'Exercise thyself.' Now, I have no doubt that the bulk of my hearers
know that the word here rendered 'exercise' is drawn from the athlete's
training-ground, and is, in fact, akin to the word which is transported
into English under the form 'gymnasium.' The Apostle's notion is that,
just as the athlete, racer, or boxer goes through a course of training,
so there is a training as severe, necessary for the godliness which Paul
regards as the one true aim of life.
You Christian people ought to train your spirits at least as carefully
as the athlete does his muscles. There are plenty of people, calling
themselves Christians, who never give one-hundredth part as much
systematic and diligent pains to fulfil the ideal of their Christian
life as men will take to learn to ride a bicycle or to pull the stroke
oar in a college boat. The self-denial and persistence and concentration
which are freely spent upon excellence in athletic pursuits might well
put to shame the way in which Christians go about the task of 'doing'
their religion.
I suppose there never was a time, in England's history at any rate,
whatever it may have been in Greece, when modern instances might give
more point to an old saw than to-day does for this text, when athletic
sports of all kinds are taking up so much of the time and the energy of
our young men. I do not want to throw cold water on that, but I do say
it is a miserable thing to think that so many professing Christians will
give a great deal more pains to learn to play lawn tennis than ever they
did to learn to be good, Christian people.
'Exercise thyself unto godliness.' Make a business of living your
Christianity. Be in earnest about it. A tragically large number of
professing Christians never were in earnest about mending themselves.
And that is why they are so far, far behind. 'Exercise thyself.' You
say, How?
'Well, I say, first of all, concentration. 'This _one_ thing I do.' That
does not mean narrowing, because this 'one thing' can be done by means
of all the legitimate things that we have to do in the world. Next
Friday, when you go on 'Change, you can be exercising yourself to
godliness there. Whatever may be the form of our daily occupation, it is
the _gymnasium_ where God has put us to exercise our muscles in, and so
to gain 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' 'Be strong in the
Lord, and in the power of His might.' The concentration for which I
plead does not shut us out from any place but the devil's
wrestling-ground. All that is legitimate, all that is innocent, may be
made a means for manifesting and for increasing our godliness. Only you
have to take God with you into your life, and to try, more and more
consciously, to make Him the motive-power of all that you do. Then the
old saying which is profoundly true as it was originally meant, and has
of late years been so misused as to become profoundly false, will be
true again, '_Laborare est orare_.' Yes! it is; if worship underlies the
work, but not else.
Again I say, exercise yourselves by abstinence. How many things did the
athlete at Corinth do without in his training? How many things do
prizefighters and rowing men do without when in training to-day? How
rigidly, for a while at any rate, they abstain--whether they recompense
themselves afterwards or not has nothing to do with my present purpose.
And is it not a shame that some sensual man shall, for the sake of
winning a medal or a cup, be able gladly to abandon the delights of
sense--eating, drinking, and the like--and content himself with a
hermit's Spartan fare, and that Christian people so seldom, and so
reluctantly, and so partially turn away from the poisoned cups and the
indigestible dainties which the world provides for them? I think that
any Christian man who complains of the things which he is shut out from
doing if he is to cultivate the godliness which should be his life need
only go to any place where horse-jockeys congregate to get a lesson that
he may well lay to heart. 'Exercise thyself,' for it is unto godliness.
And then what I said in a former part of this sermon about the various
stages of religion may suggest another view of the method of discipline
proper to the Christian life. The strenuous exercise of all our powers
is called for. But if it is true that the godliness of my text is the
last outcome of the emotions which spring from the reception of certain
truths, then if we work backwards, as it were, we shall get the best way
of producing the godliness. That is to say, the main effort for all men
who are in earnest in regard to their own growth in Christlikeness is to
keep themselves in touch with the truths of the Gospel, and in the
exercise of the sentiments and emotions which flow from these. Or, to
put it into other words, the 'gymnastic' is to be, mainly, the man's
clinging, with all his might of mind and heart, to Christ, and the
truths that are wrapped up in Him; and the cultivation of the habit of
continual faith and love turned to that Lord. If I see to number
one--the creed, and to number two--the emotions, they will see to number
three--the conduct. Keep the truths of the Gospel well in your minds,
and keep yourselves well in the attitude of contact with Jesus Christ,
and power for life will come into you. But if the fountain is choked,
the bed of the stream will be dry. They tell us that away up in
Abyssinia there form across the bed of one of the branches of the Nile
great fields of weed. And as long as they continue unbroken the lower
river is shrunken. But when the stream at the back of them bursts its
way through them, then come the inundations down in Egypt, and bring
fertility. And there are hundreds of professing Christians whose fields
lie barren and baked in the sunshine, because they have stopped with
weeds, far away up amongst the hills, the stream that would water them.
Clear out the weeds, and the water will do the rest.
And 'exercise thyself unto godliness' by keeping the crown and the prize
often and clear in view. 'Paul the aged' in this very letter says: 'I
have finished my course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
glory.' He had said, in the midst of the strife: 'Not as though I had
already attained--I press toward the mark for the prize.' And the prize
which gleamed before him through all the dust of the arena now shone
still more brightly when his hand had all but clasped it. If we desire
to 'run with perseverance the race that is set before us' we must keep
our eyes fixed on Jesus, and see in Him, not only the Rewarder, but the
Reward, of the 'exercise unto godliness.'