<p>4:17- see on 2 Tim. 2:1; 4:7; 4:13.</p><p><i>But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me- </i>There in the empty witness box, Paul sensed the Lord Jesus standing. The 'strengthening' is that spoken of in the notes on 3:5. It was psychological strengthening, against the pain of being left alone there, against bitterness, against unforgiveness.&nbsp; The Lord had such a wide experience of human life and suffering so that not one of us could ever complain that He does not know in essence what we are going through. This is my simple answer to the question of why, exactly why, did Jesus have to suffer so much and in the ways that He did. Take one example of how His earthly experiences were the basis of how He later administered &ldquo;grace to help in time of need&rdquo; for a believer.&nbsp; The Lord&rsquo;s one time close friend Judas is described as &quot;standing with&quot; those who ultimately crucified Jesus in Jn. 18:5. Paul says that none of the brethren 'stood with' him when he was on trial, but &quot;the Lord Jesus stood with me&quot;. It seems to me that the Lord knew exactly what it felt like to be left alone by your brethren, as happened to Him in Gethsemane and at His trials; and so at Paul's trial He could 'stand with' him, based on His earthly experience of being left to stand alone. In our lives likewise, the Lord acts to help us based on His earthly experiences; He knows how we feel, because He in essence went through it all. John maybe has the image of Judas and Peter standing with the Lord's enemies in mind when he writes that the redeemed shall stand with Jesus on Mount Zion (Rev. 14:1), facing the hostile world. </p><p><i>That through me the message might be fully proclaimed- </i>Paul's intention of going to Rome in order to make a public witness for the Gospel was therefore fulfilled. His trial was presumably high profile, so that many Gentiles heard the Gospel.</p><p><i>And so all the Gentiles might hear</i>- As he faced death, Paul more intensely modelled his words upon those of Christ (see on :7). And yet despite this, perhaps because of his increasing identification with Christ and sense of Christ's supremacy, Paul's concern was constantly for doctrine; he pounded away, time and again, at the danger of apostasy. As he got older, this was a bigger and bigger theme with him. His last words just before his death are full of this theme, more than any other of his writings. And yet that same letter has more reference (relatively) to the Gospels and to the Lordship of Christ than anything else he wrote. On average, Paul refers to Christ as &quot;the Lord&quot; once every 26 verses in his letters. But in 2 Timothy, he calls Christ &quot;Lord&quot; once every six verses; and in his very last words in 2 Tim. 4, once every 3 verses, nine times more than average His appreciation of the <i>excellency</i> and the supremacy of Christ, of the height of His Lordship, grew and grew. Paul seems to have seen in Christ's prophecy that the Gospel would be fully known world-wide in the last days as being a specific, personal command to him (Mt. 24:14 = 2 Tim. 4:17).&nbsp;The Gospel is to be preached; Paul realized this in these his very last words, as even then, he makes one of his last plays on words: &ldquo;&hellip; that through me the proclamation might be fully proclaimed&rdquo; (2 Tim. 4:17 RVmg.). The Gospel, the proclamation of the Kingdom, is to be proclaimed. We cannot possess a proclamation, designed to be proclaimed, without proclaiming it. </p><p><i>And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion</i>- As a Roman citizen, Paul's death would have been by execution. So he may be expressing gratitude that the form of his death was not going to be so awful as death in the arena. But he may also mean that he was spared the death penalty. But in this case, why does he write with urgency to Timothy as if he is about to die shortly? Perhaps he realized he had a terminal illness? Surely such language would be inappropriate if he had just been acquitted from a death penalty. This is why I take him here to be simply grateful for the form of death which had been decreed for him. We must also factor in the historical records of Paul's execution at the time of Nero's persecution. The reference to salvation from the lion was alluding to the Lord's experience on the cross, as described in Ps. 22:13,21. He felt forsaken by his disciples, just as Christ had been at His arrest and judgment (2 Tim. 4:16). The Lord's deliverance from the lion was through resurrection- and not through temporary release from its power. And it seems Paul understood that. But maybe he was also alluding to Daniel, who was literally saved from the mouth of the lion.</p><p>Whatever, Paul's mind was full of allusions to John the Baptist, Daniel, Moses and above all his Lord. All his years, his hours and minutes, of sustained meditation, of bringing the mind back from its&nbsp;natural wandering, were now paying their glorious reward. The picture of Paul in prison, having reached this spiritual pinnacle, fired the minds and living of &quot;many of the brethren in the Lord&quot; (Phil. 1:21). And for me too, the old and brave Paul in that cell is the man I fain would be. Nero is reported as having said that the time would come, when men would call their sons Nero and their dogs Paul, as veiled with all the pomp and the power and the pride of this life, he watched Paul led out to his death. And yet that Paul is the man we fain must be; and doubtless he had in his mind words he had penned years before: &quot;... those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things... and be found in him... being made conformable unto <i>his</i> death; if by any means I might attain the resurrection of the dead... forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth... I press toward the mark for the prize&quot; (Phil. 3). This is a far cry from the Paul who just a few years earlier had &lsquo;refused to die&rsquo;, who wanted to fight for his life (Acts 25:11). Now he felt ready to be offered, to be poured out as a drink offering upon the lives of his brethren (Phil. 2:17 Gk.); he held nothing back, but <i>gave</i> his life rather than have it forced from him by the inevitable death that must&nbsp; come to all men. What he had once counted gain- and the Greek suggests material, financial gain- he now counted loss. He came to despise the materialism of the world, as did Jacob in his maturity.&nbsp;The power of all this is not just in its relevance to the elderly or terminally ill. We are all old men now, we are all on borrowed time. We believe the Lord's return, the end, <i>the ultimate end, </i>is imminent. If we are living expecting the imminent second coming; <i>are we </i>ready? Have we reached the completeness?</p>