19 - I Have Kept the Faith

A heavy guard conducted Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, in chains across the ruined streets of Rome, where thousands of slaves were at work. No deputation greeted him on the Via Appia this time, and no one waited for him in the city. Luke was his only companion and he walked a distance behind so as not to be seen by the guard.

Where had the apostle been during the days that led up to the frightful slaughters in Rome? It would be easier to ask where he hadn’t been. From Rome he hurried to Ephesus and its neighboring cities, where he visited new congregations he’d never been to before. He went to Colosse, Nicopolis and Berea. He visited his beloved Philippi in Macedonia, and went to Crete with Titus, where he’d been considered a holy man ever since the shipwreck. He was in Naples for a time, and from there he went to Troas, where he stayed in the house of a man named Carpus.

It was while he was in Troas that he was arrested on the charge of being a Christian and spreading pernicious and forbidden doctrine among Romans and slaves. Now he was being led to the Praetorian guardhouse until he could be brought to trial in one of the basilicas on the Forum Romanum.

So quickly had he been seized that he left most of his belongings, a mantle and a few parched documents, with Carpus. In the damp prison, he greatly needed his mantle, but he sorely missed the parchment rolls with their sacred messages.

Paul felt like a man forlorn and abandoned. All his companions were gone. Some of them he’d sent out on missions or left behind to complete his work. Crispus was in Galatia, Titus had gone to Crete and Macedonia, and Timothy was in Ephesus. And when the persecutions came about, some of his companions abandoned him. Demas, who'd served him throughout his first imprisonment in Rome, left him and returned to Thessalonica, “because he loved this world.” Trophimus fell sick in Miletus and stayed there. A certain coppersmith, Alexander, did him “much evil.” Aristarchus, his faithful servant, was taken with many other Christians at Troas, to be tried before the local courts.

Luke’s completely Greek appearance and bearing kept him from being taken. He accompanied Paul when, as a Roman citizen, the latter was called to be tried in Rome.

Paul was closely guarded in the prison this time, and it didn’t matter that he was a Roman citizen. The crime of Christianity obliterated almost all distinctions.

And yet the persecutions did not destroy all his communications with the world of believers. After a while he found a way to exchange messages with friends.

Some of the soldiers taking turns guarding him were members of Gabelus’ cohort. Gabelus himself had been arrested in the Jewish catacomb, but the Christian thread was not broken, for the gentle and noble-spirited Eubulus took Gabelus’ place. When these men were on guard, they carried messages to and from Paul and his friends. They also allowed Luke to attend the apostle, and what was of the most importance, they smuggled in writing materials to allow him to send letters to the communities.

Even at noon the cell in which he was confined was dim. By afternoon it was pitch black and remained so until morning. But Paul sat steeped in light, as though the walls around him had dissolved and the heavens were shining on him freely. He was more aware than ever of the eternal light that is kindled in us when we conquer death. “In faith there is no death, there is only eternal life,” he had taught. This made him quite incapable of understanding, let alone sympathizing with, any manifestation of panic. He expected everyone, without exception, to continue to work as diligently as before and not to withhold a single act of service out of fear of death. He was filled with contempt for those believers who fled before persecution or who refused to renew contact with him for fear of discovery. Weakness and timidity cannot be associated with faith.

Not that he lacked compassion, for he interpreted defection as the loss of a great treasure. To those who’d avoided him during his first trial in Rome, he said, “Be not ashamed of risking danger for the lord, and be not ashamed of me, his prisoner.”

Paul knew the time had come to take an accounting of himself. He looked back on the course of his life and felt that everything was as it should be. He could leave the world no man’s debtor. He even owed nothing to himself.

Faith was a great peacemaker between him and the world. For there was no death; there was only one great life that passed from this world to the next, and wherever God wanted him, well, there God would find him! Those who were afraid of death were the ones who were bringing death into life.

Ah, how he longed to plant this ultimate truth of faith into the hearts of the believers! Then there would be no timidities and no defections. Then they would reach the highest perception of Christ, and the passage through death would be nothing more than a stepping-stone across a narrow threshold.


The door of the cell swings open and daylight is diffused toward the dim corner where the apostle, seated in chains, is steeped in his own inward light. Good Eubulus leads a man in. Paul looks up to see a tall, stately, black-bearded stranger. Eubulus pulls the door to, and the stranger speaks in the darkness.

“I am Onesiphorus of Ephesus. I have come to pay my respects to the apostle to the Gentiles.”

Joyously Paul asks, “You come to greet me here, in Rome? Weren’t you afraid? Weren’t you ashamed of my chains?”

“Afraid to come to you? Ashamed of the chains Christ has given you?”

The tall stranger falls on his knees before Paul, and kisses the chains.

“These,” he says, “are the ornaments of the faithful.”
“Are there many like you?” asks Paul, eagerly.
“Everywhere the faithful encounter death with a song on their lips.”
“Don’t say death,” cries Paul. “Rather say eternal life.”

He struggles to his knees.

“Oh, praise be to Christ, who has destroyed death and revealed eternal life!”


It was under the inspiration of this visit that he wrote his farewell letter to his beloved son, Timothy. That day Eubulus smuggled in pen, ink, papyrus, and a lamp. Paul wrote laboriously by the dim flame, adjusting himself to the heavy manacles.


Paul’s condition is very different now than it was during his first imprisonment. Then he was in his own house. Now he’s in the dread Praetorium prison. Then his guards, even if not Christian, were more easily moved to friendliness. The horror of the Christian accusation hadn’t yet seized the city. Now only a Christian legionary permits himself to be friendly with the apostle, and that only when another Christian is stationed outside the cell. For even the inclination to pity the “enemies of mankind” would be regarded as a sign of that infection for which the only cure is the arena. The longest record of faithfulness in service to Caesar would mean nothing. Witness old Gabelus, awaiting his trial along with the rest. Paul’s Roman citizenship performs only one service for him. He doesn’t have to wear the frightful collar or neck manacles that are put on the arrested slaves. But one hand is chained to his jailor and one foot is chained to the wall of the cell.

A letter can be written only when the guard in the cell and the guard outside the cell are both Christians. But it must be written at one sitting, for neither the papyrus nor any of the other writing materials can be left in the cell overnight. Both guards will be changed in the morning, and neither of them may be Christians. If the letter is discovered, it is death for the guards, and death for the men and women who are mentioned in it.

And yet Paul does name names. He sends greetings from Eubulus and Pudens and Linus, and he sends greetings to Priscilla and Aquila.

He must write fast. He can’t say all that is in his heart, but he must indicate his thoughts. He knows the end is near, and yet he doesn’t seem to give up hope.

“I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is near at hand.” And, “If we die with him, so shall we rule with him; and if we deny him, so will he deny us.”

He remembers that no one came forward to defend him at his first trial, “Nevertheless, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known, and I was delivered out of the lion’s mouth. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me until His heavenly kingdom.”

He also says about them, “I pray God that it not be charged against them.”

With incredible obstinacy the apostle makes no mention of the bloody calamities that have befallen the Christians, or of the persecutions they suffer, in this last letter to his beloved son. Is this because of his hope, or is it the same obstinacy that forbids him to mention his impending death?

He calls on Timothy to come to Rome at once, even though he knows he’s asking him to put his head in the “lion’s mouth.” “Hurry to get here before winter!” he writes.

And as if to deny his own premonitions, he asks Timothy to bring the mantle and the manuscripts he left behind with Carpus.

Life and death are mixed in the letter, as though the two are one and have become indistinguishable in his eyes. One instant he lays down plans for the future, and the next he bids a father’s farewell to his son. No matter what happens, Paul will accept it, not with stoical indifference, but with the love of faith. It is Paul’s last letter, and it pulses with the sensitiveness of his soul.

This last letter to Timothy, the one joy he has allowed himself in life, expresses a tender sentimentality that would be searched for in vain in any of his other letters.

“I greatly desire to see you, remembering your tears and the real faith that is in you, which was first found in your grandmother Lois and in your mother, Eunice.”

Timothy was the only person who awakened the instincts of family and fatherhood in Paul. Thus the peculiar touch of tenderness and the intimate recollection of his sufferings, which are not so much a complaint as an expression of closeness, a loving father-son relationship.

“Persecutions and afflictions came to me at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, but the Lord delivered me out of them all.”

He can’t help these allusions. But he doesn’t close the letter with them. He learned from Rabbi Gamaliel that “the words of parting between rabbi and disciple shall be words of the Torah. The father parting from the son shall leave him with words of wisdom to take along on the path of life.”

Therefore he turns from the personal to the admonitory, “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power. . . hold fast the form of sound words that you have heard from me, in faith and love that is in Jesus Christ.”

In feverish haste he sets down the leading principles of his son’s mission. “Preach the word. Be instant in season and out of season. . .watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.”

And it is here that the words slip from him, “For I am now ready to be offered.”

Looking back over the long years of his life, he sees the devious routes, the detours, the returns, and he knows that in the end his feet are on the straight path. He sees that the sum of it all is just, and he adds, in complete assurance, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.”

He will wear a crown of righteousness, hard won by a life of labor. For all his life was given to bringing men under the sign of righteousness.

He’s never gone easy on himself; never shrunk from suffering; doesn’t shrink from death. And he imposes this same discipline on others, even on his beloved son. Just a few moments ago he wrote him with infinite gentleness. Now he bids him come to Rome! Bids him too to bring Mark with him, “for he is useful to me in the ministry.”

It’s an invitation to share his fate and the fate of the believers of Rome, both to his own son, and to the nephew of his beloved boyhood friend, Barnabas. For when the moment of personal tenderness has passed, he is back in the spirit of his service, and faith reminds him that there is no break for those who serve Christ.

The light trembles on the papyrus as he hurries through the last lines of his letter. He is motionless. His yellow, wrinkled face, his lofty forehead, shine in the half darkness. His eyes are fixed on the distance, beyond the heavy walls that imprison him. In his heart is the peace of fulfillment. He has reached the point where joy and sorrow are one. Everything that was to be done has been done, and everything that was to be said has been said. He is now ready to abandon the earthly instrument that has served him so long and so painfully.

* * * * *

The end came soon. Two days after his letter to Timothy was smuggled out of the Praetorium, Paul was brought before the Tribunal. The investigation was short. He identified himself with the words, “I am a Christian;” he refused to offer incense to the image of Caesar; he made no appeal to his Roman citizenship.

He was taken to the prison reserved for those already condemned to death, where he found Simon Peter, Gabellus, and many others he’d personally led to faith in Christ.