“But these physical hardships were not the chief battle in which
Paul was engaged. Far more trying was the battle that he fought against the
enemies in his own camp. Everywhere his rear was threatened by an all-engulfing
paganism or by a perverted Judaism that has missed the real purpose of the Old
Testament law. Read the Epistles with care, and you see Paul always in
conflict. At one time he fights paganism in life, the notion that all kinds of
conduct are lawful to the Christian man, a philosophy that makes Christian
liberty a mere aid to pagan license. At another time, he fights paganism in
thought, the sublimation of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the
body into the pagan doctrine of the immortality of the soul. At still another
time, he fights the effort of human pride to substitute man’s merit as the
means of salvation for divine grace; he fights the subtle propaganda of the
Judaizers with its misleading appeal to the Word of God. Everywhere we see the
great apostle in conflict for the preservation of the church. It is as though a
mighty flood were seeking to engulf the church’s life; dam the break at one
point in the levee, and another break appears somewhere else. Everywhere
paganism was seeping through; not for one moment did Paul have peace; always he
was called upon to fight.
Fortunately, he was a true fighter; and by God’s grace he not only
fought, but he won. At first sight indeed he might have seemed to have lost.
The lofty doctrine of divine grace, the center and core of the gospel that Paul
preached, did not always dominate the mind and heart of the subsequent church.
The Christianity of the Apostolic Fathers, of the Apologists, of Irenæus, is
very different from the Christianity of Paul. The church meant to be faithful
to the apostle; but the pure doctrine of the Cross runs counter to the natural
man, and not always, even in the church, was it fully understood. Read the
Epistle to the Romans first, and then read Irenæus, and you are conscious of a
mighty decline. No longer does the gospel stand out sharp and clear; there is a
large admixture of human error; and it might seem as though Christian freedom,
after all, were to be entangled in the meshes of a new law.
But even Irenæus is very different from the Judaizers; something
had been gained even in his day : and God had greater things than Irenæus in
store for the church. The Epistles which Paul struck forth in conflict with the
opponents in his own day remained in the New Testament as a personal source of
life for the people of God. Augustine on the basis of the Epistles, set forth
the Pauline doctrine of sin and grace; and then, after centuries of compromise
with the natural man, the Reformation rediscovered the great liberating Pauline
doctrine of justification by faith. So it has always been with Paul. Just when
he seems to be defeated, his greatest triumphs, by God’s grace, are in store.
…God grant that you—students in the seminary—may be fighters, too!
Probably you have your battles even now; you have to contend against sins gross
or sins refined; you have to contend against the sin of slothfulness and
inertia; you have, many of you, I know very well, a mighty battle on your hands
against doubt and despair. Do not think it strange if you fall thus into divers
temptations. The Christian life is a warfare after all. John Bunyan rightly set
it forth under the allegory of a Holy War; and when he set it forth, in his
greater book, under the figure of a pilgrimage, the pilgrimage, too, was full
of battles. There are, indeed, places of refreshment on the Christian way; the
House Beautiful was provided by the King at the top of the Hill Difficulty, for
the entertainment of pilgrims, and from the Delectable Mountains could
sometimes be discerned the shining towers of the City of God. But just after
the descent from the House Beautiful, there was the battle with Apollyon and
the Valley of Humiliation, and later came the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
No, the Christian faces a mighty conflict in this world. Pray God that in that
conflict you may be true men; good soldiers of Jesus Christ, not willing to
compromise with your great enemy, not easily cast down, and seeking ever the
renewing of your strength in the Word and sacraments and prayer!” Read more»
J. Gresham Machen, “The Good
Fight of Faith” (1929) (HT: Chris Gordon)