1 Corinthians 9:26

VAGUE RUNNING: INEFFECTIVE FIGHTING

‘I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air.

1 Corinthians 9:26

We have here two topics—first, the danger of running vaguely; and secondly, of fighting ineffectively.

I. I so run, St. Paul says, as not vaguely.—There is a danger, then, of running vaguely; and there are two modes of this error.

(a) We may fail to keep the goal in view. The Christian life is a precarious thing—in each one of us—on many accounts, especially because we are so apt to lose sight of our goal. If we do this we must run at hazard or go wrong. I greatly fear that many have no definite goal at all. Every one, when asked, hopes to reach Heaven. But what is Heaven? And what is reaching it? Many of us have no real, no adequate notion, of Heaven. A safe place, a place of rest, a place of meeting, a place of calm, a place where sorrow, and crying, and pain, and change will be no more. These are our more thoughtful ideas of Heaven. I believe they are all true, but I am quite sure they do not make up, they scarcely touch, St. Paul’s idea, for they are Heaven without its foundation, Heaven without its sun. St. Paul’s heaven was briefly defined—where Christ is: ‘I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ.’ It is impossible that we should desire this sort of heaven unless we know much of Christ here below. Many do without Him here; they set Him aside in their daily life. Such cannot have the world or the eternity where Christ is, except in a very feeble sense, for their desire, their goal. But even those who know Christ may run vaguely in the same sense. They often lose sight of the goal. Which of us keeps the goal always in view? Be not hasty to answer. Think what it implies. How unworldly, how heavenly-minded, how charitable, unselfish, and pure that man must be who is running thus, with his goal full in view, and that goal a right one!

(b) We may run vaguely by failing to keep within the course. There were very strict rules on this point in the Grecian games—every part was rigidly marked out; the course must be all fairly traversed; and there were perils awaiting the unskilful charioteer who took either a too circuitous or a too abrupt sweep at the turning-point. And a Christian in the spiritual race has not only to keep the goal in view, but he has also all along to keep within the course; and that means he must live exactly by Christ’s rules throughout his life on earth.

II. There is a second danger— that of fighting ineffectively.—‘So fight I, as not beating the air.’ This was an allusion to blows that fell short of the adversary by misdirection or by skilful evasion. Now we may beat the air in like manner—that is, fight ineffectively—in either of two ways:—

(a) We may mistake our real enemy. We may direct our attacks upon a wrong point. We have an enemy, but we do not always know who that enemy is. For example, there are those who are spending much of their strength upon what they deem errors of opinion. It is the duty, indeed, of Christian teachers to see that the truths of revelation and the doctrines of the Gospel are carefully set forth, lest they mar the beauty of ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ But how different is all this from the practice of those who make men offenders for a word; of hearers who sit in judgment on their teachers; of those who fasten on slips of expression, often arising out of candour or fervour! This is a mistaking of our adversary.

(b) We may mistake our adversary by a very common want of self-knowledge. We all take it for granted that we know our own faults. Where there is a very strong besetting sin in any of us, no doubt this is so; but where the life has been more carefully regulated, and kept pure from gross stain, and the supremacy of conscience obeyed, it often happens that there is almost an entire ignorance of faults of spirit and temper patent to others. How often has some particular virtue been magnified into the whole of duty, such as, e.g., the virtue of temperance or of purity, which has rendered us blind to other faults!

(c) We may ‘ beat the air’ not by fighting with the wrong foe only, but by fighting with the real foe wrongly. Which of us has not done this? Which of us had not regretted, resolved, yes, and prayed against, his besetting sin, and yet fallen again before it when it has assailed him? This is sad indeed, and discouraging. We ought to have strength, considering the motive given us in Christ’s death and the promised help of His Holy Spirit. It is all for want of faith, for want of accepting what is offered, for want of believing that there is a Holy Spirit given to all for the asking. If we did believe, we should use it; but for want of faith we fall, even when experience of, and sorrow for, and resolve against, sin, and even prayer for victory, has not been wholly wanting.

—Dean Vaughan.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE RACE AND THE BATTLE

When St. Paul says this of himself, he is entering his solemn protest against that vague, well-meaning indifference, that hazy mistiness of good intentions, in which we are so content to pass through life.

I. He would have us know that all that is great and good, all that is true and noble, must come, not from uncertain hesitating effort, but only from a clear, steady purpose and a settled resolution. He is trying to make us impatient of the misty cloud-land in which we are dwelling in our sloth, and he urges us to be honest with ourselves, and ask clearly and distinctly what is the goal after which we are striving; what it is we mean to do in this world; whether there is any mark at all at which we are aiming. For our great and sore temptation is to drift unheeding through the days and the years, as if we had nothing to do but to follow the stream of time, and at last to lie down and die.

St. Paul had an object in life, and most people have none. Is not that the great difference after all?

II. But those who so labour to run the race of life ‘not as uncertainly’ find also soon that unawares they have entered into a battle. Their own indolence and sloth are not the only hindrance in their race. The world, the flesh, and the devil have also to be resisted. ‘I fight, not as one that beateth the air,’ says the Apostle, telling us in this way that he bears himself in the battle of life with the same fixedness of aim and steadfast resolution with which he runs his race. He was not content with a mere general determination to conquer sin, but his warfare was watchful, wary, and particular. For much earnest effort is wasted because it is directed like the blows of ‘one that beateth the air.’ Our best resolutions have spent their force before they have reached the sin they were to conquer, or else they have been spread so loosely and so vaguely over the surface of our life that there has been no collected strength at the point of danger. We have determined that we will lead a Christian life, but we have not examined ourselves and said, This or that is my besetting sin, I will watch steadfastly against it at all times and at all seasons. We have not looked forward cautiously into the events of the coming day, and said to ourselves, At this or that moment I know that I shall be exposed to this or that particular temptation, and by the grace of God I am determined to overcome it.

III. And yet, except the Lord be in the battle, they labour in vain who strive against temptation.—St. Paul would never have us believe that in this text he has given us the whole account of the race which he ran and the battle which he fought. If we were to ask him what was the secret of his great strength, he would be careful to answer that it was in the power of Christ alone. ‘When I am weak,’ he said of himself, ‘then am I strong.’ The more earnestly you have striven to run in the path of God’s commandments, the more certainly you have found that the task was beyond your strength. And the more humbly you have cast yourself upon your Lord and trusted in His grace, the more surely you have found that you could do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth you.

Illustration

‘In the “life and letters” of a great man, most readers feel the deepest interest in the passages where he speaks of his own inner life. They are marked and remembered, and made useful to ourselves. It is felt that they help us to find the key to the man’s work and character, and to understand how he became what he was; how he influenced other men; how he succeeded and why he failed. Accordingly, we require of a biographer that he should give us his hero’s thoughts and words, and as little as possible of his own. We want to know the man as he was. And when the life is one of the foremost of all human lives, and the letters are among the sacred books of the world, the interest in personal details rises to an enthusiasm and becomes a devotion. The mind of St. Paul has been ruling over Christendom for more than eighteen centuries; and those things which he himself has told us about his own spiritual life are precious beyond words to every earnest soul. The personal passages of the Epistles are probably the most familiar.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

A PLEA FOR DEFINITENESS

It is of the highest importance to be definite in our religious aims and efforts, and to observe method and plan in our warfare against evil. It is a principle of our Christian life that we should ‘so run, not as uncertainly.’

I. Let us apply it, first, with respect to prayer.—The mind of the Church would seem to be clearly indicated. She has not left her clergy free to use what public prayers they please, and her offices are to form part of their daily devotions. She has directed her faithful lay people to communicate not less often than three times a year. Not without a very real and practical object are these rules laid down. And all of us, I suppose, recognise more or less the need of method in our private devotions. We know that we must pray, not only when we feel inclined, but regularly. Let us carry this out more thoroughly. We have a certain time each day—say an hour, which we can give to devotion. Let us be quite sure which hour of the day it is, and how we are to spend it. Let it be so divided and marked out that prayer, self-examination, the meditation, and Bible-reading all have their allotted place. We shall have our regular system of reading Holy Scripture, our definite plan of interceding for all that need our prayers. Each meditation will have its practical resolution; each communion its one or two subjects of special prayer. The whole devotional life will thus be adapted to the character, the surroundings, the needs, and the temptations of each one of us; we shall the better be able to ‘so run, not as uncertainly.’

II. The question of temptation is one to which our principle is less commonly applied.—Yet it is surely of the first importance that men should know distinctly the spiritual foes they have to face: ‘So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.’ In the providence of God, we most of us have not only to pass through the general atmosphere of temptation which is about us, but to strive against some one or two tendencies or faults which trouble us more actively and frequently than the rest. There is a definite battle God would have us fight. There is a sin which, above all, doth most easily beset us. We have an irritable temper, or a slothful or self-indulgent disposition, or a proud heart, or a false and insincere spirit. And we are called upon to resist this fault of character every day. Yet there is a lamentable want of method among most men in dealing with temptation. Let us realise fully that, as has been said, ‘Temptation is the raw material out of which saints are made’; that it is our opportunity to strike a blow for Christ, as the battle gives the soldier his chance of serving his country; that for each of us a champion of our enemies, a Goliath of Gath, is before us, to conquer whom may be to demoralise the rest. ‘When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.’ With regard to our temptations, then, let us ‘so run, not as uncertainly.’ Let us find out, by the help of the Holy Spirit, what are our weak points, what are our worst dangers. And let us meet them with some regular and definite method of defence, tried again and again until we are sure of its strength.

The day will come when we shall have no need of our plans and our rules, which are but means to an end, and whose highest object is that they may become unnecessary. Even in this life, for some of us, that day will come. Meanwhile, let us be earnest in our struggle, that it may come sooner. Let us guard against the very real danger, before alluded to, of allowing our rules to become mere formal bonds, from which the spirit that made them living things has departed; a danger which, if unheeded, will make us Pharisees before we know it. Let us bear in mind that the worship and imitation of Jesus Christ, God and Man, is the Christian life. All plan and method must be a means to this, or it is worthless—to worship Him more thoroughly, and to grow more and more into His likeness; this is our only earthly object, the great business of our life. For this end we strive, and pray, and struggle; with this in view, we ‘so run, not as uncertainly’; and when this shall be reached, our race will be run, and the prize of our high calling secured.

Rev. Professor H. C. Shuttleworth.