Paul was in a Roman dungeon. Soon he would be executed. So he wrote a letter to his young friend Timothy and encouraged him to remain strong in spite of the persecution threatening the church. In the postscript of that letter, Paul made his final request.
Paul was a prisoner in Rome. On death row he wrote a final letter to Timothy, his young friend and coworker. And what was his word of encouragement? “Do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:5).
Many students plan to forget subjects that bore them as soon as they graduate. And that may turn out to be no big deal. But Paul urged his young friend Timothy to continue in what he had learned in the sacred writings known to him since childhood (2 Tim. 3:10-17).
Paul predicted times of stress in the “last days” (2 Tim. 3:1). When are the last days? What distressing things did Paul foresee?
Paul urges his young friend Timothy to present himself to God as “a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). “Teaching God’s word is the most important work in the world. If we mishandle it, people can be misled and lost forever.
“Ashamed” is an adjective describing the embarrassment we feel when we do something wrong or have a connection with an embarrassing person. Writing from prison, Paul urges Timothy not to be ashamed (2 Tim. 1:8-18). Ashamed of what – or of whom?
If you were on death row for an unjust reason, what would you need from your friends? I’d need lots of encouragement. But in the opening lines of his final letter, a letter written in a Roman dungeon, Paul is the one giving the encouragement.