1 Timothy 6:12

1 Timothy 6:12. Fight the good fight of faith. The thought is parallel to, but not identical with, the ‘good warfare' of 1 Timothy 1:18. Here the idea is that of the conflict of the athlete rather than the soldier, and this has, as its characteristic, that it is ‘the conflict of the faith' in its definite and objective sense, that to which the profession of the Christian faith pledges us.

Lay hold on eternal life. There is a subtle distinction in the tenses of the two imperatives which can hardly be expressed in English. The conflict is to be a continuous life-long struggle, the ‘laying hold' is to be one vigorous act.

Whereunto thou art also called. The metaphor of the conflict is dropped, and the words fit in with the spiritual realities of Timothy's own experience.

Hast professed a good profession. Better, ‘ didst confess the good confession,' the article pointing no less than the tense to some definite and conspicuous act. What this was cannot be defined with certainty. It may have been a formal statement of his acceptance of Christian truth at his baptism, or his ordination, or on his appointment to his special work at Ephesus. The immediate reference, however, to our Lord's good confession before Pilate suggests that something analogous to that was in St. Paul's mind, and that in some unrecorded crisis of his life Timothy had been brought before the civil power, and had not shrunk from acknowledging his faith in the presence of friends and foes.