But none of these things move me... — Literally, But I take account of nothing, nor do I hold my life... We note the parallelism with Luther’s famous declaration, when warned by his friends not to go to Worms, “I will go thither, though there should be devils on every house-top.”
So that I might finish my course with joy. — The two last words are wanting in many of the best MSS., and were probably inserted as a rhetorical improvement. The passage is grander without them. What St. Paul desired was to finish his course — whether “with joy” or not mattered little. The dominance of the same ruling thought finds utterance once again in his last Epistle (2 Timothy 4:7).
The ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus. — We have again to note the parallelism with St. Paul’s language elsewhere (2 Corinthians 4:1; 2 Corinthians 5:18; 1 Timothy 1:12); the words that follow are in apposition with the “ministry,” and explain what it consisted in. To bear witness, especially as a living example of its power (1 Timothy 1:12-16), of the good tidings that God was not a harsh Judge, but a gracious Father, willing all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), that was the truth to the proclamation of which his life was to be devoted. In this there was the central truth of the kingdom of God, of which the next verse speaks.