How Far Am I Ready to Endure? With One Another? Till Death?

with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel

Philippians 1:27d

Michelangelo was not the best painter of his time. He had a bad back and a sinus condition. No one else was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. He laid on his back painting a ceiling for nearly 2 years and completed the Sistine Chapel. All the other “great” painters of his day are forgotten in obscurity.

In 1949, Jonas Salk wanted a cure for polio. He worked 16 hours a day, six days a week for five years and gave us the now-famous Salk Vaccine against polio.

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players in history, played the 1997 Championship Game against the Utah Jazz with the flu even when he could have stayed at home.

What made these people different from the others? They were willing to strive to reach the maximum.

The Greek word Paul uses, which is best translated as “striving,” carries the idea of fighting, battling, and contending. A gospel-worthy life is a life that is engaged in the personal laborious struggle against sin, the corporate laborious struggle for unity among the brethren, and it is a laborious struggle in defense of the faith.

The words for striving together or striving side by side is a single Greek word, sunathleo, sun, the prefix for together. Athleo, we get the term athletic or athlete from it.

In addition to being an intensive word that connotes fighting, it also carries with it the idea of an athletic contest. Picture, if you will, a distance runner straining his neck and chest forward to cross the finish line to win a race. Now, add to that Paul’s exhortation to strive together (to strive side-by-side) with other believers, and you have a picture of an entirely different race.

Instead of an individual runner straining and striving for an individual prize, picture a three-legged race. Paul tells the Philippians that their striving should be “side-by-side.” If you’ve ever been in a three-legged race, you know it is impossible to win the race as an individual. Your team, your partnership, is only as good as the slowest runner, or the weakest person. If one of the two people tied together or paired in a sack falls to the ground, the other person has no other option but to help their partner to their feet and then the two begin again to move as one.

Paul often used terms in his epistles that, outside the Bible, were used in reference to sporting events. Growing up in a Greco-Roman world, Paul had those games of old, in mind. But the sporting games of two millennia ago, while similar to some of today’s Olympic Games, were, in other ways, very different. The boxing and wrestling matches old times were fights to the death.

Paul’s expectation of the Philippians was that they would endure together; that they would fight together and, if necessary, die together for their shared faith in Christ and belief in His Word; that they would persevere together.

 

Dear Friends, Has God given you a vision for the work He wants your church to accomplish? Do you long to see your community reached with the Gospel and your church family strengthened and growing in spiritual maturity? The answer is to strive together as a church.

A question for us to ponder What can God accomplish through a church that will “stand fast, with one mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel?” Answer -Anything He wants..

God Bless you.