THE GOOD FIGHT

THE GOOD FIGHT

Paul wasn’t just pulling a word picture out of a hat when he uttered the statement, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). Anyone in the Roman Empire would know exactly what he was talking about. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised, in fact, if these words spread and ultimately hastened his death.

In AD 67, the year of Paul’s death, Nero had the audacity to enter himself in the Olympic games. Mind you, Olympic athletes trained all their lives for the games. The thirty-year-old, soft-bellied emperor used medications to induce vomiting rather than exercise to control his weight.17 He was in pitiful shape and ill prepared, but who would dare tell him he could not compete? He cast himself on a chariot at Olympia and drove a ten-horse team. “He fell from the chariot and had to be helped in again; but, though he failed to stay the course and retired before the finish, the judges nevertheless awarded him the prize.”18

Nero did not finish the race. Nevertheless, a wreath was placed on his head, and he was hailed the victor. He showed his gratitude for their cooperation in the ridiculous scam by exempting Greece from taxation. For his processional entry into Rome he chose the chariot Augustus had used in his triumph in a former age, and he wore a Greek mantle spangled with gold stars over a purple robe. The Olympic wreath was on his head. “Victims were sacrificed in his honour all along the route.”19 You can be fairly certain they were from a despised group of people commonly called Chrestiani, or Christians.

Needless to say, word of the humiliating victory spread faster than the fire of AD 64. Soon after Nero returned to Rome, the apostle wrote his stirring final testimony. The edict was signed for his execution.