Imperishable Inheritance

One thing I have learned in my short Chris­t­ian life is that I have lived a short Chris­t­ian life. By that, I mean I’m learn­ing the value of endurance in this endeavor. I never thought I would enter into a stage of pas­siv­ity and indif­fer­ence towards my spir­i­tu­al­ity, but I have found myself in that very state.

It is espe­cially con­vict­ing that we are explic­itly told to “lay aside every encum­brance and the sin which so eas­ily entan­gles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fix­ing our eyes on Jesus, the author and per­fecter of faith” (Heb 12:1–2). I believe my approach towards the Chris­t­ian race was more of a “sprint” then a “marathon.” I went at a pace that a short-distance run­ner trains at, and as a result run­ning a marathon was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent endeavor that I wasn’t trained to run in. I've had to learn that living by faith, over a long period of time, is more then I could've imagined.

I have how­ever come to rec­og­nize cer­tain mea­sures of grace which can encour­age me in this race. I con­tinue to learn a lot from those that have gone before us (as the author to the Hebrews so points out in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter). As I hear more and more of peo­ple that live the Chris­t­ian life day in and day out for decades I’m encour­aged that it can be done. Through trial, heartache, dis­cour­age­ment, and the like they have per­se­vered by the grace of God to give tes­ti­mony of the Gospel to oth­ers. Those peo­ple that I look to often become dis­ci­plers to show me the way of Chris­t­ian liv­ing. There is no doubt that the model of dis­ci­ple­ship is intrin­si­cally bound to sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. With­out other men help­ing me I don’t know where I’d be.

I have also come to appre­ci­ate the race anal­ogy in the way that Paul describes to the Corinthians:

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Every­one who com­petes in the games exer­cises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a per­ish­able wreath, but we an imper­ish­able. There­fore I run in such a way, as not with­out aim; I box in such a way, as not beat­ing the air; but I dis­ci­pline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to oth­ers, I myself will not be dis­qual­i­fied. (1 Cor 9:24–27)

I have come to appre­ci­ate that Paul stresses that run­ning the race involves a prize and they must dis­ci­pline them­selves to com­plete the race. The longer I live in Christ I see the value in dis­ci­plines. How are we to finish a spiritual race entangled with battles if we are not disciplined in our relationship with Christ? From read­ing the Scrip­tures, to prayer, and fel­low­ship with believ­ers, it becomes an inte­gral and nec­es­sary part of the means to fin­ish the race.

Paul also notes that in dis­ci­plin­ing him­self and run­ning the race so as to win he will not give a bad account of the Gospel. It is one thing I have become dis­cour­aged by is that I don’t want to serve as a bad tes­ti­mony to the grace of God pro­vided in the Gospel. If I myself am not run­ning with fer­vor and pas­sion then why should I expect any­one else to lis­ten to what I say? I wouldn’t lis­ten to an over­weight, lazy per­son on marathon run­ning advice, and nor would any­one else look to some­one caught in spir­i­tual apa­thy to join the race he runs.

I must remem­ber that the Chris­t­ian life isn’t meant to be a non-stop ride of emo­tion and dras­tic events. Instead, the Chris­t­ian life is meant to be steady, dis­ci­plined, and long-suffering. But by the grace of God and the exam­ple of Christ might we all run the race as to win an imper­ish­able prize.