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‘If a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.’
2Ti_2:5
I. St. Paul describes no random efforts here.—His picture is of one who gets his enemy right in front of him, faces him, and then with well-directed blows, aimed straight from the shoulder, fells him. Too much of our battling with self in its many disguises is futile for lack of method and directness. Our plans of attack are often as vague as our confessions of contrition. We go to God and tell Him we have erred from His ways like lost sheep; but we keep back from Him the particular road down which we have strayed and the forbidden pastures in which we have fed.
(a) Indirectness is the death of prayer. We cannot be too explicit in laying bare the breast when in the presence of Him Who sees in secret, to Whom all hearts are open, all desires known.
(b) The same remark applies to our use of grace given. The stronger of two antagonists may be worsted by the weaker, if he relies only upon mere brute force. The one who economises his resources, whose strength is well directed and skilfully husbanded, will prove the better man of the two.
II. If we would be ‘crowned,’ we must not only put forth the strength, which God supplies, but ‘strive lawfully’ according to the rules of the combat. Method must be added to pluck and power. Consider the care with which the competitor prepares for the struggle: he subjects himself voluntarily to a fixed rule of living; so much exercise, and at such and such intervals; such a diet: he denies himself this and that luxury, this and that creature comfort. All is made subordinate to the development of his muscular powers and his physical endurance. His ‘corruptible crown’ is worth it all in his eyes, even the chance, often small, of securing it. Shall the spiritual athlete be outdone by him?
III. Self-conquest is self-expansion.—We repudiate the assertion that self-conquest is self-repression. Rather it is self-expansion. It is the repression of all that is hostile to the true expansion of our capabilities, and by true we mean their natural expansion. It is the blocking of forbidden channels that the life-stream may flow the fuller through the rest. ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things.’ Amid such boundless gain there is no room for loss.
—
Bishop A. Pearson.
Illustration‘We are striving for masteries; we have a prize to contend for; we look to be crowned at the close of the contest. We are spiritual athletes: we have to diet our souls, so to speak, to train for the struggle. The crown we strive for is not of perishing parsley or bay, such as that which rewarded the victors in the Isthmian sports. They receive a corruptible crown, we an incorruptible. A few days will suffice to see their laurels wither; to all eternity ours will be green.’