God’s Word for You

2 Timothy 4:6-7 Like a drink offering

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, July 12, 2026

6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

We heard Paul use the expression “being poured out like a drink offering” in Philippians 2:17-18. In Hebrew, this offering was known as the nesech (Leviticus 23:18). It was the conclusion of a sacrifice. After the slaughtered animal or grain offering was burned either partly or altogether on the altar, the worshiper or the priest would pour out a drink offering onto the remains. This might be wine or water, or perhaps oil. Care would have to be taken with oil, since it might itself catch fire and burn more. The act would make smoke rise up to the heavens. When done indoors, of course, the worshiper would say that he “smoked the temple with sacrifices” (Cymbeline V:3). Writing Philippians toward the end of his earlier Roman imprisonment, Paul suspected it was possible that he might be put to death. Now, nearing the end of his second imprisonment in Rome, he knew that death was certain. So he refers to his own blood about to be spilled as the drink offering that will end the long sacrifice, willingly given, of his life and ministry in the service of Christ.

He calls this the time of his analysis (ἀνάλυσις), which in Greek means his “departure.” It is also our word “analysis.” Today we use “analysis” to describe how we untie or untangle the threads of a mystery, or a complicated paragraph, or the symptoms of an illness, or to discover the makeup of a chemical, or of a tasty soup. In ancient Greek, it literally meant to “untie.” So they used the word for “breaking camp” (untying the tent poles from the tent) or more often for casting off the lines of a ship in order to depart, which is Paul’s meaning here. We could also have translated, “It is time for me to ship out,” or, “Time to cast off.” We should notice that this is a reference to “casting off” at just the right moment. It is often heard at a funeral, “She was too young to die,” or, “His family still needed him.” But when the Lord calls one of his people home to heaven, it was surely the right moment, the moment chosen by God for the good of the Christians who remain behind, and the right moment chosen by God for the Christian who is called heavenward, and for the angels to carry his soul up to his waiting family (Luke 16:22). As David confessed: “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15).

The “good fight” Paul has fought is his struggle against the enemies of Christ. He has already used this expression: “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Sometimes this fight is not against human enemies, but the demons and wicked angels that walk unseen: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Other times, the fight is against human enemies that we may know only too well “In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us” (Titus 2:7-8).

Like a runner at the end of long miles, Paul pants, “I have finished the race.” Long before, Paul had declared to the elders of Ephesus, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). This Paul had done; no one could possibly dispute that truth.

And in addition, Paul could rightly say, “I have kept the faith.” But I don’t think that Paul only means his personal faith, which no one would doubt at all, but rather “the faith,” that is, the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. For in the final clause, Paul places the definite article “the” (τὴν) in the front, it is the well-known faith, the faith given by Christ to the whole Christian church on earth. As we confess in the Athanasian Creed, “Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold the true Christian faith” (§1), and again, “Unless a man believe this firmly and faithfully, he cannot be saved” (§40). The Scriptures warn that even if someone would worship only the one, true God, but did not know his loving attitude toward them and feared only his wrath about their sinfulness, and did not know Christ or his forgiveness, they would not and could not be saved and could not be confident of his love and blessing. They would remain under God’s wrath and damnation, because they would have no faith in Christ, and no one comes to the Father except through Christ (John 14:6). But this is why we continue to preach the word, for “no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:21). Christ has been proclaimed since the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15), and preaching has been carried out in the world since the days of the first pastor, Enosh the grandson of Adam (Genesis 4:28). Paul’s charge to Timothy is that he should continue in this ministry, proclaiming the same Christ, to give people knowledge of the forgiveness of their sins (Luke 1:77).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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