12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” (1 Timothy 6:12 (ESV)
The following message is by Dr. John Piper. He preached this sermon September 9, 1984. He entitled it Camaraderie in the Fight of Faith.
Paul’s Words to Everybody in the Church
Some things in Paul’s letters to Timothy are designed for pastors in particular rather than for all Christians. But not verse 12 of 1 Timothy 6. When Paul says, “Fight the good fight of faith,” we can be sure he is not giving counsel that only pastors must follow.
This applies to everybody in the church. We know it does because every Christian needs faith, not just pastors. And we know it does because the next phrase is the goal not just of pastors but of all Christians: “Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.” By fighting the good fight of faith, Timothy must lay hold on eternal life. But there are not two different ways to eternal life—one for pastors and one for the rest of the church. Therefore, we can know that what Paul commands in this verse is for all of us not just for Timothy or just for pastors.
So, the doctrine that I want to draw out of this portion of God’s word and press home to your hearts today is this: All Christians Must Lay Hold on Eternal Life by Fighting the Good Fight of Faith
Three Questions
In handling the text, I will try to answer three questions:
- In what sense is our fight a fight of faith?
- Why does the apostle Paul call it a good fight?
- How do we go about engaging in this fight successfully?
1. In What Sense Is Our Fight a Fight of Faith?
As I look at the context of Paul’s command to fight the good fight of faith, I see two ways to understand the term “fight of faith.”
Two Ways to Understand “Fight of Faith”
One would be this: since our faith is often threatened by doubt and unbelief, we must fight to maintain faith. So, the phrase “fight of faith” would mean: the struggle to keep on believing God, the fight to keep on trusting his promises.
The other way to understand the phrase “fight of faith” would be this: we must fight the fight of faith in the sense that faith is used as the weapon to attain some other victory beyond faith itself. The idea is not merely that we are fighting to maintain our faith, but that we are maintaining faith in order to attain some victory by means of faith.
I think both of these are in Paul’s mind and that the two always go together. The only reason I distinguish them is that there are people who try to deny that both are true or try to live as though both were not true. Let me try to illustrate both meanings of the phrase “fight of faith” from the context and from some other Scriptures.
The Fight to Maintain Faith
In the verse just before our text (v. 11), Paul commanded Timothy to aim at, or pursue, “righteousness, godliness and faith.” But since Timothy is already a believer, this command to pursue faith must mean that Paul is admonishing him to attain more faith or to hold on to the faith he has. This is what Paul means by the fight of faith (in the first sense). The goal of Timothy’s pursuit is faith itself.
So, there is a sense in which every one of us must keep on pursuing faith. We must not rest content as though the faith we have is all we need, or as though the faith we have will remain in our hearts without a fight against the forces of unbelief. If you begin to coast in your Christian life, or if you begin to let down your guard, thinking that some past act of faith will save you without any struggle to persevere, you may be rudely shocked on the judgment day.
In 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul says at the very end of his life, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Fighting the fight of faith, finishing the race, and keeping faith all mean the same thing. Fighting the fight of faith is the struggle to keep the faith. And it’s a struggle that a true Christian never finally abandons until he attains the crown of righteousness from the Lord. So, the first meaning of the term “fight of faith,” is the fight to maintain faith, and it comes from the context of verse 11 and from 2 Timothy 4:7.
Fighting with Faith as a Weapon for a Further Victory
The other meaning of the term “fight of faith” is illustrated in verse 12 in the very next phrase: “take hold of eternal life.” The reason Paul adds this command right after the command to fight the good fight of faith is that eternal life is the goal to be attained by a successful fight of faith. Paul is saying, “Fight the good fight of faith, and in that way lay hold on eternal life.” So, the fight of faith is not just a fight to maintain faith (the first meaning); it is a fight to use faith as a weapon for attaining a victory beyond faith itself, namely, eternal life.
It’s just as if one of our coaches of the Olympic boxing team would have said to a fighter just as the third and decisive round started, “Fight the good fight, brother, and lay hold on the gold!” So, the term “fight of faith” means, in this second sense, fighting to win the (gold!) crown of eternal life by means of persevering in our faith.
From Pilgrim’s Progress to the American Church
One of the reasons there is so little deep, earnest, passionate concern for godliness in the contemporary church is that this truth is so little understood—the truth, namely, that eternal life is laid hold of only by a persevering fight of faith. There is today, by and large, a devil-may-care, cavalier, superficial attitude toward the on-going, daily intensity of personal faith because people do not believe that their eternal life depends on it. The last 200 years has seen an almost incredible devaluation of the fight of faith. We have moved a hundred miles from Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian labors and struggles and fights all his life until he is safe in the Celestial City. O, how different is the biblical view of the Christian life than the one prevalent in the American church.
James 1:12 says, “Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him.” The person who will receive the crown of eternal life is the person who successfully endures trial, that is, the person who fights the fight of faith and gets the victory over the temptation of unbelief.
Revelation 2:10 says to those who are being thrown in prison for their faith, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” This is very different from the mood of American Christianity. Here something infinite and eternal hangs on whether these Christians keep their faith in prison. But today worship services, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and fellowship gatherings in most churches do not have a spirit of earnestness and intensity and fervor and depth because people do not believe in their heart that anything significant is at stake—least of all their eternal life.
We have been poorly taught. And so, I urge each of you to return to the Scripture with eyes opened afresh to learn the doctrine of our text—that:
All Christians Must Lay Hold on Eternal Life by Fighting the Good Fight of Faith.
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here.
Soli deo Gloria!
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