Fighting the Good Fight

Near the end of his life the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy encouraging and instructing him to guard the faith, fighting the good fight. The agony that Paul speaks of is the struggle that arises when we stand for, defend, and live by the faith. Fight¹ the good² fight of the faith, take hold of eternal life into which you have been called, and you verbally agreed the good confession before many witnesses, 1 Timothy 6:12.

“The faith” is the body of doctrine that Christians are to live by. As saints in Christ we are not under any quality of law, yet, today so many want to put arbitrary, restrictive, and un-Scriptural rules on the saints on how they are to live and please God, taking the Old Testament and miss applying it to Christians while denying in practice that the Church is under a different covenant based upon different promises. (But now He has obtained a different religious service, by as much as also He is a mediator of a better covenant which was legislated upon better promises, Hebrews 8:6).

Let us fight the proper fight. Let us stand up for the faith. Lets us take God at His Word and live out from faith, not out from law. We all have a course to run that God has set before us. Let us run it properly, not allowing those who would pervert the faith to hinder us. In doing so, perhaps at the end of our lives here on earth we can say, “I have fought the proper fight. I have finished the course. I have guarded the faith.³”

1. Struggling, contending, striving – used of competing in the games, 1 Corinthians 9:25
2. That which is good in appearance or proper
3. 2 Timothy 4:7