_CHRISTIAN LIFE A RACE._
Various passages in this Epistle suggest that the Apostle's Philippian
friends or some of them were relaxing in diligence; they were failing
perhaps to lay to heart the need of progress, less sensitive than they
ought to be to the impulse of Christianity as a religion of effort and
expectancy. Some of them, it might be, were inclined to think of
themselves as now pretty well initiated into the new religion, and as
pretty thorough adepts in its teaching and its practice; entitled
therefore to sit down and look round with a certain satisfaction and
complacency. If it were so, the tendency to division would be accounted
for. Arrogance in Christians is a sure preliminary to heats and
disputings. At all events, however it might be at Philippi, an insidious
complacency in little improvements and small attainments is not unknown
among Christians. It is, one may fear, a common impression among us that
we are fair average Christians,--a feeling perhaps not so cherished as
to make us boast, but yet so cherished as to make us feel content. And,
alas! the very meaning of Christianity was to inspire us with a spirit
that would refuse so to be contented.
Some feeling of this kind may have led the Apostle to lay stress on the
onward energising character of Christianity as _he_ knew it. This was
the manner of his regard to his Lord. At the foundation of his religion
there was, indeed, the faith of a wonderful gift of righteousness and
life. That gift he welcomed and embraced. But it wrought in him
eagerness of desire, and intentness of purpose, to secure and have all
that this gift implied. It stirred him to activity and progress. His was
not the Christianity of one who counts himself to have already obtained
all into possession, nor of one who finds himself landed already in the
state at which the Christian promises aim. Rather he is one set in full
view of a great result: some experience of the benefits of it is already
entering into his history; but it is yet to be brought to pass in its
fulness; and that must be along a line of believing endeavour, Christ
working and Paul working, Christ faithful with Paul faithful. "I follow
after, if that I may lay hold and extend _my_ grasp, seeing Christ has
laid hold with _His_ grasp on me." Christ had a purpose, and has
mightily inaugurated a process through which this purpose may be
achieved in the history of Paul. And as Christ lays His grasp on Paul,
behold the purpose of Christ becomes also the purpose of Paul, and _he_
now throws himself into the process with all his force, to apprehend
that for the sake of which Christ apprehended him.
Here Paul signalised one distinguishing attribute of genuine
Christianity as he knew it. He did not yet count himself to have laid
complete grasp on the whole of Christian good. In a very important
practical sense salvation was still something ahead of him, as to the
final, secure, complete possession; Christ Himself was an object still
before him, as to the knowledge and the fellowship for which he longed.
But one thing is vital and distinctive. "This Saviour with His salvation
holds me so, that I count all but loss for Him. He holds me so, that
forgetting all that lies behind, I bend myself to the race, stretching
out towards the goal at which the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ is won. That is _my_ Christianity." He who had suffered loss of
all for Christ, he who so burned with desire to know Him in His
righteousness, in the power of His resurrection, in the fellowship of
His sufferings, is far from thinking he has reached the goal. Because
the knowledge of Christ is so great a thing in his eyes, therefore, on
the one hand, all he has attained as yet seems partial and imperfect;
but for the same reason, on the other hand, he feels the great
attraction by which all his powers are drawn into the endeavour which so
great a prize shall crown.
The question may here be put how the consistency of the gospel can be
made out if we are called to rest and rejoice in Christ, and if, at the
same time, we find ourselves committed to so absorbing a struggle for a
prize. If God will have us, it may be said, to seek and strive that we
may obtain, then we must do so because it is His will. But where is the
connection of things that will avert inconsistency, and bring out a
reasonable continuity of principles, between the call to rest on Christ
for full salvation, and the call to run a race, and so run as to obtain?
For answer it is to be remembered, in the first place, that (as commonly
happens in matters where life and its activities are concerned) the
difficulty concerns only the adjustment of our theory; it begins to
vanish when we come to practice. When we are in vital contact with the
spiritual realities themselves, we find both elements of the case to be
true for us, and each indispensable to the truth of the other. The rest
of faith and the fight of faith belong to each other. But not to dwell
on so general a consideration, two lines of thought may be suggested to
those who are conscious of embarrassment at this point.
First, let it be considered that the faith of a Christian embraces real
relations with the living God, different from anything that is possible
to unbelief. Through Christ we believe in God. Those relations are
conceived to be real and vital from the first, though the perfect
experience of all that they imply belongs to the future. Faith means
that from the outset of believing we are to be to God, and God is to be
to us, something different from what the flesh perceives. Christ
believed in is an assurance that so it is and shall be. But now, the
state of men is such, as long as they have to carry on a life of faith
in a world of sense and sin, that this faith of theirs presently meets
with flat contradiction. The course of the world treats it all as null.
Sin in their own hearts, and many experiences of life, seem to negative
the pretensions and the claims of faith. And strong temptations whisper
that this high fellowship with a living God not only does not exist, but
that it is not desirable that it should. So that from the outset and all
along, faith, if it is not content to be a mere dream, if it will count
for a reality, must contend for its life. It must fight, "praying always
with all prayer," to make good its ground, and to hold on to its Lord.
It is indeed the nature of faith to rest, for it is a trust; not less
certainly faith is under necessity to strive, for it is challenged and
impeached.
It lies therefore in the very nature of the case that, if faith is in
earnest in embracing real and progressive salvation, it must find itself
drawn into conflict and effort to assert the reality and to experience
the progress. The opposition it meets with ensures this.
On the other hand, it is the nature of the gospel to set men free for
active service. It supplies motives, therefore, for enterprise,
diligence, and fidelity; and it provides a goal towards which all shall
tend. So men become fellow-labourers with their Lord. And if it is
intelligible that the Lord should exert continual care for them, it
ought to be intelligible also that they are to be exercised in a
continual care for Him; care, that is, for the discharge of the trust
which they hold from Him.
The Apostle dwells on all this, evidently because he felt it to be a
point of so great importance in practical Christianity. In this world
the right Christian is the man who knows well he has not attained, but
who devotes his life to attaining. Paul brings this out by means of the
image of a race for a prize, such as might be seen in the public games.
This is a favourite illustration with him. His use of it illustrates the
way in which things that are steeped in worldliness may aid us in
apprehending the things of God's kingdom. They do so, because they
involve elements or energies of man's nature that are good as far as
they go. As the Apostle thought of the racers, prepared by unsparing
discipline, which had been concentrated on the one object; as he thought
of the determination with which the eager runners started, and of the
way in which every thought and every act was bent upon the one purpose
of success, until the moment when the panting runner shot past the goal,
it stirred him with the resolve to be not less eager in his race; and it
made him long to see the children of light as practical and wise as, in
their generation, the children of this world are.
As usual in the case of illustrations, this one will not hold in all
points. For instance, in a race one only wins, and all the rest are
defeated and disappointed. This is not so in the Christian race. The
analogies lie elsewhere. In order to run well the runners submit to
preparation in which everything is done to bring out their utmost energy
for the race. When the race comes each competitor may possibly win: in
order to win he must put forth his utmost powers; he must do so within a
short period of time; and during that time nothing must distract him
from the one aim of winning. He does this for a benefit embodied in, or
symbolised by, the prize which rewards and commemorates his victory.
These are the points in which the races of public games afford lessons
for the Christian race. In the former the fact that the success of any
one competitor deprives the others of the prize they seek, is the
circumstance that puts intensity into the whole business, and makes a
real race of it. So also in the spiritual antitype there are elements
which make the race most real, though they are elements of another kind.
The prize can be nothing else than the life eternal (1 Tim. vi. 12)
which comes, as we have seen, into full possession at the resurrection
of the dead. He whose favour is life confers it. The bestowment of it is
conceived as taking place with gladness and with honourable approbation:
"Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord." The prize stands in strict connection with the perfecting of the
believer: the time of receiving the prize is also the time of being
presented faultless. Neither prize nor perfectness is attained here;
neither is attained unless sought here; and the blessedness bestowed is
connected in fact and measure with the faith and diligence expended on
the race. On all these accounts the prize is spoken of as a crown: a
crown of glory, for it is very honourable; a crown of life,
incorruptible, that fadeth not away, for it shall never wither on the
brow, as the wreaths of those earthly champions did. Now to run his race
was for Paul the one thing. He had not yet attained; he could not sit
still as if he had: it was his living condition that he must run, as one
not _yet there_, following on in earnest that he might actually have the
prize.
Perhaps some one may regard it as objectionable to conceive practical
Christianity as a race for a prize. This seems, it may be said, to
subordinate the present to the future, this world to the other world,
and, in particular, virtue to happiness; because in this way the efforts
of goodness here are conceived only as a means to enjoyment or
satisfaction there. We reply that the prize does indeed include joy, the
joy of the Lord. But it includes, first of all, goodness, consummate in
the type of it proper to the individual; and gladness is present no
otherwise than as it is harmonised with goodness, being indeed her
proper sister and companion. Besides, the elements of the gladness of
that state come in as the expression of God's love--a love both holy and
wise. Communion with that love is the true security for goodness. It is
equally absurd to suppose, on the one hand, that when that love fills
the heart with its unreserved communication there can fail to be
gladness; and, on the other hand, to suppose that fellowship with it can
be other than the proper and supreme object of a creature's aspiration.
There is no unworthiness in devoting life to win this prize; for it is a
state of victorious well-being and well-doing. The highest goodness of
all intervening stages is to aspire to that highest goodness of all.
Whatever we may do or be, meanwhile, is best attained and done as it
confesses its own shortcoming, and hopes and longs to be better and to
do more.
It is true that a complete gift of eternal life is held out to us in
Christ, and it is faith's part to accept that gift and to rest in it.
But yet part of that gift itself is an emancipation of the soul; in
virtue of this the man becomes actively responsive to the high calling,
reiterates his fundamental decision all along the detail of mortal life,
affirms his agreement with the mind and life of his Lord, approves
himself faithful and devoted, and runs so as to obtain. All this is in
the idea of the gift bestowed, and is unfolded in the experience of the
gift received. So the prize is to arise to us as the close of a course
of progressive effort tending that way: the reality of the prize
corresponds to the reality of the progress; the degree of it, in some
way, to the rate of that progress. The progress itself is made good, as
we have said, by perpetually re-affirming the initial choice; doing so
in new circumstances, under new lights, with a new sense of its meaning,
against the difficulties implied in new temptations; yet so as ever, in
the main, to abide by the beginning of our confidence. With all this let
it be remembered that the time is short; and it will be understood that
the Christian life, so viewed, assumes the character, and may well
exhibit the intensity and pressure, of a race.
How far short men fall of the great idea of such a life--how they flinch
from the perfectness of this Christian imperfection--need not be
enlarged upon. But if any life is wholly untrue to this ideal, the
Apostle seemingly could not count it Christian. This one thing _he_ did,
he bent himself to the race. For if the ultimate attainment has become
very attractive, if the sense of present disproportion to it is great,
and if, in Christ, both the obligation and the hopefulness of reaching
the perfect good have become imperatively plain, what can a man do but
run?
* * * * *
Verses 15 and 16 state the use which the Apostle desires his disciples
to make of this account of his own views and feelings, his attitude and
his effort,--"As many of us as are perfect."
Since the Apostle has disclaimed (ver. 12) being already perfected, it
may seem strange that he should now say, "As many of us as are perfect."
His use of language in other places, however, warrants the position that
he is not speaking of absolute perfection, as if the complete result of
the Christian calling had been attained. Rather he is thinking of ripe
practical insight into the real spirit of the Christian life--that is to
say, advanced acquaintance, by experience, with the real nature of the
Christian life. He uses this word "perfect" in contrast to "babes" or
"children" in Christ. These last are persons who have been truly
brought to Christ; but their conceptions and their attainments are
rudimentary. They have not attained to large insight into the means and
ends of the Christian life, nor to any ripe acquaintance with the
position of a Christian man, and the relation he holds to things around
him. They are therefore unready to face the responsibilities and perform
the duties of Christian manhood. Hence the translators of the Authorised
Version, in some passages, render the same word so as to bring out this
sense of it. So 1 Cor. xiv. 20, "Be not children in understanding:
howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men"
(τἑλειοι), and Heb. v. 14, "Strong meat belongs to those that are
of _full age_" (τελεἱων).
It cannot be doubted, however, that the word is used here with a certain
emphatic significance in reference to the previous disclaimer, "I am not
yet perfected." In the Philippians, or in some of them, Paul apprehended
the existence of a self-satisfied mood of mind, such as might perhaps be
warrantable if they were now perfect, if Christianity had brought forth
all its results for them, but on no other terms. In contrast to this he
had set before them the intense avidity with which he himself stretched
out towards attainment and completeness which he had not reached. And
now he teaches them that to be thus well aware how far we are from the
true completeness, to be thus reaching out to it, is the true perfection
of our present state: he only is the perfect Christian who is "thus
minded"; who knows and feels how much remains to be attained, and gives
himself up to the effort and the race under that inspiration. It is as
if he said: Would you approve yourselves to be believers, advanced and
established; would you show that you have come to a larger measure of
just views and just feelings about the new world into which faith has
brought you; would you have the character of men well acquainted with
your Lord's mind about you, with your own position in relation to Him;
in short, would you be perfect, fully under the influence of the
Christianity you profess:--then let you and me be "thus minded"; let us
evince the lowly sense of our distance from the goal, along with a
living sense of the magnificence and urgency of the motives which
constrain us to press on to it.
For is there such a thing attainable here as a Christian perfectness, a
ripe fulness of the Christian life, which exhibits that working of it,
in its various forces, which was designed for this stage of our history?
If so, what must it be? That man surely is the perfect man who fully
apprehends the position in which the gospel places him here, and the
ends it sets before him, and who most fully admits into his life the
views and considerations which, in this state of things, the gospel
proposes. Then, he must be a man penetrated with a sense of the
disproportion between his attainment and Christ's ideal, and at the same
time set on fire with the desire and hope of overcoming it. Has a man
experienced many gracious dealings at his Lord's hands, has he made
attainments by grace, has he come to a Christian standing that may be
called full age, would he be what all this would seem to imply,--then
let him take heed to be "thus minded." Otherwise he is already beginning
to lose what he seemed to have attained.
It is not so surprising, and it is not so severely to be reprehended, if
those fail in this point who are but children in Christ. When the
glorious things of the new world are freshly bursting into view, when
the affections of the child of God are in their early exercise, when sin
for the present seems stricken down, it is not so wonderful if men
suppose danger and difficulty to be over. Like the Corinthians, "now
they are full, now they are rich, now they have reigned as kings." It
has often been so; and at that stage it may be more easily pardoned. One
may say of it, "They will learn their lesson by-and-by; they will soon
find out that in the life of a Christian all is not triumph and
exultation." But it concerns those who have got further on, and it is
expected of them, that they should be "thus minded" as the Apostle Paul
was. It is a more serious business for them to be of another mind on
this point, than for those who are only children in Christ. It tends to
great loss. Are we, says the Apostle, come to a point at which we may be
thought to be--may hope we are--experienced believers, well acquainted
now with the salvation and the service, men in Christ? Then as we would
ever act in a manner answerable, at this stage, to the gospel and to our
position under the gospel, let us be thus minded; forgetting that which
is behind, reaching forth to that which is before, let us press toward
the mark. For at each stage of progress much depends on the way in which
we deal with the position now attained, with the views which have opened
to us, and with the experiences that have been acquired. This may decide
whether the stage reached shall be but a step towards something better
and more blessed, or whether a sad blight and declension shall set in.
There are Christian lives to-day sadly marred, entangled and bewildered
so that one knows not what to make of them, and all by reason of failure
to be "thus minded."
A man is awakened to the supreme importance of Divine things. At the
outset of his course, for years perhaps, he is a vigorous and growing
Christian. So he comes to a large measure of establishment: he grows
into knowledge of truth and duty. But after a time the feeling creeps
into his mind that matters are now less urgent. He acts rather as a man
disposed to keep his ground, than as one that would advance. Now he
seems to himself to lose ground somewhat, now to awaken a little and
recover it, and on those terms he is fairly well contented. All this
while it would be unjust to say that he does not love and serve Christ.
But time passes on; life draws nearer to its close. The period at which
God's afflictions usually multiply has arrived. And he awakens at last
to see how much of his life has been lost; how extensively, though
secretly, decay has marred his attainments and his service; and how
little, in the result, of that honourable success has crowned his life
which once seemed fair before him.
"Let us be thus minded." Let Christians be admonished who have for some
time been Christians, and especially those who are passing through
middle life, or from middle life into older years. There is enchanted
ground here, in passing over which too many of Christ's servants go to
sleep. Leave that which is behind.
Let us be thus minded: but this proves hard. One may see it in a general
way to be most reasonable, but to come up to it in particulars is hard.
In all particular cases we are tempted to be otherwise minded. And in
many particulars we find it very difficult to judge the manner of spirit
that we are of. Were all right in us, absolutely right, rectitude of
disposition and of moral action would be in a manner instinctive. But
now it is not so. With reference to many aspects of our life, it is very
difficult to bring out distinctly to our own minds how the attitude that
becomes us is to be attained and maintained. The difficulty is real; and
therefore a promise is annexed. "If in anything ye be otherwise minded."
That may realise itself in two ways. You may be distinctly conscious
that your way of dealing with some interests which enter into your
lives is unsatisfactory, is below your calling and privilege as a
Christian; and yet you may find it hard to see how you are to rise into
the worthier life. It is like a problem which you cannot solve. Or,
again, you may fear that it is so; you may fear that if things were seen
in the true light it would turn out so. But you cannot see clearly; you
cannot identify the faulty element, far less amend it. Here the promise
meets you. "If in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even
this unto you." Keep your face in the right direction. Be honestly set
on the attainment, and the way will open up to you as you go. You will
see the path opening from the point where you stand, into life that
throughout is akin to the aspiration and the achievement of the life of
Paul.
Paul here has regard to a distinction which theorists are apt to
overlook. We have a sufficient objective rule in the word and example of
Christ. This may be summarised in forms easily repeated, and a man may,
in that respect, know all that need be said as to what he is to do and
to be. But in morals and in spiritual life this is only the beginning of
another process--namely, the subjective individual entrance into the
meaning of it all and the practical appropriation of it. I know the
whole of duty on the human side: I am to love my neighbour as myself. It
is most essential to know it, and a grand thing to have consented to
make a rule of it. But, says one, there remains the difficulty of doing
it? Is that all? I reply. There is another previous difficulty. I can
preach a sermon on loving my neighbour as myself. But what does that
mean, for me, not for any one else, but for myself, on a given day in
November, at half-past one in the afternoon, when I am face to face with
my neighbour, who has his merits, and also his defects, being, perhaps,
provoking and encroaching, with whom I have some business to arrange?
What does it mean then and there and for me? Here there opens the whole
question of the subjective insight into the scope and genius of the
rule; in which problem heart and mind must work together; and commonly
there has to be training, experience, growth, in order to the expert and
just discernment. Short of that there may be honest effort, blundering
most likely, but honest, and lovingly accepted through Christ. But there
ought to be growth on this subjective side.
Moreover, when progress has been made here it imposes responsibility.
Have you been carried forward to such and such degrees of this
subjective insight? Then this ought to be for you a fruitful attainment.
Do not neglect its suggestions, do not prove careless and untrue to
insight attained. Whereto we have attained, "by the same rule let us
walk,"--or, as we may render it, "go on in the same line." So new
insight and new achievement shall wait upon our steps.
Generally, if their Lord had carried the Philippians forward to genuine
attainments of Christian living, then that history of theirs was a track
which reached further on. It was not a blind alley, stopping at the
point now reached. It had had a meaning; there was some rationale of it;
it proceeded on principles which could be understood, for they had been
put in practice; and it demanded to be further pursued. There is a
continuity in the work of grace. There is a rational development of
spiritual progress in the case of each child of God. What God means,
what the direction is in which His finger beckons, what the dispositions
are under the influence of which His call is complied with and
obeyed,--these are things which have been so far learned in that course
of lessons and conflicts, of defeats and backslidings, restorations and
victories, which has brought you so far. Let this be carried out; keep
on in the same road. Whereto you have attained, go on with the same.
But such an admonition at once raises a question; the question, namely,
whether we are at _any_ stage in the pathway of Christian attainment,
whether there is for us as yet _any_ history of a Divine life. Among
those who claim part in Christ's benefits are some whom the grace of God
has never taught to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live
soberly, righteously, and godly; for they have been persistently deaf to
the lesson. There are some who do not know how Christ turns men from
darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. To them the
line of admonition now in hand does not apply: to exhort them to "walk
on in the same" would be to perpetuate for them a sad mistake. Their
course has been dark and downward. Therefore to the admonition already
given, the Apostle adds another. "Brethren, be followers together of me,
and mark (keep sight of) them who walk so as ye have us for an example."
Do not mistake the whole nature of Christianity; do not altogether miss
the path in which God's children go. It is one spirit that dwells in the
Church; let not your walk forsake the fellowship of that spirit.
Christians are not bound to any human authority: Christ is their Master.
They must sometimes assert their independence, even with respect to the
maxims and manners of good people. Yet there is one spirit in God's true
Church, and there is in the main one course of life which it inspires.
God's children have not been mistaken in the main things. In these, to
forsake the spirit and the way of Christ's flock is to forsake Christ.
_ENEMIES OF THE CROSS_.
"For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even
weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose
end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in
their shame, who mind earthly things."--PHIL. iii. 18, 19 (R.V.).