Deliverance. 2 Timothy 4.

The Post that Ate Manhattan.
This post has taken over a week to finally finish. And you can't really even tell.

But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message would be fully proclaimed for all the Gentiles to hear. And so I was delivered from the lion’s mouth! The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. (2 Timothy 4:16-17 NET)

At first glance, those words sound encouraging about Paul's personal fate. He was delivered before. He'll be delivered again. Oh wait... "safely into his heavenly kingdom." Which was indeed the case. We have no further letters from Paul. The cavalry didn't come to the rescue, and tradition has it that not too long after this letter was written, Paul was executed, most likely beheaded as befitted a Roman citizen, during the persecution of Nero.

For some, this may not sound like much of a deliverance, but for those who deal with pain and suffering every moment, every day, and for those who have a clear vision of what it will mean to be with the Lord forever, this is total deliverance. Paul wrote to the Philippians during his first imprisonment:

"For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. Now if I am to go on living in the body, this will mean productive work for me, yet I don’t know which I prefer: I feel torn between the two, because I have a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more vital for your sake that I remain in the body." (Philippians 1:21-24 NET)

The concepts in the words: saving, salvation, rescue, and deliverance, are all tied together. This connection is a natural one to make before you enter the vocabulary world of Christian-ese. As Christians, though, we tend to separate out "salvation" from the other words. This too is somewhat natural, because the definition of the word has been expanded to incorporate a larger concept than deliverance. (Although deliverance would be perfectly acceptable as a meaningful description of what happens to us through Christ.)

I want to take a quick look at these words as a way to cap our read through 2 Timothy. In the Greek, there are two words that can be translated into English as deliver, delivered, deliverance, or salvation and saved, when used in the sense of rescue. (There are a couple others that have to do with handing over, as in Luke 24:7 -- "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men.") The two words are:

rhuomai - to draw to oneself, i.e. deliver; to rescue from danger, with the implication that the danger in question is severe and acute.

soteria - deliverance, salvation; salvation (in the Christian sense); preservation, release; to rescue from danger and to restore to a former state of safety and well being; a state of having been saved; the process of being saved.

Rhuomai is the word Paul uses here. In other words, he's talking about getting rescued from execution and released from prison.

But take a look at those definitions for soteria. There is also a sense of rescue from danger implicit in this word we translate as salvation. This is an important idea in Hebrew thought. Salvation for the Jews carried with it this idea of deliverance or rescue. It was applied more often to physical rescue from the clutches of an enemy than to the idea of going to heaven. The ultimate salvation for the Jews was simply to "be God's covenant people." The understanding was that, "Salvation, then, means deliverance from all that interferes with the enjoyment of these blessings. So it takes countless forms—deliverance from natural plagues, from internal dissensions, from external enemies, or from the subjugation of conquerors (the exile, particularly)."¹ The blessings referred to included a long and prosperous life in Palestine, the happiness of knowing God, a new heaven and new earth, and the resurrection of the dead (Is. 26:19).

And so it is that Paul can say, even as he considers his life poured out in offering, "The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom."

¹The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, M.A., D.D., General Editor