2 Timothy 4:7

Ver. 7. I have fought the good fight or more exactly, as at 1 Timothy 6:12, though one is unwilling to alter such familiar words, I have maintained the good contest τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα ἠγώνισμαι referring to the contest for the mastery in the public games; and the perfect tense having here its full significance, for the contest was now in a manner over: he could look back on it as a thing of the past. And why does he speak of having maintained the good contest? “It is (says Chrysostom beautifully) as if a father should console his little son seated beside him, and unable to bear the bereavement, saying: My son, weep not; we lived honourably, and having come to old age we left you; our life has been blameless, we depart with glory; you can also acquire honour from the things that have been done by us.” And why emphatically the good contest? Let Chrysostom again answer: “Nothing better than this contest; this crown takes no end. It is not a thing of wild olives; it has not a man for presiding arbiter, nor has it men for spectators [of the contest]; the theatre is replenished with angels. There they labour for many days, and are fatigued, and in a single hour they receive the crown, and the pleasure presently is gone. But here it is not so; for they are always in brightness, in glory and honour.” I have finished the course the race being the contest which here, as elsewhere (Philippians 3:12; 1 Corinthians 9:24; Hebrews 12:1), presented itself to the apostle's mind as the fittest of the Grecian games to symbolize the Christian struggle; so that to finish the course, only expresses in a more specific form the thought contained in the preceding clause. I have kept the faith that, namely, which had been entrusted to him as a sacred deposit faith objectively, as the great treasure of gospel verities. As to meaning, it is much the same thing over again: the apostle, as Bengel notes, having expressed the matter twice by metaphor, now gives utterance to it in direct speech. Through all trial, and mockery, and persecution, and suffering, he had held fast by the saving truths which he received by special revelation from above, and which as a chosen vessel he was sent forth to declare to a perishing world (Galatians 1:12; Acts 9:15). In doing this he maintained the good contest, and finished the course.