to the Father’s will, so that they shall be eternal! Righteousness will then, indeed, be, at last, upon an absolute throne, and the crown of righteousness be the recompense of all who love His appearing. 3. The apostle goes on now to what is more personal to himself. We see the circumstances in which he is, and how little they can minister of comfort to him. Demas, mentioned elsewhere as a fellow-laborer, had now forsaken him, drawn away by the love of the present age, and was in Thessalonica. Cresces had gone to Galatia, Titus was in Dalmatia. There is no reproach attaching to their absence from him, but they were absent. Only Luke, the so constant companion of his journeys and labors, as the Acts shows him -Luke was with him. There is a joyful word with regard to Mark, whom he desires Timothy to bring with him as one serviceable to him for ministry.

Tychicus he had himself sent to Ephesus. He needs for his comfort the cloak which he had left behind in Troas, with Carpus; and he has need of his books, especially the parchments, the material of which naturally points out the importance of what was written upon them. He remembers the evil done him by Alexander the smith, probably the one whom we have seen at Ephesus. The Lord would recompense him according to his works; but Timothy had need to be upon his guard against him as one who had greatly withstood the apostle’s words. More sorrowfully still, but in another spirit, he thinks of that first answer of his before the Roman Emperor, in which no man, even from among the brethren, stood with him, but all forsook him. He prays that it may not be laid to their charge.

But there was One who stood with him, in Himself all-sufficient in place of any others; and He made this the very opportunity that the preaching should be fully known, and the nations should hear it; and for that time he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. But, indeed, from every evil work He would deliver him, and preserve him unto His heavenly kingdom.

The deliverance might take, as is plain, very different forms, and that which was, after all, to be his great deliverance might seem to be the very reverse; but God makes all things work together for good to those that love Him, and, His own soul, conscious of this nearing departure, breaks out in praise to Him to whom shall be the glory of the ages of ages. He greets finally Prisca and Aquila, his old companions, and the house of the Onesiphorus of whom we have heard him speaking. Erastus had remained in Corinth, and Trophimus he had left in Miletus sick. We see that whatever miraculous power was in the Church, it was not made use of to make every saint comfortable in this life, nor, necessarily, to enable him to minister to the comfort of others either. The apostle felt, no doubt, the absence of Trophimus; but he has not a word of reproof for him, nor a thought of murmuring with regard to it. But his heart longs once more to see Timothy, and again he bids him use diligence to come to him. He closes with greetings from those around him and from all the brethren, and prays that the Lord might be with his spirit, energizing and controlling it. He ends with a prayer for him, that he might have the grace at all times so needful.