2 Timothy 4:6-8

Hey, everybody, welcome back.
Thanks for joining us again as we continue through 2 Timothy.
We’re into chapter 4.
We pick up in verse 6 today.
Michael, if there is a sort of classic
Paul
passage in 2 Timothy,
I think you could make the case that today is it.
A very interesting change of direction.
We leave teaching for a moment.
This turns very personal.
It turns very introspective.
It’s celebrative.
I mean, there’s celebration in it,
but it’s just a really interesting passage.
And this is not something that is typical of Paul’s letters.
There’s not a section like this
in every one of them.
There’s teaching.
There’s greetings.
There’s goodbyes.
But this, I think, stands out as unusual,
though there are a couple who have something like it.
But let me read it for you.
Then we can talk more about it.
“As for me,
I’m already being poured out as a libation,
and the time of my departure has come.
I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.
From now on, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord the righteous judge will give me on that day,
and not only to me,
but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Very interesting that we have Paul
essentially reflecting on the end of his life.
He seems convinced that his time is short.
At some point,
he is preparing the church.
Remember that this will be read out loud,
and he knows that.
He’s preparing the church for that event.
But this is just a very interesting
moment where Paul, as an older man,
looks at where he is and to some extent looks back on where he’s
been and speaks transitionally about that.
I think these words are often quoted in Paul,
and I think they’re profound.
“I fought the good fight,
finished the race,
and I have kept the faith.” In that,
we’ve admitted many times on this Bible study,
there’s mixed reviews on Paul,
but I think in these words,
we see something that we can all aspire to.
If we reach the end of our
days and we can say similar things in good conscience about ourselves,
then I would say
that we have arrived at a good place and at a realistic place.
And I think Paul really
gives us some things to think about here.
So, we are nearing the end of the book,
so that is worth noting that we’re coming here to some substantial concluding kinds of words.
And I really want to turn your attention here because once again, context matters.
Let’s make sure that we all see what’s going on here.
Verse 5,
he writes to Timothy,
“As for you,
be sober and do your suffering,
do the work of an evangelist,
and carry out your ministry fully.”
We talked about those things yesterday,
so if you missed that conversation,
jump back and listen to that for sure.
But now,
verse 5, “As for you, Timothy,” now verse 6,
where we’re at today,
“As for me,
I am already being poured out as a libation.” This is maybe one of the best
summaries of the letter.
It’s at this intersection point where we see that Paul is as a wiser, more experienced apostle,
offering counsel and wisdom to a younger apostle.
As he comes to offer some concluding notes,
we see that when he reflects on his own life,
the very thing that he’s calling Timothy to,
he sees as the arc of his own life.
He’s saying, “I have done that enduring.
I have seen the suffering.
I have done the work of an evangelist,
and now the time has come.
I fought the good fight.
I finished my race.” And
there is something deeply inspiring about those individuals.
I’m sure all of us have had at least one of these
people in our life who we could say we look at as finishing their own race.
We look at them,
and we see in their life
what maybe from our own vantage today might even look impossible.
Clint,
if you’re young and you’re going through some struggles,
you might say, “There’s no way I get to where they are.” And those individuals,
those men and women of faith who have been faithful,
who have continued on in the difficult process of submitting to Jesus Christ to growing
in the deeper fruit of the faith,
when you see what that works over a lifetime and after years
and years of service,
I think that that does bring a kind of special inspiration.
And here, I think Paul is using it rhetorically.
He’s using a beautiful metaphor here,
that idea of finishing the race.
But this is not just an inspirational speech.
When he talks about finishing the race,
he means running this long race we call the faith,
this real and meaningful thing.
And Paul is able to use that in a way that I think not only teaches Timothy,
but if we’re willing to
hear it teaches us.
One of the things that makes this passage so interesting,
Michael, is I think it functions at a lot of layers.
As you pointed out, as for you,
as for me, as he’s calling a
young servant into faithful leadership,
he is then also saying,
“I’m about done.
I’m moving out of the picture.” And there’s an element of passing the torch in that,
maybe of sort of
handing off the baton.
My time has come.
My departure has come.
I’ve fought the fight.
I’ve finished the race.
And there’s reserved for me a crown of righteousness.
There is a word
to a young person there that is interesting.
I think there is also an example to a young person.
As you and I,
as people who have the opportunity to be involved in various parts of people’s lives,
I reflect in my own ministry of how inspiring it has been
to watch people face the end of their
life with courage and faith.
And that doesn’t mean that it’s easy.
It certainly doesn’t mean that it’s comfortable.
But
to see people
whose end is at hand
say things like,
“The crown is reserved for me.
I’ve fought the good fight.
I’ve kept the faith.
I’m ready to go.”
There is something,
as a younger person,
there’s something humbling.
There’s something amazing.
There’s something instructive
in that.
And that’s not earned in that moment.
That’s earned
in the decades and decades that lead up to it.
Nobody just gets there on their deathbed.
That has long roots.
And I think that
perhaps what Paul is doing is
either purposefully or just by
nature setting Timothy an example of what it means to have faith and confidence in the promise,
not only from the standpoint of this gift of righteousness,
but just the ability to say,
“My time may be done,
and
that’s not a bad thing in my eyes.”
There’s some language here,
Clint, that is interesting too.
The verse 8 language,
“Reserved for me the crown of righteousness.”
That doesn’t actually get used in the New
Testament as often as you might think it does.
There’s a kind of popular Christian kind of
vocabularies for any of the ideas.
You know, “I got an extra jewel in my crown,” or “I’ve
heard these kinds of things being in the church for my whole life.” The language of what we get
on the other side of eternity doesn’t happen all that often in the scriptures.
The scriptures tend to be far more interested in our
present living out of the faith,
and they are what will be on
the other side of being with God.
What I find interesting about this crown is that it has been
earned not in all of the mountaintops,
but rather in the things that we’ve named throughout this
entire study.
They’re recognizing the difficult moments when one has to stand up and say difficult
words to those who are misleading,
the faithful,
or the moments in which we affirm,
“Hey, their suffering is part of the Christian life.
We just read this week persecution is a part of the deal.”
And that persecution is,
in some ways, more deeply,
painfully found within the church family
than it is outside of it.
There’s a kind of
richness to this perspective that is so easy
to read and move beyond,
to just sort of pick up and to keep on reading.
And we miss, Clint,
that the crown, which we might initially think is this beautiful, positive thing,
is in some ways
like the crown of thorns that Jesus wore.
The crown, of course, it comes after a life of faithfulness,
but to use your words,
that wasn’t earned at the end.
It was earned the whole way.
And there’s something full.
I’m struggling to find the words.
There’s something deeply human
about the recognition that it’s not just about working for a mansion on the other side.
It’s about living our lives in such a way that that crown is fitted over and over and over again.
And that looks like the gifts we’ve talked about of grace,
of forgiveness,
of peace.
We’ve named this many times in the study.
But as Paul uses his own life as a metaphor for the gospel,
we see these themes that have come up before now interworked into his own being,
his own faith.
It’s beautiful.
Yeah, I don’t know if this is helpful,
Michael, but throughout this letter and the first letter,
if you’ve been with us,
you might remember there have been these passing references to athletic events,
to physical training and to running a race.
And here we have it again.
I’ve finished the race.
I’ve kept the pledge,
the faith.
And now there is a result.
What do the finishers of the race get?
They get a crown.
And what do they have to do to get it?
They have to finish.
They have to run the whole thing.
They can’t pull off halfway.
They have to persevere.
They have to endure.
They have to do exactly the things that Paul has told Timothy
are a part of serving the church.
And who gives it to them?
The judge, literally the one who judges the race.
In this case,
it is a righteous judge who gives a crown of righteousness on the day
that you cross the finish line.
And not everybody sees things through an athletic
lens, but I think that metaphor is helpful here.
And I think Paul kind of very subtly wraps it into this last chapter
as we move toward closing the letter.
And he’s done that.
He’s done that in other places.
And I think here we kind of see where he’s been going with it.
No, this is very much a preacher at work.
It’s just something worth pointing out.
Yes, there’s a lot of eye language here.
That’s but notice at the very end of verse eight here,
not only me,
but to all who have longed for his appearing.
That is the move of a preacher.
You’re able to move instinctively from this isn’t about
me to whatever extent that was an illustration.
This is about all of us, the longing,
the desiring, the living in faithfulness,
the seeking
to move forward.
There’s an inclusiveness to what Paul
saying here that we shouldn’t miss.
It’s not in some ways him just trying to point the finger
towards himself.
This is truly and wholeheartedly intended to be a follow me as I follow Christ kind of encouragement.
It’s hey, Timothy,
keep on going.
Leadership can be hard.
Living in Christian community,
it can be hard.
But take each day,
take each practice, take every
step that you need to take,
even through life’s most difficult valleys.
And when you do that,
you’re going to be longing for that day of appearing when you too will finish the race,
when you to receive your crown that has been worked in the season.
If anything, Clint,
this is a call to us today,
thousands of years removed,
continuing to do the same work.
Fundamentally, we’re joining our our hopes and our faith in the same direction that Paul was
at this moment of writing has seen years the end of his life.
That’s where Scripture lists off the page and becomes practical.
It lives in our bones.
It lives in our choices.
We find it in what we say to one another.
It’s the very present hope that what God is doing is
moving us towards that perfect day in which all of this is knit together.
I think there’s a very
interesting fork in the road, Michael.
So essentially, Paul’s saying,
“I’m confident.
When I finish my race,
I’ll receive the crown.
I trust the righteous judge.” And then,
as you point out,
he moves to, and not just me.
We will all, all the faithful,
all those who finish
their race, all those who fight the good fight will get that on that day.
And historically,
maybe that day has been read to mean on the final day,
the day, the day of Christ’s return.
But I think,
given what Paul is saying here,
it’s not inappropriate to think of that we all have that
day when our race finishes.
Each of us has at some point in our future a last day,
a finish line.
And when we cross it,
how do we do so?
How do we finish our race?
How do we close out
those last rounds of the good fight?
How is it that we move forward through our life,
yes, in view of the big day,
but also with an eye on all of our last days and what it means for us
as we are challenged to be able with Paul to say,
“I know that on that day,
I receive a crown of
righteousness, not because I’m righteous,
but because the righteous judge has given it to me.” And
if I were preaching this passage,
Michael, I’d be really tempted to land on that side of
the fence versus the second coming day, which is important.
But I think that I like the personal
word.
I like the personal challenge.
And I think it’s in keeping with what Paul’s trying to do in this text.
Clint, I’ve always thought that Christian funerals are really interesting business,
because in some ways,
when Christians show up to celebrate the life of one who has died,
we’re trying to do,
at our best, we’re trying to do two things that don’t work together.
On one hand,
we come to grieve,
which is what one does.
When we lose,
we really lose.
We lose a loved one.
We lose someone who we deeply care about.
The response to love that has been broken is grief.
And so we come to that service with grief.
At the same time,
as we acknowledge that,
we stand
facing death and say hope.
We stand facing death and we say life.
We say life eternal,
that this isn’t the end.
There’s a kind of stick-it-to-the-manness to Christian funerals,
which I think should inform our Christian life.
In other words, when we look at someone like Paul,
who’s writing here about that day,
Christians don’t need afraid of death.
Now,
that does not take away that death takes something from us.
Certainly, when we lose someone or when our loved ones lose us,
there will be grief.
On the other hand,
that day is also a day of crowning.
It’s also a day of victory.
These things live together.
And it’s the messy,
complicated, sort of binary nature of that, that Christians live with both,
that I’ve always appreciated, Clint.
There’s deep don’t allow that reality to define what God can do.
And together, these things make, I think, an entirely different picture than one of those left to their own devices.
There’s a verse in which Paul writes he wants the church to be informed about those who have died
so that they don’t grieve as those who have no hope.
And I’ve always heard in that two things,
Michael, that Paul gives us permission to grieve.
There are Christians who think
we shouldn’t be sad when someone dies because of what they gain.
But I think that doesn’t
acknowledge what we lose.
I think sadness, of course, is a reflection to losing someone you love.
However,
our grief as believers should be tempered with hope.
It should be a recognition of the pain of loss and a celebration of the promise of gain simultaneously.
And I have always,
not always,
I have come to admire that about the funeral.
In the Christian tradition,
we do something that almost,
I think the funeral in some ways is the most
unique and the most Christian thing that we do.
And let me unpack that.
What I mean is,
when we do a marriage,
there are other traditions that marry people.
There are other religions that
marry people.
There are secular weddings,
and people celebrate love,
right?
I mean, people are,
they do what we do.
We do it with a particular bit.
When we celebrate and give thanks,
the same is true.
But only the Christian funeral says,
“We believe about this person,
that they are not gone,
that this is not the end of our story.” That’s not true
in other forms of grieving.
That’s not true for people that don’t have a vantage point
of Christian faith.
They can join us in saying,
“This person’s gone.” But they stop short of
saying what we go on to say,
which is,
we trust that in Jesus Christ and the mercy of God,
there is life on the other side of death.
And that really is a
uniquely Christian claim.
And I think each funeral then asks us at some level,
what do we really believe about these
things?
The funeral sort of puts us in very close proximity to those foundational and fundamental
questions of our own faith.
And that doesn’t make them easy.
In fact, it makes them more difficult.
But I do think it makes them profound.
And I do think that the funeral,
among all the things we
do as Christians, I think the funeral is the one that in my experience most loudly asks,
“What do you really hold true about this life and the next life?” And I respect it for that.
I hope that there’s encouragement in this.
The truth is that it’s natural to be human,
to come to the late stages of
our race and to have lots of doubts and fears and anxieties and questions.
Wherever you are in your own life and your own faith,
know that God is faithful to
complete the work that God has begun.
And the crown talked about here is not one that Paul has earned,
but rather one that Paul has faithfully trusted.
And there’s a great gift in that.
So wherever you are, be encouraged this day.
And we look forward as you join with us tomorrow as we continue on.
Thanks, everybody.