Keeping the faith means fighting the fight

We are going to read someone else’s mail today. The writer reveals personal friendships, successes, failures and embarrassments. We are almost intruding.
It is late in the Apostle Paul’s life. He is in prison (2 Timothy 1:8), awaiting his death as he writes to a student pastor, “I am ready now for my life to be sacrificed and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:6-7). We can imagine him putting that last period in place, then laying his quill down for a moment to breathe a heavy sign before taking it up again to finish the last chapter.
His prison cell is cold and he misses his warm overcoat. He regrets not having brought his books and old parchments to read in solitary confinement (v. 13). He writes these things to Timothy, his “son in the faith” whose mother and grandmother he has also known through their years of mutual faith and ministry (1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:5). Maybe Timothy can bring him a few things before winter sets in (2 Tim. 4:21).
“Do try to come soon,” he says, “for Demas has deserted me for his love of the world.”
Others have also left him for various reasons, some good, others questionable. Precious few remain for him, like Luke and Titus. We can identify with Paul. Haven’t some of our relationships endured, while others have ended suddenly and others still feel like betrayal? “Get Mark and bring him with you,” he says, remembering another faithful friend (v. 11). Could we fill in someone’s name from our own difficult times?
Paul warns Timothy, too: “Alexander, the metalworker, did me great harm and the Lord will reward him accordingly.” Yet, he more easily forgives others: “May the Lord not hold it against them,” echoing Jesus’ teaching from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” What have our attitudes been in similarly disappointing relationships over the years?
Paul has good memories, too: “I send warm greetings to Priscilla and Aquila.” They were a married couple with whom Paul had lived and worked. They had risked their lives for him by holding worship services in their house (Rom. 16:3-4). Greetings go to many others who had visited Paul in jail, welcomed him into their family, or who had experienced tragedy alongside him. Paul remembers specific individuals and mentions them by name. Could we, also?
Two phrases stand out above them all — athletic words, images of contest, struggle, and personal training (1 Cor. 9:24-27). Boxing and running track in the Coliseum at Rome could result in death for any unprepared athlete. Believing in Jesus was no safer.
We sometimes hear the phrase “keep the faith” without its counterpart, “fight the good fight.” For Paul, they can not be disconnected. If you believe in Jesus, he would say, you are going to have a fight on your hands, so you’d better train for it and practice regularly. If we are interested in fighting, we must make it worth the time, effort and risk that getting into it require. But we must not fight just any fight. He told Timothy that some fights are “foolish and ignorant” (2 Tim. 2:13-20), not worth fighting. They leave people recovering from wounds with no sense of having been in a “good” fight.
Keeping the faith does mean fighting the good fight. By the way, have you been in one recently?
The Rev. Russell G. Waldrop, D. Min., LPC, is a pastoral counselor and is chaplain of Western State Hospital. Contact him at 540-332-8004 or at .