This is admitted, by all who hold the authenticity of the Pastoral epistles, to be the last writing we have from the pen of the apostle. He had himself evidently despaired, at the time he wrote, of getting deliverance from the hand of his persecutors, or even of having his martyrdom long delayed. An early termination of his course by an unjust and violent death appeared now to be inevitable; and the brief epistle in which he gave expression to his last utterances of faith and hope, is altogether worthy of the occasion. The probable date has been already discussed in the Introduction. A measure of uncertainty must always hang around it; but a variety of convergent circumstances seems to point to the year A.D. 68 as the most likely period.
Chapter I
Ver. 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. The descriptive designation which Paul here employs respecting himself is so far peculiar, that it does not precisely accord with any other found at the commencement of his epistles, while still there is nothing in it which is not also found in some of them. That he was an apostle by, or through, God’s will, is very frequently expressed—1Co_1:1; 2Co_1:1; Eph_1:1; Col_1:1 : in the thirst to Timothy it was by God’s appointment, which occurs only there. In connecting his apostleship here, and so frequently, with God’s will, he sought to place it above, not merely any choice or desert of his own, but also every kind of elective agency that was simply human, and to bring it into immediate connection with the mind and purposes of the Supreme. To show this more distinctly, he adds: according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. This promise of life, or, as it is expressed in Tit_1:2, “hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before eternal times,” is presented as the primary ground out of which the specific acts and arrangements of God proceeded in reference to the work of salvation in the world, and among others, Paul’s own calling to the apostleship, which formed an important link of connection between the promise and its actual realization among men. The life meant, of course, is life in the higher sense, comprehensive of all the blessing and glory, both in this world and the next, which flow from an interest in the redemption of Christ. It is therefore not life simply, but that life which is in Christ Jesus (see at 1Ti_6:19). Timothy is thus again reminded, at the outset, that the character in which Paul now wrote to him, and consequently the counsels and admonitions which in that character he might express, bore on them a divine impress: they stood in near proximity to the eternal purpose and will of the Father.
