Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Timothy 2:11

"Faithful is the saying: For if we died with him, we shall also live with him:" — 2 Timothy 2:11 (ASV)

For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.—The last sentence ended with the words “eternal glory”—the goal, the end of the salvation which is in Christ.

This is what the Apostle will help others to win, regardless of any suffering it may cost him. Then, with his mind full of the thoughts of the “eternal glory,” he once more addressed himself to Timothy: “Faithful is the saying, namely, if we be dead with him,” and so on. It was as though he said, “Do you not remember that well-known watchword of our own faith, so often repeated among us in our solemn assemblies when the brotherhood meet together?”

Many have supposed, from the rhythmical character of the clauses of 2 Timothy 2:11–13, that this “saying” was taken from some most ancient Christian hymns, composed and used in the very earliest days of the faith. But whether or not this is the case, there is a high probability that the words formed part of a liturgy in common use in the days of Timothy. If not as a hymn—which seems, on the whole, the most likely supposition—we can well conceive of them as part of the tapestry of a primitive Christian liturgy, woven in like the introductory sentences in our morning and evening prayer, or like the “comfortable words” of the Communion Service.

The expression “If we be dead with Him”—more accurately, If we died with Him—is well explained by 1 Corinthians 15:31: “I die daily.” The Apostle died when he embraced the lot of daily death.

The meaning is further illustrated in 2 Corinthians 4:10, where we read how St. Paul and his companions were “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.”

“He and his faithful companions (was Timothy, to whom he was then writing, to be ranked in this blessed company?) had given themselves up to a life that involved exposure to sufferings, bitter enmity, cruel persecutions, and even death.

But if we are thus dead with Him, what matters it? How can we fear even that last agony man can inflict on us—physical death? For death with Him surely involves life with Him too: that life endless, unfading, full of glory, which we know He is now enjoying, and in the possession of which I, Paul, and some of us have even seen Him, face to face, eye to eye.

In that life of His we shall share; we shall be partakers in this life of His there, but only if we have shared in the life of suffering which was His life here.”