James Nisbet Commentary - 2 Timothy 4:6 - 4:6

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James Nisbet Commentary - 2 Timothy 4:6 - 4:6


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

READY TO BE OFFERED’

‘I am now ready to be offered.’

2Ti_4:6

How many of us can say this? Do we not often feel in a strait betwixt two?

I. Things which make it difficult to say with St. Paul, ‘I am now ready to be offered.’

(a) The enjoyment of life.

(b) Attachment to friends.

(c) Anticipated pain of dissolution.

(d) Uncertainty about the future.

II. Things which make it easy to say with St. Paul, ‘I am now ready to be offered.’

(a) The sad experience of life’s ills.

(b) The consciousness of having finished one’s life work.

(c) The joy of meeting friends who have ‘gone before.’

(d) An ever-nearing and enlarging prospect of heaven’s glory. St. Paul had it, ‘Henceforth there is laid up for me,’ etc. Many have had it since.

Illustration

‘Too often, alas! the sad experience of life’s ills is the experience so sad in the case of unbelievers that it causes them with their own hands to sever the silver cord—

Mad from life’s history,

Glad to death’s mystery

Swift to be hurled,

Auywhere—anywhere—out of the world!

In the case of good men it sometimes causes them to say with Job, “I loathe it; I would not live alway.” Doubtless these things are so ordered just to wean men’s hearts from earth, and make them “ready to be offered.” ’