James Nisbet Commentary - 2 Timothy 4:7 - 4:7

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James Nisbet Commentary - 2 Timothy 4:7 - 4:7


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

KEEPING THE FAITH

‘I have kept the faith.’

2Ti_4:7

This was the satisfaction on which St. Paul’s mind rested when he contemplated the close of his earthly work.

I. When St. Paul said that he had kept the faith, he evidently believed that there was a faith to keep.—We hear much about a Pauline theology. It is a favourite idea. These doctrines are not Christ’s but St. Paul’s, stamped with his peculiar character, and enforced only by his own personal authority. This text proves very clearly that he had no such idea about his belief and teaching. To him the truth which he believed was not a doctrine which he had discovered, but a faith which he had kept. There are schools of thought, and there are revelations of God. Each teacher must be either a leader in the first or a messenger of the second. St. Paul considered himself and boasted that he was the latter.

II. What sort of a creed may one hold, and expect to hold it always, live in it, die in it, and carry it even to the life beyond?

(a) In the first place, it must be a creed broad enough to allow the man to grow within it, to contain and to supply his ever-developing mind and character.

(b) And the second characteristic of the faith that can be kept will be its evidence, its proved truth. It will not be a mere aggregation of chance opinions.

(c) And then the third quality of a creed that a man may keep up to the end is that it is a creed capable of being turned into action.

Bishop Phillips Brooks.

Illustration

‘The true faith which a man has kept up to the end of his life must be one that has opened with his growth and constantly won new colour and reality from his changing experience. The old man does believe what the child believed; but how different it is, though still the same. The joy of his life has richened his belief, his sorrow has deepened it, his doubts have sobered it, his enthusiasms have fired it, his labour has purified it. This is the work that life does upon faith. This is the beauty of an old man’s religion. His doctrines are like the house that he has lived in, rich with associations which make it certain that he will never move out of it. His doctrines have been illustrated and strengthened and endeared by the good help they have given his life; and no doctrine that has not done this can be really held up to the end with any such vital grasp as will enable us to carry it with us through the river and enter with it into the new life beyond.’