Albert Barnes Commentary 2 Timothy 4:6

"For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come." — 2 Timothy 4:6 (ASV)

For I am now ready to be offered. This conviction of the apostle that he was about to die is urged as a reason why Timothy should be diligent and faithful in performing the duties of his office. His own work was nearly done. He was soon to be withdrawn from the earth, and the world was now to be deprived of whatever benefit it might have derived from his experience or active exertions.

He was about to leave a work which he much loved, and to which he had devoted the vigor of his life. He was anxious that those who were to succeed him should carry on the work with all the energy and zeal in their power. This expresses the common feeling of aged ministers as death draws near.

The word "ready," in the phrase "ready to be offered," conveys an idea that is not in the original. It implies a willingness to depart, which, whether true or not, is not the idea conveyed by the apostle. His statement is merely of the fact that he was about to die, or that his work was drawing to a close.

No doubt he was "ready," in the sense of being willing and prepared, but this is not the idea in the Greek. The single Greek word rendered "I am ready to be offered"—spendomai—occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, except in Philippians 2:17, where it is translated, "if I be offered." See this explained in the commentary on Philippians 2:17.

The allusion here, says Burder (in Rosenmuller's A. u. n. Morgenland), is to the custom that prevailed among the heathen generally, of pouring wine and oil on the head of a victim when it was about to be offered in sacrifice. The apostle's idea then is that he was in the condition of the victim on whose head the wine and oil had already been poured, and which was just about to be put to death; that is, he was about to die.

Every preparation had been made, and he only awaited the blow that was to strike him down. The meaning is not that he was to be a sacrifice; it is that his death was about to occur. Nothing more remained to be done but to die. The victim was all ready, and he was sure that the blow would soon fall.

What the ground of his expectation was, he has not told us. Probably there were events occurring in Rome that made it morally certain that though he had once been acquitted, he could not now escape. At all events, it is interesting to contemplate an aged and experienced Christian on the borders of the grave, and to learn what his feelings were in the prospect of his departure to the eternal world.

Happily, Paul has in more places than one stated his views in such circumstances, and we know that his religion then did not fail him. He found it to be in the prospect of death what he had found it to be throughout all his life, the source of unspeakable consolation; and he was enabled to look calmly onward to the hour that would summon him into the presence of his Judge.

And the time of my departure is at hand. In Greek, this is dissolving, or dissolution. Thus, we speak of the dissolution of the soul and body. The verb from which the noun (analusis) is derived (analuo) means to loosen again, to undo.

This verb is applied to the act of unloosing or casting off the fastenings of a ship, preparatory to its departure. The proper idea in using the word here would be that Paul had been bound to the present world, like a ship to its moorings, and that death would be a release. He would now spread his sails on the broad ocean of eternity.

The true idea of death, therefore, is that of loosening the bands that confine us to the present world, of setting us free, and permitting the soul to go forth, as with expanded sails, on its eternal voyage. With such a view of death, why should a Christian fear to die?

For "offered," compare "sacrificed." For "departure," see Philippians 1:23 and 2 Peter 1:14.