2 Timothy 2:3 You therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, and especially every Christian minister, may be regarded as a soldier, as an athlete (ver. 5). as a husbandman (ver. 6); but of the three similitudes the one which fits him best is that of a soldier. Even if this were not so, St. Paul's fondness for the metaphor would be very intelligible. 1. Military service was very familiar to him, especially in his imprisonments. He must frequently have seen soldiers under drill, on parade, on gourd, on the march; most have watched them cleaning, mending, and sharpening their weapons; putting their armour on, putting it off. Often, during hours of enforced inactivity, he must have compared these details with the details of the Christian life, and noticed how admirably they corresponded with one another. 2. Military service was also quite sufficiently familiar to those whom he addressed. Roman troops were everywhere to be seen throughout the length and breadth of the empire, and nearly every member of society knew something of the kind of life which a soldier of the empire had to lead. 3. The Roman army was the one great organisation of which it was still possible, in that age of boundless social corruption, to think and speak with right-minded admiration and respect. No doubt it was often the instrument of wholesale cruelties as it pushed forward its conquests, or strengthened its hold, over resisting or rebelling nations. But it promoted discipline and esprit de corps. Even during active warfare it checked individual license, and when the conquest was over it was the representative and mainstay of order and justice against high-handed anarchy and wrong. Its officers several times appear in the narrative portions of the New Testament, and they make a favourable impression upon us. If they are fair specimens of the military men in the Roman Empire at that period, then the Roman army must have been indeed a fine service. But the reasons for the apostle's preference for this similitude go deeper than all this. 4. Military service involves self-sacrifice, endurance, discipline, vigilance, obedience, ready cooperation with others, sympathy, enthusiasm, loyalty. 5. Military service implies vigilant, unwearying and organised opposition to a vigilant, unwearying, and organised foe. It is either perpetual warfare or perpetual preparation for it. And just such is the Christian life; it is either a conflict or s preparation for one. (A. Plummer, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.WEB: You therefore must endure hardship, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. |
    |