Crossing the Finish Line
5/29/25 Bible Thought (Acts 20)
In Acts 20, Paul’s third and final missionary journey was coming to a close. With this, Paul had a Spirit-led conviction that he was to go to Jerusalem, but also that harm awaited him there (Acts 20:22).
As a result, he calls the leaders of the Ephesian church to come see him in the nearby city of Miletus (Acts 20:17). He is certain he won’t see them again, and it is a tear-filled farewell.
In the midst of the physical hardships to come, and the present emotional hardship of leaving friends behind, Paul had one single resolve.
He declares,
“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).
Life itself wasn’t Paul’s greatest treasure; His greatest treasure was Jesus Christ.
As such, his goal was to simply finish his course, that is, “the course that one follows in a race.”[1]
Races are frequently used as metaphors for life and here we see Paul’s resolve to sprint to the finish line. Last year, a good friend of mine and I had the opportunity to do a mud run together. It was around 4.5 miles and had all manner of obstacles.
There were things you had to climb over, a massive cargo net to ascend, a frigid water obstacle you had to go under—certainly, this race was a very good metaphor for life! At the end, they had an obstacle that was essentially a mud pit with a bunch of wires hanging down that had an electrical charge that you had to navigate through.
They saved the best for last, and on the other side was the finish line.
This is essentially where Paul was at.
There was significant hardship to come, and it wasn’t something that he was looking forward to. Rather, he was looking ahead to the finish line when he would be with Christ (see Phil. 1:23).
Later, as Paul was penning his very last letter, one written to his ministry protégé, Timothy, he would conclude,
“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:6-8).
Paul’s goal in Acts was to finish strong, and according to what he would later write to Timothy and the record we find in Acts he did.
There was a day coming where he would stand before his Savior and hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” and that mattered more than anything down here, even life itself.
His resolve should inspire us to finish our God-given race strong.
All of us are tasked with something. The route we have might be unique, but God has us here for a reason.
We should be devoted to finishing that task for as long as God grants us life and we can persevere along the way, no matter the obstacles that come, by keeping our eyes fixed on that heavenly finish line and the crown of righteousness that awaits us there.
[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996) 527.