_THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE AS MILITARY SERVICE; AS AN ATHLETIC CONTEST; AS
HUSBANDRY._
"Suffer hardships with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No
soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life;
that he may please him who enrolled him as a soldier. And if also a
man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except he have
contended lawfully. The husbandman that laboureth must be the first
to partake of the fruits. Consider what I say; for the Lord shall
give thee understanding in all things."--2 TIM. ii. 3-7.
St. Paul represents the Christian life and the Christian ministry under
a variety of figures. Sometimes as _husbandry_; as when he tells the
Galatians that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;" and
that "in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Gal. vi. 7, 9); or
when he reminds the Corinthians that "he that ploweth ought to plow in
hope, and he that thresheth, to thresh in hope of partaking" (1 Cor. ix.
10). Sometimes as an _athletic contest_; as when he tells the
Corinthians that "every man who striveth in the games is temperate in
all things" (1 Cor ix. 25); or the Ephesians that "our wrestling is not
against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. vi. 12). Sometimes,
and most frequently, as _military service_; as when he charges the
Thessalonians to "put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a
helmet the hope of salvation" (1 Thess. v. 8); or when he writes to the
Philippians of Epaphroditus as his "fellow-soldier" (Phil. ii. 25).
In the passage before us he makes use of all three figures: but the one
of which he seems to have been most fond is the one which he places
first,--that of military service. "Suffer hardships with me," or "take
thy share in suffering," as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier
on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may
please him who enrolled him as a soldier." He had used the same kind of
language in the First Epistle, urging Timothy to "war the good warfare"
and to "fight the good fight of faith" (i. 18; vi. 12). Every Christian,
and especially every Christian minister, may be regarded as a soldier,
as an athlete, as a husbandman; but of the three similitudes the one
which fits him best is that of a soldier.
Even if this were not so, St. Paul's fondness for the metaphor would be
very intelligible.
1. Military service was very familiar to him, especially in his
imprisonments. He had been arrested by soldiers at Jerusalem, escorted
by troops to Caesarea, sent under the charge of a centurion and a band of
soldiers to Rome, and had been kept there under military surveillance
for many months in the first Roman imprisonment, and for we know not how
long in the second. And we may assume it as almost certain that the
place of his imprisonment was near the praetorian camp. This would
probably be so ordered for the convenience of the soldiers who had
charge of him. He therefore had very large opportunities of observing
very closely all the details of ordinary military life. He must
frequently have seen soldiers under drill, on parade, on guard, on the
march; must have watched them cleaning, mending, and sharpening their
weapons; putting their armour on, putting it off. Often during hours of
enforced inactivity he must have compared these details with the details
of the Christian life, and noticed how admirably they corresponded with
one another.
2. Military service was not only very familiar to himself; it was also
quite sufficiently familiar to those whom he addressed. Roman troops
were everywhere to be seen throughout the length and breadth of the
Empire, and nearly every member of society knew something of the kind of
life which a soldier of the Empire had to lead.
3. The Roman army was the one great organization of which it was still
possible, in that age of boundless social corruption, to think and speak
with right-minded admiration and respect. No doubt it was often the
instrument of wholesale cruelties as it pushed forward its conquests, or
strengthened its hold, over resisting or rebelling nations. But it
promoted discipline and _esprit de corps_. Even during active warfare it
checked individual license; and when the conquest was over it was the
representative and mainstay of order and justice against high-handed
anarchy and wrong. Its officers several times appear in the narrative
portions of the New Testament, and they make a favourable impression
upon us. If they are fair specimens of the military men in the Roman
Empire at that period, then the Roman army must have been indeed a fine
service. There is the centurion whose faith excited even Christ's
admiration; the centurion who confessed Christ's righteousness and
Divine origin at the crucifixion; Cornelius, of the Italian cohort, to
whom St. Peter was sent; C. Lysias, the chief captain or tribune who
rescued St. Paul, first from the mob, and then from the conspiracy to
assassinate him; and Julius, who out of consideration for St. Paul
prevented the soldiers from killing the prisoners in the shipwreck.
But the reasons for the Apostle's preference for this similitude go
deeper than all this.
4. Military service involves self-sacrifice, endurance, discipline,
vigilance, obedience, ready co-operation with others, sympathy,
enthusiasm, loyalty. Tertullian in his _Address to Martyrs_ draws with
characteristic incisiveness the stern parallel between the severity of
the soldier's life and that of the Christian. "Be it so, that even to
Christians a prison is distasteful. We were called to active service
under the Living God from the very moment of our response to the
baptismal formula. No soldier comes to the war surrounded by luxuries,
nor goes into action from a comfortable bed-room, but from the
make-shift and narrow tent, where every kind of hardness and severity
and unpleasantness is to be found. Even in peace soldiers learn betimes
to suffer warfare by toil and discomforts, by marching in arms, running
over the drill-ground, working at trench-making, constructing the
tortoise, till the sweat runs again. In the sweat of the brow all things
are done, lest body and mind should shrink at changes from shade to
sunshine, and from sunshine to frost, from the dress of ease to the coat
of mail, from stillness to shouting, from quiet to the din of war. In
like manner do ye, O blessed ones, account whatever is hard in this your
lot as discipline of the powers of your mind and body. Ye are about to
enter for the good fight, in which the Living God gives the prizes, and
the Holy Spirit prepares the combatants, and the crown is the eternal
prize of an angel's nature, citizenship in heaven, glory for ever and
ever. Therefore your trainer, Jesus Christ, Who has anointed you with
the Spirit and led you forth to this arena, has seen good to separate
you from a state of freedom for rougher treatment, that power may be
made strong in you. For the athletes also are set apart for stricter
discipline, that they may have time to build up their strength. They are
kept from luxury, from daintier meats, from too pleasant drink; they are
driven, tormented, distressed. The harder their labours in training, the
greater their hopes of victory. And they do it, says the Apostle, that
they may obtain a corruptible crown. We, with an eternal crown to
obtain, look upon the prison as our training-ground, that we may be led
to the arena of the judgment-seat well disciplined by every kind of
discomfort: because virtue is built up by hardness, but by softness is
overthrown" (_Ad Mart._, iii). It will be observed that Tertullian
passes by an easy transition from training for military service to
training for athletic contests. The whole passage is little more than a
graphic amplification of what St. Paul writes to Timothy.
5. But military service implies, what athletic contests do not,
vigilant, unwearying, and organized opposition to a vigilant,
unwearying, and organized foe. In many athletic contests one's opponent
is a rival rather than an enemy. He may defeat us; but he inflicts no
injury. He may win the prizes; but he takes nothing of ours. And even in
the more deadly conflicts of the amphitheatre the enemy is very
different from an enemy in war. The combat is between individuals, not
armies; it is the exception and not the rule; it is strictly limited in
time and place, not for all times and all places; it is a duel and not a
campaign,--still less a prolonged war. Military service is either
perpetual warfare or perpetual preparation for it. And just such is the
Christian life: it is either a conflict, or a preparation for one. The
soldier, so long as he remains in the service, can never say, "I may lay
aside my arms and my drill: all enemies are conquered: there will never
be another war." And the Christian, so long as he remains in this world,
can never think that he may cease to watch and to pray, because the
victory is won, and he will never be tempted any more. It is for this
reason that he cannot allow himself to be "entangled in the affairs of
this life." The soldier on service avoids this error: he knows that it
would interfere with his promotion. The Christian must avoid it at least
as carefully; for he is always on service, and the loss of promotion is
the loss of eternal life.
Observe that St. Paul does not suggest that Christians should keep aloof
from the affairs of this life, which would be a flat contradiction of
what he teaches elsewhere. The Christian is to "do his own business, and
to work with his hands, that he may walk honestly toward them that are
without, and may have need of nothing" (1 Thess. iv. 11, 12). He has a
duty to perform "in the affairs of this life," but in doing it he is not
to be _entangled_ in them. They are means, not ends; and must be made to
help him on, not suffered to keep him back. If they become entanglements
instead of opportunities, he will soon lose that state of constant
preparation and alertness, which is the indispensable condition of
success.
The same thought is brought out in the second metaphor by the word
"lawfully." The athlete who competes in the games does not receive a
crown, unless he has contended _lawfully_, _i.e._, according to rule
(=nomimôs, nomos=). Even if he seems to be victorious, he nevertheless
is not crowned, because he has violated the well-known conditions. And
what is the rule, what are the conditions of the Christian's contest?
"If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross, and follow Me." If we wish to share Christ's victory, we must be
ready to share His suffering. No cross, no crown. To try to withdraw
oneself from all hardship and annoyance, to attempt to avoid all that is
painful or disagreeable, is a violation of the rules of the arena. This,
it would appear, Timothy was in some respects tempted to do: and
timidity and despondency must not be allowed to get the upper hand. Not
that what is painful, or distasteful, or unpopular, is necessarily
right; but it is certainly not necessarily wrong: and to try to avoid
everything that one dislikes is to ensure being fatally wrong. So that,
as Chrysostom says, "it behoves thee not to complain, if thou endurest
hardness; but to complain, if thou dost not endure hardness."
Chrysostom and some modern commentators make the striving lawfully
include not only the observance of the rules of the contest, but the
previous training and preparation. "What is meant by _lawfully_? It is
not enough that he is anointed, and even engages, unless he complies
with all the regulations of training with respect to diet, temperance,
and sobriety, and all the rules of the wrestling-school. Unless, in
short, he go through all that is befitting a wrestler, he is not
crowned." This makes good sense, if "is not crowned" be interpreted to
mean "is not likely to be first," rather than "does not receive the
crown, even if he is first." A victorious athlete is rightly deprived
of the reward, if he has violated the conditions of the contest: but no
one ever yet heard of a victor being refused the prize because he had
not trained properly. Moreover, there are enough examples to show that
"lawfully" (=nomimôs=) does sometimes include the training as well as
the contest.
But this does not seem to be St Paul's meaning. In the first similitude
he takes no account of the time which precedes the soldier's service,
during which he may be supposed to be preparing himself for it. The
Christian's life and the soldier's service are regarded as co-extensive,
and there is no thought of any previous period. So also in the second
similitude. The Christian's life and the athlete's contest are regarded
as co-extensive, and no account is taken of anything that may have
preceded. Baptism is entering the lists, not entering the
training-school; and the only rules under consideration are the rules of
the arena.
No doubt there are analogies between the training-school and Christian
discipline, and St. Paul sometimes makes use of them (1 Cor. ix. 25,
27); but they do not seem to be included in the present metaphor.
But it is about the third similitude that there has been most
discussion. "The husbandman that laboureth must be the first to partake
of the fruits:" not, as the A. V., "must be first partaker of the
fruits;" which seems to imply that he must partake of the fruits before
he labours. What is the meaning of "first"? Some commentators resort to
the rather desperate hypothesis that this word is misplaced, as it
sometimes is in careless writing and conversation: and they suppose that
what St. Paul means is, that "the husbandman, who labours first, must
then partake of the fruits," or, more clearly, "the husbandman, who
wishes to partake of the fruits, must first of all labour." The margin
of the A. V. suggests a similar translation. But this is to credit the
Apostle with great clumsiness of expression. And even if this
transposition of the "first" could be accepted as probable, there still
remains the fact that we have the present and not the aorist participle
(=kopiônta= and not =kopiasanta=). Had St. Paul meant what is supposed, he
would have said "The husbandman who _has_ first _laboured_," not "who
_labours_ first." But there is no transposition of the "first." The
order of the Greek shows that the emphatic word is "labours." "It is the
_labouring_ husbandman who must be the first to partake of the fruits."
It is the man who works hard and with a will, and not the one who works
listlessly or looks despondently on, who, according to all moral fitness
and the nature of things, ought to have the first share in the fruits.
This interpretation does justice to the Greek as it stands, without
resorting to any manipulation of the Apostle's language. Moreover, it
brings the saying into perfect harmony with the context.
It is quite evident that the three metaphors are parallel to one another
and are intended to teach the same lesson. In each of them we have two
things placed side by side,--a prize and the method to be observed in
obtaining it. Do you, as a Christian soldier on service, wish for the
approbation of Him who has enrolled you? Then you must avoid the
entanglements which would interfere with your service. Do you, as a
Christian athlete, wish for the crown of victory? Then you must not
evade the rules of the contest. Do you, as a Christian husbandman, wish
to be among the first to enjoy the harvest? Then you must be foremost
in toil. And the Apostle draws attention to the importance of the lesson
of self-devotion and endurance, inculcated under these three impressive
figures, by adding, "Consider what I say; for the Lord shall give thee
understanding in all things." That is, He has confidence that His
disciple will be enabled to draw the right conclusion from these
metaphors; and having done so, will have grace to apply it to his own
case.
Timothy is not the only Christian, or the only minister, who is in
danger of being disgusted, and disheartened, and dismayed, by the
coldness and apathy of professing friends, and by the hostility and
contempt of secret or open enemies. We all of us need at times to be
reminded that here we have no abiding city, but that our citizenship is
in heaven. And we all of us are at times inclined to murmur, because the
rest for which we so often yearn, is not given us here;--a rest from
toil, a rest from temptation, and a rest from sin. Such a sabbath-rest
is the prize in store for us; but we cannot have it here. And if we
desire to have it hereafter, we must keep the rules of the arena; and
the rules are _self-control_, _self-sacrifice_, _and work_.