The Farewell Appeal

Bur watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered. A.V.

But thou, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do an evangelist’s work, fully discharge thy ministry. For I am already being poured out upon the altar as a drink-offering.

Here again we have an argument for Timothy’s devotion and diligence drawn not from sunshine but from shadow. St. Paul has just charged him to preach the Word because dark days were coming in the Church. Now he tells him to rise up afresh to suffer and to labour because he, Paul, was just about to be ‘taken from the head’ of his dear Timothy. He was ‘being poured upon the altar’ of martyrdeath; he was ‘being bated’; his life-blood was so soon to be shed that it might be said to be already flowing, like the wine of libation dropped upon the sacrifice.

This vivid image is an echo from the thoughts of long years before. In that happier first captivity, in the ‘hired house,’ he had written just so to the Philippians (Phil. iv. 17); ‘Yea, even if I am being poured out as a drink-offering upon the sacrifice and the service of your faith, I joy, and I rejoice with you.’

But the metaphor here after all meant for Timothy

The Farewell Appeal

no poetic picture but just this tremendous fact, that 2 Mee iv. St. Paul was soon to die, and he to be left orphaned 5, 6.

of that wonderful companionship. In earlier chapters ‘ Seeds we have noticed once and again how often this dying =

Letter utters or implies that thought; how we feel

it to be wet here and there with the tears of a mortal

farewell, tears shed by the writer as his heart feels

the tears of the receiver. And be sure that this profound sympathy is not absent here; St. Paul

knows here as elsewhere the anguish which his

death will mean for his son. But here the tender

thought passes upward at once into the heroic, or

let us rather say, for it is more Christian to say so,

into the believing, into the devoted. St. Paul is now

in act to be ‘poured out’; therefore let Timothy

arise, as if he had never done it before, to ‘be

sober,’ and to accept suffering with all his heart,

and to labour in the Gospel to the end.

It is the holy logic, conclusive to the believing

heart, which JeEHovaH Himself used so very long before with Joshua (Josh. i. 2); ‘Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan.’ The Master was about to ‘bury his workman,’ but He would be present as ever to ‘carry on His work.’ And He had need of Timothy that He might do it. And to do it, let us be sure, would be for Timothy not only the clearest duty but the most effectual and benignant balm.

Now, what is the command to him which this Four argument from death and loss is intended to enforce? H3zting Look at it word by word; and if my reader is a words. commissioned minister of Christ, let him look at

2 Tim. iv. it with a special scrutiny. First, ‘be sober in

5, 6.

all things’: — the Greek points directly to that ‘sobriety’ which is the opposite to the fumes and bewilderment of the drunkard. Not the so-called sobriety which often means a timid refusal to give the will and energies wholly over to God, the powntde-zéle of the worldling, but rather the sobriety which means a soul fully awake, deliberately conscious of eternal realities, ‘looking at the things which are not. seen’ (2 Cor. iv. 18), ‘seeing Him which is invisible’ (Heb. xi. 27), and accordingly alive to the life which his bond-servant must live, ‘yielded unto God.’ Then, secondly, ‘endure hardship’; do not be the carpet-knight who never really sacrifices and suffers. For such a Lord, and for the dear souls for which He died, be willing to lead a life which daily dies to self-indulgence and to that self-protection which, whether for spirit or for body, shuns exhaustion, or pain, or sorrow, as ‘strange things happening to you.’ Then, further, ‘do an evangelist’s work’; remember that you are called not to be the mere theorist of a system however true, or the mere guardian and celebrator of ordinances however sacred, but the evangelist, the message-bearer of the blessed Christ to living (and dying) human hearts; the man who for himself ‘knows whom he has believed,’ and so has an immediate and absolute certainty that Hr is the Evangelium, the Good Tidings, for all who want Him and who find Him, and longs to bring them and Him together, loving Him and them. Lastly, ‘fully discharge thy ministry’; let it so fill thy life that thy life may all serve to fill it

The Farewell Appeal

fully out, that ‘all thy studies may be drawn that 2 Tim. iv. way, and that all men may see that thou, O man 5y 6

of God, O man of Christ, hast only one ruling

passion, only one master aim, even to ‘glorify Him

on the earth and to finish the work which He gave

thee to do’ (Joh. xvii. 4).

2 Tim. iv.
6.

Christian
Death.

The
Libation.