6 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
7 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:
8 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
Introduction
Two friends were talking and one said to the other, “What were your father’s last words?” The friend replied, “He didn’t have any. Mother was with him till the end.”
Everybody has last words. Some are trivial, but some are immortal. We remember the words of Nathan Hale, the patriot: “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” We remember the words of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as he was being stoned to death: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). We remember the last words of Jesus: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). But perhaps the most memorable of all last words were those spoken by the apostle Paul. We have an account of them in the 2 Timothy 4:6-8. He says, “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”
The apostle Paul wrote the book of 2 Timothy. It was his parting challenge to young Timothy. Paul knew that he was at the end of his life. His last days were ahead, death was awaiting and the mantle of leadership would soon pass on to someone else. And so throughout this book he has been challenging this young man to shoulder up, brace up, to be ready for the stiff fight that would be his as the leader of the people of God.
In chapter 4 Paul comes to this great final challenge of his. He says, “Timothy, I want you to preach the word, to be instant in season and out of season, to reprove and to rebuke and to resort with all longsuffering and patience. Timothy, I want you to always do the work of an evangelist, to keep bringing people to Jesus Christ for as long as you live.”
And having issued this great challenge to young Timothy, he then tells him why. He says, “Timothy, for the time of my departure is at hand. My death is right around the corner and the work is placed in your hands so you must be faithful and true to the Lord Jesus.” In this parting statement we have the apostle Paul giving us his view of death, reflecting back on his own life, and then looking forward with great hope to the future.
I think it is interesting the way the apostle Paul describes his own death. He says, “For the time of my departure is at hand.” That word departure is one of four words that are used in the New Testament to describe the death of a Christian. Now the first and most common word for death in the New Testament is the word “sleep.” Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). It is a word that describes quiet rest. And when you understand something of the frantic attitude that people had toward death in the New Testament world, the sense of hopelessness and despair that overcame them when they thought of death itself, then you will understand what a new and fresh revelation it was for Jesus to speak of death as sleep. And then the apostle Paul and the other Bible writers to pick up that concept of death as quiet rest in the presence of God.
Another word that is used to describe death by the apostle Paul is the word “dissolved.” He said we know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle shall be dissolved we have a building with God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He pictures this present life, our present body as a tent. And whatever else you say about a tent it is an impermanent dwelling place. And Paul looked upon this body and this life as temporary. And he said when the time comes that this present tent shall be dissolved. And that word dissolved literally means “to fold up and pack away.” When the time comes this present tent in which we live is folded up and packed away and we move on to our eternal home, and then we shall know life as God intended it to be.
Peter gives us a concept of death as he speaks of his own leaving as a “decease” when he writes, “after my decease to have these things always in remembrance” (2 Peter 1:15). We still use that word quite often today in reference to death. We speak of the deceased. It goes back to the days of the Old Testament to a Hebrew word, the word “exodus.”
The word exodus means “a way out.” You remember in the Old Testament God said to Moses, “I want you to go to the Pharaoh and I want you to tell him to let my people go.” The children of Israel were in bondage and God wanted them set free so they could go into the Promised Land. And after a series of plagues the Pharaoh reluctantly agreed to let the children of Israel go from Egyptian bondage. The waters of the Red Sea departed, they marched through the wilderness, and they came eventually to the Promised Land of God. And that whole experience of going out from bondage and into the Promised Land of God was called the exodus. And when Peter speaks of his own death he describes it as an exodus, as a going out from bondage into the liberty of new life in Christ.
Out of all the words in the Bible that are used to describe the death of a Christian, I think perhaps the one that is most vivid and meaningful is the one the apostle Paul uses here to describe his own death when he says, “The time of my departure has come.” Now the word literally means “to loosen, to unloose.” And it was used in a number of different ways in secular Greek. Sometimes the word was used for the unharnessing, the unyoking of oxen and animals from a plow. And as you would unharness them you would set them free from the burden of pulling the plow. Sometimes the word was used to describe the setting free of a criminal. His hands and his feet would be in chains, locked up, restricted, held fast. And then he was set free. Somebody came and unlocked the chains that held him and suddenly he was released from bondage into the liberty, the freedom of a whole new life. And Paul sees that word to describe the death of a Christian. Once again it is a word that was sometimes used in connection with the military, with the tent, and you would untie the strings that tied the tent to the stakes so that the tent could be folded up and packed up. You could move onto another place.
But most often this word departure was used in a nautical sense. It meant to untie a ship from its moorings. And then they weighed anchor and then they hoisted the sails and the gentle breezes would begin to fill the sails and it would slowly move out of the harbor and into the open seas and sail for some distant port. And when the apostle Paul thought of his own death, leaving this life and going out to meet God, he spoke of it in those terms. As a departure, as loosing himself from the things that tied him to this life so that he could freely move into the presence of almighty God.
It is a beautiful concept of death. I grew up on the coast, so we often saw ships come and go. Many a time I have stood on the banks of the canal and off in the distance, down the canal as far as you could see, a ship would appear. Stand there long enough and it would come down that canal until it was in front of you as big as life itself. But if you stood there long enough, it would sail on past and down the canal and eventually over the horizon and out of sight. And invariably as the ship passed out of sight, somebody would say, “She is gone.” Now we knew exactly what the person meant. The ship was gone out of sight, not out of existence. Out there beyond the horizon, the ship was still there as big as life, the hull and all the rigging on the ship, just as big as ever. But we couldn’t see it anymore. It was out of sight, not out of existence. And when somebody over here said, “She is gone,” somebody else over there might have said, “There she is.” Still in existence, still sailing, still striving for the port. And the apostle Paul as he sought to explain his own death to us used that very beautiful picture to help us to understand what it was like to die as a child of God. In that great affirmation of faith he shares with us the kind of confidence and assurance we ought to have as we live and as we most surely die as the people of God.
If you study his confession carefully you will see Paul saying three things to us. He is saying first of all, “I am not ashamed of the past.” Second, he is saying, “I am not alarmed by the present.” Third, “I am not afraid of the future.” And when a person lives with faith and trust in Jesus Christ and they know that death is approaching, when they have lived like they ought to, then they can have that same confidence, that same assurance. “I am not ashamed of the past, I am not alarmed by the present, I am not afraid of the future because I have put my faith solidly in the Lord Jesus Christ.” And my hope and prayer for every one of you would be that you would so come to a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and then live out that commitment to him so when your time to die comes, you could say with the apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the past. I am not alarmed by the present. And I am not afraid of the future.”
1. Don’t be ashamed of the past. I want you to look at his confession, which could very well be the confession of every one of us who names the name of Jesus Christ. Paul begins by saying, “I am not ashamed of the past.” As Paul thinks about his approaching death he looks over his shoulder at days gone by. And he views his life as an athletic contest. He uses some strong figures to describe his life. “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.” Those are strong words, and all of them from the field of athletics, to describe for us a life of struggle, a life of turmoil, a life of difficulty. But Paul says, “I want you to know that I have been faithful in my life. I have played the game of life in such a way that when I look back to the past I am not ashamed of the way I conducted myself and the way I played the game. I am not ashamed of the past.”
He spells out exactly what he is talking about. He says in three simple statements what he means by “I have fought a good fight.” Now in the Greek the definite article “the” is in that verse of scripture. And so instead of reading as the King James does, “I have fought a good fight” Paul is saying in reality, “I have fought the good fight.” That is to say, “I have been on the right side. I have fought for the right things. I have given my life for the right cause.” And it is because of this that Paul could look back and say, “I am not ashamed of the past. I have fought the good fight.”
He is saying that early in life he established his priorities and gave himself to what is highest and best. He fought the good fight. There are a lot of fights going on in the world today and some of them aren’t worth getting into. A bulldog can whip a skunk any time, but it is not worth it. It is a tragic thing when a man lives his life for the wrong causes and has not given himself to the one good fight and struggle. And that is the cause of God in this world. It was Jesus who said, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). It was Jesus who asked the question, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26) Whatever else you do, decide what ultimately counts in life and give that your highest priority. That’s the only way you can come to the end of your days and look back and say, “I am not ashamed of the past.”
Paul said, “I fought the good fight.” But more than that, he said, “I have finished my course.” He lived with the conviction that God had a will and a purpose and design for his life. And he said, “I have stayed on course and I have finished what God sent me to do.” A lot of people live and die without having that sense of satisfaction: “I have finished the work.”
There is always enough time to do what God put you here to do. And if it is true that you end your life before you have finished the work God gave you to do it is because you did not manage it well, you did not give yourself to that which God wanted for you.
Franz Schubert started his Symphony No. 8 in B minor in 1822 but never completed it. And sometime later people found it and pulled it out and published it under the title, “The Unfinished Symphony.” And that is the tragic postscript to many people’s lives. Their life is an unfinished symphony.
And when we do not finish what God put us here to do, then we look back with regrets. Paul said, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. I have been faithful to God down through the end. And as a result of these things that I have done when I look back upon my past life I am not ashamed of the past.”
A preacher friend of mine once visited the house of one of his members who was dying. The man said to him, “Pastor, the doctors tell me I am going to die, and I have no reason to doubt what they are saying. In my lifetime I have been in some good churches and heard some wonderful sermons. But I’ve never led a person to Jesus Christ and have wasted many chances to do so. And now I am going to die and it looks as if I’ll not have another opportunity. I am not so much afraid to die as I am ashamed to die. When I stand before God it will not so much be the things I have done that bother me but all the things that I have not done.”
When you stand before God, can you stand there unashamed of the past? Will you be able to say, “I have done what God wants me to do, I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”? If you can live your life with such faith and commitment to the Lord Jesus that when you come to the end you can look back and say, “I am not ashamed of the past,” then you are ready to die.
2. Don’t be alarmed by the present. The apostle Paul had more to say than that. He not only said, “I am not ashamed of the past, I am not alarmed by the present.” He said the time of his departure had come. He was ready to be offered up.
It’s amazing to see the apostle Paul talk about his own death. He is standing at the edge of life. He is peering out across the dark of death and into eternity and he says very calmly and coolly, “I am ready.” No wringing of his hands, no pacing up and down, no complaining about the circumstances of life. The apostle Paul said, “The time has come and I am ready.”
And it is only as we come to that settled place of assurance in our own relationship to God where we can face death without being unduly alarmed that we can ever impress the world. You know some Christians go through life in such a frantic fit that they have callouses on their index finger from punching the panic button of life. When all the while the Lord Jesus in our lives and in our relationship ought to give us that calm assurance so that we are not only not ashamed of the past, but we are not alarmed in the present as we stand and look forward and anticipate the time when we shall die. We ought to be able to say with the apostle Paul, “I am ready.” Maybe not anxious but at least ready to go.
Woodrow Wilson was a great and a godly man. One day the regents of Princeton University came to him and said, “We want you to be president of Princeton.” And Woodrow Wilson said, “I’m ready.” Years later, members of his political party came and said, “We want you to serve as the president of the U.S.—will you let us nominate you? And he said, “I am ready.” His life came to an end and his physician visited him in his sick room and he said to him, “Woodrow, the end is not far away. You shall soon die.” And he said, “I am ready.” Ready educationally, ready politically, ready spiritually, ready in every way. When we put our faith and our trust in the Lord Jesus, he makes us ready to live or to die. And when that time comes we can not only look back upon the past without being ashamed, we can look at the present around us without being alarmed.
3. Don’t be afraid of the future. One other thing that faith in the Lord Jesus ought to do for us—it ought to cause us to be able to look to the future without being afraid. Unashamed of the past. Not alarmed by the present. Not afraid of the future.
Paul said, “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”
That word henceforth means “now what remains.” He has looked back upon his life. He has looked around at his circumstances. And now, Paul says, let’s look at what remains. “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.”
Paul speaks of his reward as a crown of righteousness. He is using athletic terms again. He talked about his life as running a race and finishing the course and keeping the faith. And with that same athletic metaphor he looks at the end of time and he sees the Lord giving him the crown of righteousness which was in reality the crown or the wreath that was placed on the head of a man who won a race, the victor’s crown in an athletic contest. And that victor’s crown made out of leaves and limbs that were plaited together was a symbol of immortality. And in that day the Lord shall give to Paul the crown of victory that is immortality. It is life everlasting.
But I want you to notice that he also describes the Lord in a very special way. He calls him “the righteous judge.” And the word judge does not mean a judge in the legal sense. It is a judge like a referee. It is a judge like an umpire. Paul describing his life as an athlete in a contest says that there is a referee. There is an umpire watching this contest and he sees what I do and when I win the race he is going to be there to place that crown of immortality on me and say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And he identifies the Lord Jesus as the umpire, as the referee of the game of life. He tells us that Jesus is the righteous judge. He is the judge who makes no mistakes.
Wouldn’t you hate to be an umpire or a referee in today’s world? I mean every time you make a call there are a dozen TV cameras that are focused right on that play from every possible angle. And then there are commentators who have all kinds of comments to make concerning the way you blew it. It would be terrible in this day’s world to be a referee or an umpire. Every mistake would be a glaring mistake in front of the whole nation.
Let me tell you that on that day when we stand before God you can have all the TV cameras in the world focused on a man’s life from every angle, in the darkness and in the light of the public eye, watching him all the time and nobody will ever see that referee make one wrong call.
Paul said when that time comes, he will give to me the crown of righteousness. And not to me only, but to all them. That includes you and me who look for his coming again. I am not ashamed of the past. Not alarmed by the present. Not afraid of the future because of the Lord Jesus.
Can you say with the apostle Paul, “I’ve fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I’ve kept the faith and now what is ahead is a crown of given to me by the judge, the umpire, the referee who never makes a bad call”?