How did the apostle Paul die?

Some speak of it as abrupt, because it does not tell us of the later imprisonment of the apostle and his death. It is the same spirit of unbelief that complains of the two Gospels which do not set the ascension scene before us, as if God did not know best how to reveal His own truth. Paul is a prisoner, yet not so as to hinder the truth going out even in Rome. To know more of the apostle we must read the word closely; yet even then there is nothing to encourage curiosity, superstition, or hero-worship, but everything so that God in all things may be glorified by Jesus Christ.

If uninspired pens had been at work we would have had a dramatic description of his martyrdom, a vivid account of how he looked and behaved in his last moments on earth. The manner and place of his burial would have been carefully described. But Scripture gives us not a word of this. Why? Is it not to teach us that God does not flatter the man, but honours him in his work? When his work is done, the curtain falls.

We have the agreed testimony of antiquity that Paul suffered martyrdom during the persecution under Nero, and most probably in A.D. 67. As a Roman citizen he was beheaded, instead of being scourged and crucified or exposed to the horrifying tortures then invented for the Christians. Like his Master he suffered "outside the gate." There is a spot on the Ostian Road, about two miles beyond the city walls, where his martyrdom is supposed to have taken place.

He stood his last trial before the Emperor Nero, the foulest of all the Roman Emperors. He was led down the Appian Way on his last journey. A flash of the sword, and the head of the devoted servant of Christ was separated from his body. The tired body, scarred by whippings, bearing the brands of the Lord Jesus, was laid down.

The reference is undoubtedly to the trial of Paul and, as we would say, to his first hearing (for it is more accurately rendered "my first defence"); and we learn that not one person was found to go with him to the court. All men "forsook" him, and the word "forsook" is the same one used of Demas, showing that these, like him, had given way to the power of the enemy. But if they were overcome by their fears, grace was still at work in the heart of Paul, and it lifted him above the sense of their unfaithfulness and his own desertion, so that he could pray that the sin might not be charged against them.

He was delivered out of the hands of the wicked Emperor Nero, who was only the tool of Satan, now going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he might devour... One has said that the heavenly kingdom may indeed be reached through a martyr's death, but the apostle knew that to die was gain, for it would bring him into the presence of his beloved Lord in His heavenly glory.

Verse 6 is more correctly translated, "For I am already being poured out, and the time of my departure is come." It was as though he were a drink offering, poured out upon the infinitely greater offering of his Lord, showing his joy in this One... For the drink offering was clearly poured out upon the meal offering.

The tribunal of Nero fades from his sight here. Death in its most violent form has no terror for him. Christ in glory is the object of his eye and of his heart... The unrighteous tribunal of Nero, and the blood-stained sword of the executioner, were to Paul only messengers of peace, come to close his long and weary path and to bring him into the presence of Jesus in glory.