New Testament · Paul's Letters
A dying man's charge, guard the deposit, preach the word; I have finished the race.
The last letter we have from Paul, and it reads like it. He is in prison again, this time expecting to die, and asks Timothy to come before winter and to bring the cloak he left behind, and the books, especially the parchments. That request for a coat and some reading is one of the most human moments in the New Testament. He names those who have deserted him and those who have not, and the tone alternates between urgency and settled peace: preach the word in season and out, and I have fought the good fight. This is also where the line about all Scripture being God-breathed and profitable sits, written to a man who had known those writings since childhood.
If you remember one thing
The last words we have from Paul, asking for his cloak and his scrolls and for Timothy to hurry before winter.
“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.”
2 Timothy 4:7
2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is God-breathed. Which writings the author had in view, and what inspiration entails, are both discussed, and traditions differ on the second more than the first.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
A young believer from Lystra with a Greek father and a Jewish mother, who traveled with Paul and was left in charge at Ephesus. Two of Paul's letters are addressed to him, and the second is the last one we have.
The names at the beginnings and ends of the letters, which most readers skip. They are the actual shape of the early church: a courier, a runaway slave, a treasurer of a city, a woman who hosted a congregation in her house, two women whose disagreement was serious enough to be named in a public letter.
Never named in the Hebrew Bible, but present in it. Daniel's goat from the west with a conspicuous horn, moving so fast it does not touch the ground, and whose horn breaks at the height of its power to be replaced by four, is read across traditions as Alexander and the four generals who divided his empire.
A Pharisee trained under Gamaliel who persecuted the church until he was stopped on the road to Damascus. He then spent thirty years planting churches across the Roman world and writing the letters that make up roughly a third of the New Testament. He was a Roman citizen by birth, which is why he could appeal to Caesar.
A quiz for 2 Timothy is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
