Worldwide Harvest Ministries * Messages

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Accept your share in suffering like a fine soldier of Christ Jesus.  No soldier who is on active service entangles himself in ordinary civilian business; he lays aside such things, so that by good service he may please the commander who has enrolled him in his army. 

• The picture of man as a soldier and life as a campaign is one which the Romans and the Greeks knew well.  "To live," said Seneca, "is to be a soldier".  (Seneca: Epistles 96:5).

• "The life of every man," said Epictetus, "is a kind of campaign, and a campaign which is long and varied" (Epictetus: Discoursed, 3, 24, 34).

• Paul took this picture and applied it to all Christians, but specially to the leaders and outstanding servants of the Church.  He urges Timothy "to fight a fine campaign" (1 Timothy 1:18).

• He calls Archippus, in whose house a Church met, "our fellow soldier" (Phm. 2).

• He calls Epaphroditus, the messenger of the Phillippian Church, "my fellow soldier" (Php, 2:25).

• Clearly Paul saw in the life of the soldier a picture of the life of the Christian.

1.  The soldier's service must be a concentrated service.

• Once a man has enlisted on a campaign he can no longer involve himself in the ordinary daily business of life and living; he must concentrae on his service as a soldier.
• The Roman code of Theodosius said: "We forbid men engaged on military service to engage in civilian occupations. A soldier is a soldier and nothing else.
• The Christian must concentrate on his Christianity.
• That doesn't mean that he must engage in no worldly task or business. 
• He must still live in this world, and he must still make a living; but it does mean that he must use whatever task he is engaged upon to demonstrate his Christianity.

2.  The soldier is conditioned to obedience.

• The early training of a soldier is designed to make him unquestioningly obey the word command.
• There may come a time when such instinctive obedience will save his life and the lives of others.
• There is a sense in which it is no part of the soldier's duty "to know the reason why>" 
• Envolved as he is in the midst of the battle, he cannot see the over-all picture.
• The decisions he must leave to the commander who sees the whole field.
• The first Christian duty is obedience to the voice of God, and acceptance even of that which he cannot understand.

3.  The soldier is conditioned to sacrifice.

• A. J. Gossip tells how, as a chaplain in the 1914-18 war, he was going up the line for the first time.  War and blood, and wounds and death were new to him.  On his way he saw by the roadside, left behind after the battle, the body of a young kilted Highlander.  Oddly, perhaps, there flashed into his mind the words of Christ. "This is my body broken for you."
• The Christian must ever be ready to sacrifice himself, his wishes and his fortune, for God and for his fellowmen.

4.  The soldier is conditioned to loyality.

• When the Roman soldier joined the army he took the sacramentum, the oath of loyalty to his emperor.
• Someone records a conversation between Marshal Foch and an officer in the 1914-18 war.  "You must not retire," said Foch, " you must hold on at all costs."
• "Then," said the officer aghast, "that means we must all die." 
• And Foch answered: "Precisely!"
• The soldier's supreme virtue is that he is faithful unto death.
• The Christian too must be loyal to Jesus Christ, through all the chances and the changes of life, down even to the gates of death.

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