Day 319: 2 Timothy 4:1–8

I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (vv. 6–7).

Paul wasn’t just pulling a word picture out of a hat when he uttered the statement, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7 hcsb). Anyone in the Roman Empire would know exactly what he was talking about. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised, in fact, if these words spread and ultimately hastened his death.

In ad 67, the year of Paul’s death, Nero had the audacity to enter himself in the Olympic games. Mind you, Olympic athletes trained all their lives for the games. The thirty-year-old, soft-bellied emperor used medications to induce vomiting rather than exercise to control his weight.64 He was in pitiful shape and ill prepared, but who would dare tell him he could not compete? He cast himself on a chariot at Olympia and drove a ten-horse team. “He fell from the chariot and had to be helped in again; but, though he failed to stay the course and retired before the finish, the judges nevertheless awarded him the prize.”65

Nero did not finish the race. Nevertheless, a wreath was placed on his head, and he was hailed the victor. He showed his gratitude for their cooperation in the ridiculous scam by exempting Greece from taxation. For his processional entry into Rome he chose the chariot Augustus had used in his triumph in a former age, and he wore a Greek mantle spangled with gold stars over a purple robe. The Olympic wreath was on his head. “Victims were sacrificed in his honour all along the route.”66 You can be fairly certain they were from a despised group of people commonly called Chrestiani, or Christians.

Needless to say, word of the humiliating victory spread faster than the fire of AD 64. Soon after Nero returned to Rome, the apostle wrote his stirring final testimony. The edict was signed for his execution.

Yet God did not allow the deaths of His beloved apostles to overshadow their lives. Their departures were intimate encounters between themselves and the One for whom they laid down their lives. Teaching handed down through the ages tells us two soldiers by the name of Ferega and Parthemius brought Paul word of his death. They approached him and asked for his prayers that they might also believe in his Christ. Having received life from his instruction, they then led Paul out of the city to his death.67 Traditional teaching claims he prayed just before his execution. At this point I would have trouble believing anything different. Wouldn’t you?

After praying, the apostle Paul gave his neck to the sword. But before his earthly tent had time to collapse to the ground, his feet stood on holy ground. His eyes, possibly scarred and blurred from a glorious light on a Damascus road, saw their first crystal-clear vision in thirty years. Paul himself had written, “For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12 hcsb). Faith became sight, and the raptured saint saw Christ’s face. He beheld the ultimate surpassing glory.

No thought of beatings. No questions of timing. No pleas for vengeance. No list of requests. Just the sight of unabashed, unhindered, unveiled glory. And he had not yet looked past His face—“God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6 hcsb). He was seeing the face he had waited thirty years to see. The Righteous Judge raised a wreath of righteousness and placed it on the head of His faithful servant. He had finished the race. And more impressively, he had kept the faith. Never doubt the difference.

Paul once wrote, “Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12 hcsb). The partial knowledge of Christ that Paul had acquired in his lifetime was the same knowledge he claimed to be worth every loss (see Phil. 3:8–10). Oh, my friend, if partial knowledge of the Lord Jesus is worth every loss, what then will full knowledge be like? I cry out with our brother Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33 hcsb). One day the prayer of the apostle will be answered for all of us. We will indeed “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ . . . and know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18–19).

Until then, may God find us faithful, unstoppable servants of the One who saved us, waiting to hang our hats on heaven’s door. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Rom. 8:38–39 hcsb).

Most Worthy Lord,

make me a drink offering

and take me not home

until the cup is overturned

the glass broken

and every drop loosed

for Your glory.