The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Timothy — Section 16

display of power, confouniling the "mighty; for it IB here said that by this appearing he sbolisbed death. He nppcared in flesh, and endured death in all its reality, and, by doing so, he has made it no longer a reality to his people. He has made it of none effect. He has made it so that it cannot tyrannize over them. And, though they have to endure death, it is not as a token of God's <liRpleasure, but as hie wise and good arrangement, and introduction into a state from which death is for rver excluded. The positive side of the benefit derived from the appearing is presented under a slightly different aspect. It is regarded as presented in the gospel. And as death is a dark power, so the gospel is a light-giving power. What it has brought to light is of the utmost consequence. It is life, and life with the superlative quality of imperishableness. Under heath~nism men bad no right conception of life. Even with all the help that philosophy could give them, the meaning of life wa.s dark to them. The gospel has ~hown it to consist in the favour of God, and the quickening of all our faculties under the breath of his Spirit. But specially are we to think of life in its imperishableness. We know that, to the heathen generally, the future was an absolute blank. A few of them bad glimmerings, not of a resurrection, but of the survival of the thinking part, with some reward for the good. The gospel has brought immortality into the full clear light. It has given us the certainty of our existence after death. It, moreover, holds out before us the prospect of a life that is to be spent, without intermission or end, in the sunshine of God's love, with ever increased quickening of all our powers-a life in which there will be a reunion of soul and body, of which already we have the earnest in the resurrection of Christ. It is our great privilege that we live under this light of the gospel. It is the imperishableness of the life of God that is here begun that has power to nerve the soul, even to martyrdom. 5. Reason against false shame in tk e:rample of the apostle. (1) Suffering connected with his office. "Whereunto I was appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher. For the which cause I suffer also thme thinp:s." As in 1 Tim. ii. 8, he takes a threefold designation of office. AB preacher or herald, it was his duty to cry aloud. As apostle, he was specially invested with authority. As teacher, he had to go among the Gentiles. It was a glad message in relation to which he exercised his office, and it should have brought him many a welcome. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace I" But it brought him many a rebuff, and much outward disgrace; for at this time he was suffering his second imprisonment in Rome, and was nearing his martyrdom. (2) Triumph over shame. "Yet I am not ashamed." The apostle does not exhort Timothy without setting him an example. It was no small matter to him to be counted by men only worthy of imprisonment, and, very soon, of death. But he was so much impressed with the supreme importance of the gospel, that he heeded not the shame. (3) His personal assurance. Its strength. "For I know him whom I have believed." As he is here speaking of his being a prisoner, we naturally take the reference to be to him whose prisoner in the eighth verse he declared llimself to be, viz. the Lord. He had lived a life of faith on Christ; and he could speak confidently, from his own experience of him. Not I think I know him, but, as one would speak of a friend whom he has long and intimately lived with, I know him. Without experience we cannot have the assurance that excludes doubt. Only when we have tried Christ, and found him sufficient for us in all positions of life, can we rise above the language of hesitation. Its well-supported nature. "And I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day." W Lat is guarded is literally my deposit, and, as in the thirteenth verse "deposit" is something committed to Timothy, so some would think here of something committed to Paul, viz. his stewardship. But, as the guardian is also naturally the holder, we naturally think of something committed by Paul to Christ; and what was that but his interest, his stake in the future world, dependent on his faithfulneBB in this? How did Paul know that it would not tum out a blank, or be much diminished by future failure? The explanation was that he had put it into Christ's hands, and he trusted in him being able to guard it for him against that day, viz. the day of judgment, when it would become irreversibly, gloriously his, being as it were handed back to him by Christ. One who has this well-grounded assurance can meet death even triumphantly, 6. Twwtl,y u furtt- ca,lled upon ,a attend spuially to hi, orthod-Ozy. (1) The patttJrn . ., Bold the p&tt«n of 110und words which thou hut heard from me, la faith and wve OR. J, 1-18.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 17