Enduring the Christian Race

Enduring the Christian Race

It is clear that the Christian life takes endurance.  Throughout the New Testament we are continuously exhorted to persevere, and Jesus promises both persecution and suffering to those who follow Him.  However, so very often this exhortation is brought in such a way so as to produce burden, rather than encouragement.  This burdensome exhortation happens for many reasons, including a lack in the understanding of Christ’s victory, a misunderstanding of what we are to endure, and a culture of discipline-loving Christianity.

What We Need Not Endure

Often times endurance is discussed in association with people who have fallen into sinful patterns of life.  Pastors are exhorted to endure so they don’t give into the temptation of adultery that has so often left a black-mark on Christian leadership.  The solution to these issues is not to try hard not to sin.  Such exhortation places us back under the law, and actually increases the likelihood of stumbling.  We are to “reckon ourselves to be dead to sin.”  (Romans 6:11)  A person who is dead to sin cannot spend their time devising strategies for how not to sin.  We are not to build up endurance to resist a sinful nature that is dead!

True Christian Endurance

Paul brings an exhortation to his spiritual son Timothy saying, “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” (2 Tim 2:3) We are indeed in the midst of a battle, but we must understand the direction of that fight.  So often the battle is confused as a battle within one’s self.  You are not fighting yourself.  There is no sinner arguing with a saint within you.  However, the true enemy loves to have us fight with ourselves so we fail to pay appropriate attention to what He is actually doing.  Sinful nature was taken care of on the cross, and thus, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  (Ephesians 6:12)  The war that is being fought is an external one, and thus the encouragement to endure is appropriate when a brother or sister is facing an external struggle.  Such encouragement to endure is to acknowledge the “hardship” that we, like Timothy face, and to remind one another who we are in the face of that hardship.  Paul continuously reminds Timothy of his strength, of the Spirit within Him.  If the Christian life is a race, encouragement to endure should be like water-stations on a Marathon route.  They supply necessary life and sustenance to those under pressures.  There is an enemy, there are trials to be endured, but our God made a public spectacle of that enemy on the cross, disarmed Him, and came to dwell in you, so that He who dwells in you is greater than he in the world.  Those truths are encouragement to endure and words of life and energy in seasons of distress and intensity of battle.

Laying Aside Burdens

We’ve talked now about not needing to endure against our sinful nature, and we’ve discussed what it looks like to encourage someone to endure.  However, the question still remains of what endurance looks like.  How do I endure?  The author of Hebrews gives us a blueprint for answering this question, saying,

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2

The first step of endurance is to lay aside.  If anyone has seen a marathon they know that those participating desire to be as scantily clad as possible.  The best in the world spend thousands of dollars just to have shoes and clothes that are light and comfortable.  You cannot be weighed down and finish a marathon, much less finish it well. 

The issue in our understanding of this text is not a failure to realize that something must be set aside, it is a failure to realize what must be set aside.  In fact, most readers and preachers of this text never truly make it beyond this step of laying aside.  Here the message digresses into an exhortation of how to discipline yourself out of your sinful habits.  Such a path is in fact a rabbit trail with no end but bondage to the law.  To lay aside sin fundamentally means to understand what Jesus did for you.  It is to understand that any burden of sin on your life is a lie and a mirage.  “For he who has died has been freed from sin.” (Romans 6:7)  You and your sinful nature died with Christ so that you could live to God.  This means that Jesus carried the burden already so it is illegal for you to try and carry it again.  Lay it aside! 

The important difference here is that the true laying aside of sin has nothing to do with experience.  I don’t need to ask you if you have a porn problem, I need to let you know that you are burdenless before God.  The bible is obsessed with our consciences.  The book of Hebrews in particular emphasizes the need for a clean conscience.  We read, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22)  Before you can start the race you must set aside your guilty conscience and the heavy grime you feel on your life.  Paul understood this and that is why he exhorted Timothy saying, “This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck . . .” (1 Timothy 1:18-19) Did you catch that?  Paul is saying that the reason people have shipwrecked in the faith is that they have rejected a good conscience rather than rejecting the bad one. Let Jesus cleanse our conscience with His holy blood.  That is what it means to lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us!

Looking unto Jesus

The second step is in reality the first step, because the first step of laying aside can’t be done until we look at Jesus.  However, it is good to know that the only real instruction for actually running the race is to look at Jesus!  To keep our eyes on Jesus is the race.  King David summed up the race when he said, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD . .  .” (Psalm 27:4)  The only work that you are allowed to do is to look at Jesus.  Enjoy!

If I was wise I would stop at this point, because that is fundamentally all that needs to be said.  That is the race in its entirety, but because we are inquisitive people, and I like to talk I will continue to elaborate on the subject.  The author of Hebrews tells us to view the Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith.  This means that not only does the race not consist of cleaning up our own sin, but it also doesn’t look like trying to have enough faith.  Jesus has enough faith for you so simply look to Him and let Him work.  In fact, the author here lets us in on a little secret:  Jesus has already worked, which means he has finished, which means we can look back at this work and admire it!  All the work was done on the cross.  The race is thus to look at the finished work of Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  This is all you need to know to run a good race: Jesus already ran it for you, he finished perfectly, and now He’s sitting in a throne next to God, by the way, you are also seated with him there! (See Ephesians 2:6)

For Joy

The fear that makes us really obsessed with the subject of enduring is, the “what if I stumble?” or, “what if I don’t finish?”  I would like to ask a question here, and that question is simply, “what kind of people fall in the middle of, or fail to finish races?”  The answer is tired people.  It’s worn out tired pastors that have moral failures.  It is people that have no gas left in the tank that cave under the pressures of critique, or simply decide to run a shorter race, because the full one is just too hard.  So how do we avoid becoming tired?  We get less serious and have fun.  Joy is the key to avoiding fatigue!  When we choose joy we will refuse to participate in dead works that wear us down.  If hanging out with a group of really broken people seems like it could break me, I simply won’t do it.  The Christian life should be fun.  This race doesn’t have to be painful.  If you read the New Testament you will see people in prison perfectly happy, people being killed rejoicing for it, and people poor as can be and more cheerfully giving than anyone around them.  How is this possible?  When we behold the face of Jesus!  Jesus brings joy that can drown out all else.  When I was a child my family had to go to Christmas Eve service at church.  My pastor preached the same pointless sermon every year, and though there were some cool novelties (such as fire in church during Silent Night), the church service was a  trial at best.  However, I endured it happily for the joy set before me of Christmas morning.  In fact, I didn’t even complain about the service, or worry about it at all.  My attention was for the next morning.  The joy set before us can be captivating.

I would look at this point to the story of the first Christian martyr, Stephen.  Check out these words,

“But he, [Stephen], being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’  Then they [angry mob] cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. . . And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’  Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not charge them with this sin.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:55-60)

I call attention to this story to compare Stephen’s death to the death of Jesus.  Why is it that it seems like Stephen is a lot more joyful about his death than Jesus was about His? Isaiah 53:4-6 tells us, “surely he  [Jesus] has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”  Stephen can die happier because Jesus already died with the burden of Stephen’s sorrow and grief upon his shoulders.   Stephen didn’t need to bear it, because it was already born, and in fact it died with Jesus.  Jesus didn’t rejoice when he was beaten, but Peter and other apostles did after they were beaten, “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” (Acts 5: 41)  These Christians were not stronger than Jesus they were just running a race without the burdens that Jesus bore for them.  This should be a joyful race!  Jesus died to give you, “ beauty for ashes, oil of joy for mourning, [and a] garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Isaiah 61:3

Quit Killing Yourself
I’ve already talked about the fact that we are not our own enemy, but many of us really have trouble with this concept.  I’ve had trouble practically walking out the fact that I don’t need to overcome myself to be successful in the Christian life.  The idea that you need not to overcome yourself but actually to become yourself to be successful is completely foreign to most of Christian America.  We talk often about dying daily, about picking up your cross, about killing yourself.  We ask each other if we are willing to pay the cost of following Jesus.  I myself was the biggest proponent of such thinking for much of my life in ministry.  However, I am now convinced that these things are simply not biblical.  Imagine someone trying to run a race, serious about finishing, but also serious about trying to beat themselves to death the whole way.  It is a sickly comical picture, but it is the way many of us have been taught to run the race of Christianity.  I have already told you that the race we are on is simply to look at Jesus, but I haven’t told you where it goes yet.  Paul will tell you though that it goes from, “glory to glory.”  (2 Cor. 3:18)   The implications of this are significant.  It means that this race should not only be enjoyable, but that it is actually glorious, and getting better all the time.  Glory to glory is how you know if you are living under grace.  A person living under grace and in the Holy Spirit is always having new depths of God unveiled to them, and they are following Jesus into those new depths.  Their eyes never leave the next glory.  People under the law however do not work in a positive direction of proceeding into glory, but rather the negative direction of what must be removed before I can go forward.  Such people believe they are going backward to go forward, but in reality they are stagnant in bondage.  All language of dying multiple deaths, killing yourself or anything of the sort is language of the law.  It has an appearance of wisdom, but is of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. (See Colossians 2:23)  When a person lives with this “killing yourself” mindset they must have eyes for the things that need to be killed.  Thus, such a person is constantly looking at themselves and keeping a record of wrongs, which if you remember love doesn’t do, which means they are not loving themselves, which means they have missed the first and greatest commandment, and to top it all off they make their cleansed consciences guilty all over again.  You can see what a slippery slope this law stuff can be.  Jesus died and you died with Him, once for all.  Now it is simply, “further up and further in,” as CS Lewis wrote. 

I went to a wedding recently and the pastor spoke and encouraged the couple by telling them how hard their marriage was going to be, how much they were going to have to die each day and how hard it is for two sinners to live together.  Besides making me want to cry uncontrollably such a mentality is actually the voice of the enemy.   Marriage is a race, and contrary to popular opinion, it is a most glorious race.  Benjamin Dunn makes the point that “loneliness was the first thing God called not good.”  God saw Adam by himself and for the first time in his creation process declared a flaw.  Thus, He made woman and introduced marriage and called it very good!  I have been married for coming up on three years now and I can gladly say that I have never died during that process.  I was half a person before my wedding, and became whole when united to my wife.  That was a nice plus, and we have been moving together from glory to glory ever since!  What a beautiful and joyful race it is. The culture of the church however is to celebrate and fight for marriage on one hand and on the other to tell us how hard it is. We then wonder why our divorce rates are so high, or why leaders are cheating on their spouses.  We were created for happiness, and when that, which according to God’s plan is supposed to supply that happiness, is twisted into a painful obstacle course we may just decide to seek happiness someplace else.  So it is a lie that we must kill ourselves, but it is also a lie that the race is hard!

The Race is Easy and Glorious

It is often assumed that the Christian race is a hard one because you need endurance for it.  Thus people talk about it as a Marathon, but what if it is really more like a walk across the park.  The thing we need endurance for isn’t the race itself, but the evil cronies who are still lingering in the park, and really don’t want you to have a good time!  The race is heaven on earth and I don’t need endurance to overcome the heaven, but rather to overcome the hell that is trying to disrupt my heaven on earth.  Adam ran the race when he walked with God in the cool of the day.  Then He and Eve ate the fruit and the result has been the painful marathon of human history!  We have been redeemed from the rat race of the world!  Isaiah prophesied this about our race, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary.  His understanding is unsearchable.  He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-31)  So whether you prefer a walk in the park or mounting up with wings like eagles, this is the Christian life, not the grueling marathon.  “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple!”  That is the race I have been called to, and the one I intend to run.  It runs through the House of God from one glory to another, and around every corner I see another side of the manifold beauty of His face.  Because of his faithfulness I will endure those enemies who would threaten to interfere, and I will join Paul in saying at the end of my life that, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Tim. 4:7)  Anyone who wants to try their best to follow Jesus up the marathon hill of Golgotha can take their best shot, but I am satisfied in taking credit for His work.  I will walk with Jesus in the winner’s circle of his race, that beautiful place where sticks and stones can break my bones, but I won’t care ‘cuz I’m with Jesus.