The Good Fight

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

-1 Tim. 6:12

Growing up, I always thought that fighting the fight of the faith meant to white knuckle my way through temptation and try really hard to do good things. Recently, however, I am learning that the fight of the faith is not a fight for a morally better life; Christ has achieved the morally best life for us because we couldn’t. The fight, then, is for Christ.

Every battle has an antagonist and a cause. We fight against the antagonists and for the cause. In the faith, we fight every moment of every day against unbelief and we fight for Christ.

This formulation has always sounded vague and “churchy” to me, offering little practical help for the day-to-day life of the Christian. Yet I have been learning how essential this battle is. Every day I must fight against the unbelief, apathy and lethargy in my own heart, the hardness towards God that exists there, living a life of constant repentance.

The curious thing about all of this is that the strength and the desire to fight do not lie in me; they flow as gifts from God. He gives me the desire to fight and the strength to do so. The great preacher, John Piper, put this well in his sermon “Going Hard After the Glory of God” where he says, “The evidence that you have [God] is that you want more of him. Continued indifference to growth in grace is a sign of no grace.”

As I have been learning this lesson, about the importance of the Good Fight, I have also been learning how hard it actually is. This is not a one-time deal! We do not fight one battle and then rest for the remainder of our lives. The battle is not at our conversion, but every day after. Every day I have to wake up and seek God through prayer and the Scriptures, asking Him to draw me closer to Christ and to see His goodness.

Though hard, this fight is essential. We have all been made in God’s image and we have been made to be in relationship with Him. When we do not seek Him we are actually rebelling against our design. When we do seek Him we are living the way we were meant to live and will live lives that are more fulfilled; our lives will not necessarily be easier as a result, they will actually get harder. We will have to make hard decisions as we refuse to follow the world, to give into temptation, and to listen to Satan. In fact, it will be a battle every moment of every day. But we have a Savior who gives us strength and fights for us.   

I have learned a large part about fighting from The Memoirs of Thomas Boston, the reflections of a 17^th Century Scottish Presbyterian minister. Every page of his life is filled with the evidences of this battle. On a side note, this is why the practice of reading biographies of great Christians is so important. Through the testament of their lives they show us how the Truth of Scripture is lived our in every day life. Let us, then, surround ourselves with many seasoned veterans in this Good Fight as we push forward by God’s grace.