Let us pause for a moment to consider how Paul felt as he wrote what was almost certainly his last epistle, 2. Timothy. His long and wonderful ministry was drawing to its close, not in blazing glory and brilliant success, but with enemies triumphing all around. Throughout the epistle he is handing over the torch to the Apostle Timothy, yet without any prospect of such success as he had enjoyed at first, but only a legacy of persecutions and sufferings (3:10, 11). Any failure as we may be called upon to endure is utterly eclipsed by his, as the importance of the ministry of any of us is eclipsed by his too. Yet do we find him complaining and enlarging on the injustice of the treatment he was receiving, as we all too often are inclined to do? Does he say anything like: "Look how I have served You, Lord; and look how You are treating me!" For that is what we, in the severe weakness of our mortality often in effect complain, even if we do not consciously realise we are doing it. No! Nothing even remotely like it. Instead he accepts with both hands the ultimate sacrifice that awaits him: "For already I am being poured out as a libation and the season of my dissolution has become imminent. The ideal contest I have contended, the race I have finished, the faith I have kept." How many of us could accept and even greet such a sacrifice?
We proclaim the Word of God; and His Word will not return to Him void; but it is an unwarrantable addition to His word to maintan that this means evident success, as we estimate success. In the end, when we are glorified in our celestial bodies, we shall see the whole of human history as God sees it. Then we will know that what appears to us now, in this life, as failure, will in the light of that vision be seen as success far beyond any we could ever imagine in our mortal bodies. His Word will accomplish His purpose, even in the deepest depths of apparent failure. That we know, and that is all we need to know.
R. B. Withers
