I have fought a good fight. — More accurately, more forcibly rendered, the good fight. St. Paul changes the metaphor, and adopts his old favourite one, so familiar to all Gentile readers, of the athlete contending in the games. First, he speaks generally of the combatant, the charioteer, and the runner. “I have fought the good fight,” leaving it undetermined what description of strife or contest was referred to. The tense of the Greek verb — the perfect — “I have fought,” is remarkable. The struggle had been bravely sustained in the past, and was now being equally bravely sustained to the end. His claim to the crown (2 Timothy 4:8) was established.
I have finished my course. — Or “race,” for here the image of the stadium, the Olympic race-course, was occupying the Apostle’s thoughts. Again the perfect is used: “I have finished my course.” How, asks, Chrysostom, “had he finished his course?” and answers rather rhetorically by replying that he had made the circuit of the world. The question is better answered in St. Paul’s own words (Acts 20:24), where he explains “his course,” which he would finish with joy, as the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus.
I have kept the faith. — Here, again, the metaphor is changed, and St. Paul looks back on his lived life as on one long, painful struggle to guard the treasure of the Catholic faith inviolate and untarnished (see 1 Timothy 6:20). And now the struggle was over, and he handed on the sacred deposit, safe. It is well to compare this passage with the words of the same Apostle in the Epistle to the Philippians (2 Timothy 3:12, and following verses). The same metaphors were in the Apostle’s mind on both occasions; but in the first instance (in the Philippian Epistle) they were used by the anxious, care worn servant of the Lord, hoping and, at the same time, fearing what the future had in store for him and his Church; in the second (in the Epistle to Timothy) they were the expression of the triumphant conviction of the dying follower of Christ, who had so followed his loved Master in life, that he now shrank not from following the same Master in death.