2 Timothy 4:7

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:

It is wrong to see any touch of egotism in this. In the Greek, "I" does not begin each clause. Hendriksen rendered it: "The grand fight have I fought, the race I have finished, the faith I have kept."[15] Besides that, the mere reference to facts so overwhelmingly obvious, in such a context as this, could not possibly indicate any undue self-esteem on the part of the apostle.

The grand fight I have fought ... The imagery here is not that of a mere boxing match, or of any other particular contest such as marked the Olympian games, but rather to the entire course of life, which Paul surely regarded as "the grand fight," the same being not a contest looking merely to the defeat of others but of triumphing over every obstacle that stood between him and the crown of life. That such a contest involved struggling against enemies, and even struggling with himself, is, of course, inherent.

I have finished the course. Here again, under another figure, it is the race of life which is meant. Unlike the races which marked the Olympiads, wherein only one received the prize, the Christian race allows that all who run lawfully and diligently may receive the prize (2 Timothy 4:8), provided that, as in the example of the apostle, they FINISH the course. It will be remembered that in the Saviour's parable, the payoff came in the evening (Matthew 20:8).

I have kept the faith ... Many scholars cannot resist the temptation to alter any passage in the New Testament that speaks of faith in the objective sense, even so reliable a writer as Hendriksen referring to the meaning here as "I have retained my personal trust in God."[16] How preposterous! Of course, it is true that Paul had kept alive and nourished his subjective faith in the Lord, but it is absolutely impossible that he used "faith" in any such sense here. His keeping the faith is exactly parallel to his having fought the grand fight and finished the course, meaning a body of duties discharged. It is delightful to find Lenski agreeing with this totally: "All three nouns are alike objective, and only thus are the three statements one."[17] To be sure, Lenski, who also holds to the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, likewise tempered the meaning here by making Paul's keeping the faith to consist only of his "guarding it" and passing it on intact to others; but the total life of Paul indicates that his keeping the faith included the full discharge of his duties as a Christian. Without such fidelity, or the earnest effort to attain it, no person has any promise of eternal life. This is a basic fact of the Christian religion, nor does this truth, in any sense, make man his own Saviour, or require sinless perfection.

[15] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 313.

[16] Ibid., p. 316.

[17] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 861.