2 Timothy 4:9-22
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
November 23, 2025
In this, the last installment in a nine-part series on Paul’s second letter to Timothy, we reflect on the Apostle’s last words recorded in the Bible.
We are wise to take seriously a final message from someone who’s aware they’re about to die, especially someone like Paul who had for decades walked with God in the service of Christ and His good news. Expecting to be executed any day, Paul saw life very clearly: its purpose, destiny and priority.
Yet, even as we appreciate the profundity of Paul’s perspective, we may also appreciate the openness of Paul’s self-revelation. Here he showed himself to be as limited and frail a flesh-and-blood creature as any of us. Here we get to know him at his most human, vulnerable and endearing – as he yearned for the companionship of dear friends, shivered in the cold darkness of a Roman dungeon and hungered for the intellectual and spiritual food that would help him in the one ministry left to him in prison: writing letters about Jesus and His goals.
While Paul gave no sign of demoralization or self-pity or anger over his incarceration, still experienced Jesus as a very present and precious help in his troubles and still kept in touch with friends far and near, Paul nevertheless ached with loneliness for those who meant the world to him – most particularly, Timothy, whom at the start of this letter he called “my beloved child” and whom, he said, he remembered “constantly in my prayers day and night” and “longed to see” to “be filled with joy”. No wonder then, with both the first words and the last words of this passage, Paul begged Timothy to “do your best to come to me soon”.
The use of the word “soon” does not so much indicate impatience as awareness of the practical challenges of making a reunion happen. Not only was Paul’s execution fast approaching, but so was winter whose fierce sea storms closed down the sailing lanes. Since there was not yet motorized ground travel, it would take months for Paul’s letter to reach Timothy in Ephesus and for Timothy to make the trip from Ephesus to Rome over dangerous rivers and through perilous mountain passes.
Paul knew Timothy loved him; but Paul very much wanted his beloved child to be at his side one more time before he died. Indeed, while letters (or, these days, online conversations) are to be valued, there’s no substitute for physical closeness. When two people are mutually present in the flesh, there’s greater possibility for deep communication and interaction.
But having such a visit with Timothy was important to Paul, not just because Paul was a man who needed the company, but also because he was a leader of a newborn community, still in its infancy and tenuous in its sustainability, who needed to pass on his leadership role to another. Paul felt an urgency about finishing the task of preparing Timothy to take the helm and carry on the mission after he was gone.
The church, after all, was encountering daunting difficulties as it struggled to stay unified and faithful in the face of fierce opposition. For instance, Nero had, just a few years before, blamed the great fire of Rome on its Christians; and state propaganda and hysteria fueled a ferocious suspicion of them as evil doers behind that and other crimes against humanity. Why, there was even a rumor going around that Christians regularly practiced cannibalism in a ritual meal called Communion at which they consumed the flesh and blood of a human being.
So Paul wanted Timothy to come both because Paul needed the support and because Timothy needed the training for the tough job ahead. To serve both those purposes, Paul wanted Timothy wanted to bring someone else along with him: Mark, from whom Paul had been alienated when Mark quit the first missionary journey to return home but with whom Paul had since been reconciled – to such an extent that Paul now saw Mark as “useful” and even essential to his life and ministry.
Besides Mark, Paul asked Timothy to also bring him a warm cloak to fend off the cold, books to nourish his mind and faith, and writing paper to continue to fulfill his prime purpose in life by writing letters from prison about Jesus and his loving intent toward all people.
Paul needed those physical supports; but, most of all he needed the relational support of Timothy and Mark (and Luke) as he dealt with the treacherous Roman judicial system. Remember, at his “first defense”, Paul wrote to Timothy, “no one came to my support, but all deserted me”. In speaking of a “first defense”, Paul was referring to the preliminary hearing at which it was determined whether a full trial was required. At that proceeding, no one stood with Paul. No one vouched for him, argued for his innocence or answered the accusations against him. Paul spoke of this, not to show how faithless people were, but to show how faithful God was – especially in taking care of Paul’s biggest concern: which was to speak of Jesus in every available context, including the halls of political power. Though no one else stood up for him in court, Paul testified, “the Lord stood by me and gave me strength”, not so that the Apostle could escape a conviction, but “so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.” Bearing witness to Jesus mattered more to Paul than anything else, and he was grateful for the chance his trial gave him to have the ear of the highest authorities of the world’s greatest superpower in that day.
To be before that court sharing the gospel was for Paul to be “rescued from the lion’s mouth”. By those words, Paul was not suggesting he’d been spared from being thrown before starved carnivores to be pounced upon and eaten alive for people’s entertainment. For that was never a possibility, as Paul was a Roman citizen and Roman law exempted its citizens from such a fate. Actually, with those words Paul was quoting a Psalm, Psalm 22, the Psalm whose first verse Jesus quoted when he cried out from the cross, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and whose 21st verse prayed that God “rescue me from the lion’s mouth”. Paul, knowing that “the time of my departure has come”, was looking to God, not to save him from death, but to save him from failing to fulfill his life purpose, which was to make the goodness and power of Jesus known to many. Paul believed the Lord “will rescue me from every evil attack” because he believed the Lord turns every evil into a good means by which to put Jesus on display.
Paul then was eager to follow in his Savior’s footsteps as he too endured, alone, trumped-up charges in a prejudiced court, prayed for those who did him wrong and, as an innocent man, accepted execution for the benefit of the guilty.
To Paul as to Jesus, that is what it means to be God’s and to participate in the rescue of the others. Are you and I willing to be God’s and do our part to rescue others as the Lord has rescued us?
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