To ask who is meant by the lion is a futile question. Whom did the Psalmist mean by the lion, when he prayed "Save me from the lion's mouth"? (Ps. xxii. 21.) He meant no one by the lion; but by the lion's mouth he meant some great and imminent danger. And that is what we must understand here. All kinds of gratuitous conjectures have been made by those who have insisted on identifying the lion;--the lion of the amphitheatre, to whom the Apostle might have been thrown, had he been condemned; the Emperor Nero, or, as he was possibly in Greece at this time, his prefect and representative Helius; or, the chief accuser; or again, Satan, whom St. Peter describes as "a roaring lion." All these are answers to a question which does not arise out of the text. The question is not, "Who is the lion?" but, "What is the meaning of the lion's mouth?" And the answer to that is, "a terrible danger," and especially "peril of death."
The goodness of the Lord does not end with this welcome, but temporary deliverance. "The Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will save me unto His heavenly kingdom." Paul's enemies are not likely to be idle during the extension of time granted by the court. They will do their utmost to secure a sentence of condemnation at the second hearing of the case, and thus get the man whom they detest removed from the earth. Whether they will succeed in this or not, the Apostle does not know. But one thing he knows;--that whatever is really evil in their works against him will be powerless to harm him. The Lord will turn their evil into good. They may succeed in compassing his death. But, even if they do so, the Lord will make their work of death a work of salvation; and by the severing of the thread which still binds Paul to this life "will save him unto," that is, will translate him safe into, "His heavenly kingdom."
It is utterly improbable that by "every evil work," St. Paul means any weakness or sin into which he himself might be betrayed through want of courage and steadfastness. Even if the lion's mouth could mean Satan, this would not be probable; for it would be Satan's attacks from without, by means of opposition and persecution, and not his attempts from within by means of grievous temptations, that would be meant. What is said above about Alexander the coppersmith shows what kind of "evil" and what kind of "works" is intended in "every evil work." The expression evidently refers to the machinations of Paul's enemies.
It is also highly improbable that "will save me unto His heavenly kingdom" means "will keep me alive until He returns in glory." There was a time when the Apostle expected, like most other Christians of that day, to live to behold the second coming of Christ. But what we have already seen in this Epistle shows that in St. Paul's mind that expectation is extinct. He no longer thinks that he will be one of those "that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord" (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17); that he will be among the living, who "shall be changed," rather than among the dead, who "shall be raised" at the sounding of the last trump (1 Cor. xv. 53). He does not repeat, what seems almost to have been a familiar watchword among the Christians of that day,--"Maran atha"; "the Lord is at hand" (1 Cor. xvi. 22; Phil. iv. 5). On the contrary, it is his own hour that is at hand: "I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come." He is fully persuaded now that he will not live to see Christ's return in glory; and he does not expect that return to come speedily; for, as we have seen, one of his chief anxieties is that there should be a permanently organized ministry in the Churches, and that provision should be made for handing on the faith intact from generation to generation (Tit. i, 5; 2 Tim. ii. 2). There can be little doubt, therefore, that when the Apostle expresses a conviction that the Lord will save him unto His heavenly kingdom, he is not expecting to reach that kingdom without first passing through the gate of death. What he is sure of is this,--that the evil works of his adversaries will never be allowed to prevent him from reaching that blessed resting place. Christ's kingdom is twofold; He has a kingdom on earth and a kingdom in heaven. The saints who are in the kingdom on earth are still exposed to many kinds of evil works; and the Apostle is persuaded that in his case such works will be overruled by the Lord to further his progress from the earthly to the heavenly kingdom.