Finishing Well

The Christian life is a race that must be run all the way to the finish line. Starting is vital—if you never humble yourself before Jesus, confess your sin against Him and trust Him as Lord, you cannot become a Christian. But finishing is equally essential because true Christians will not continue in the faith until the end.

As Jesus said in Matthew 24:10-13—“Many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

This is one of the great concerns that the Apostle Paul has for his young colleague in the ministry, Timothy, as he writes his last letter to him. He has charged Timothy to guard the gospel, to suffer for it, to continue in it personally and to keep preaching it publicly. Then, as we saw a couple of weeks ago near the end of the letter, Paul writes, “As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).

He wants Timothy to finish well.

Today, as we conclude our study of the Pastoral letters, we come to Paul’s final words to Timothy. These are the last words that we have from him in the Bible.

We have been studying 2 Timothy in the NT for the last few weeks. Not only is it the last letter that Paul ever wrote that made it into the Bible, it is the 3rd and last of the so-called “pastoral letters” that we have been looking at for several months. In his final words, Paul demonstrates for us what finishing well looks like.