Philippians 2:20-21

Philippians 2:20

I. In these and like passages of the Epistles of St. Paul written subsequently to his imprisonment, we may trace signs of one of the many trials of the Apostle's life; and it is one which we hardly perhaps estimate at its real measure. St. Paul's life at this time must have seemed like what we call a failure. The great work for which he lived had shattered itself against the natural obstacles of a firmly established order: religion; law; the habits and prejudices of society; the recognised indulgences of human passion. His missionary journeys had come to an end, and he had not reconciled Jew and Gentile, his brethren after the flesh, so dear to him, his brethren after the promise, his crown and joy. The tide which had carried him so high was ebbing, and left him lonely and deserted, hardly recognised or cared for, except by his distant friends in the East. "Demas hath forsaken me." "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all forsook me," are the words of his last Roman letter. His career, his zeal, had ended in disaster. This is what it seemed to have come to; this is what it would have appeared to friend and foe when the old man was led out along the Ossian Way to die, he who had laid the foundations of the Church universal, the Church of all the nations, he who had left a name than which no earthly name is greater, than which there is no greater among the saints of God.

II. To a faith like St. Paul's these adverse appearances, though they might wring from him as they passed a cry of pain and distress, wore a very different aspect and took very different proportions from what they would have to the world. To him the mere vicissitudes of a mortal career would be nothing more strange than the variations in his health or in the number of his years. They were but part of his Master's use of him, part of that cross by which the world was crucified unto him, and he unto the world. So that he had faithfully done what God wanted of him, the outward features of that small fragment of time which we call his life were of slight moment. It mattered little that so much that seemed a course which had begun triumphantly seemed to end among the breakers. It mattered little to himself when he died that the world of his day pronounced the enterprise of his life a mistake and a failure.

III. Do not let us be afraid in a good cause of the chances of failure. "Heaven is for those who have failed on earth," says the mocking proverb; and since the day of Calvary no Christian need be ashamed to accept it. The world would have missed some of its highest examples if men had always waited till they could make a covenant with success. There in the light beyond the veil, and not here, we shall really know which are the lost causes and which are the victorious ones; those who have not been afraid to be like Him here shall be like Him there, for they shall see Him as He is.

Dean Church, Oxford University Herald,Feb. 18th, 1882.