HERE we are confronted by one of those staggering statements which are to be found in such profusion in the Epistles of this great and mighty apostle to the Gentiles.
There is nothing more misleading when one reads the letters of the Apostle Paul than to assume that when he has really finished the business which he set out to do, he has at the same time finished saying great and mighty things. We should always keep an eye on the postscripts of this apostle. You never know when he is going to throw in a gem. Anywhere, everywhere, in the introduction to his letters, in the postscripts to his letters, there is generally some amazing insight into the Truth or some profound revelation of doctrine.
We are here, in a sense, looking at the postscript to this letter. The apostle has finished the business at the end of verse 9 and he is now just offering his personal thanks to the members of the Church at Philippi for their goodness to him personally, for the gift which they had sent. But, as we have already seen, the apostle could not do that without being involved at once in doctrine. Anxious as he is to thank them, he is still more anxious to show them, and to show to others, that his sufficiency was in Christ, and that whether he is remembered or forgotten by men, he is always complete in the Lord. And it is in that connection that we come to this thirteenth verse.
I say that this is a staggering statement—‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’. It is a statement that is characterized at one and the same time by a sense of triumph and by humility. He sounds at first as if he were boasting, and yet when you look at his statement again you will find that it is one of the most glorious and striking tributes that he has ever paid anywhere to his Lord and Master. It is one of those paradoxical statements in which this apostle seems to have delighted; indeed, it is the simple truth to say that Christian Truth is always essentially paradoxical. It at one and the same time exhorts us to rejoice, to make our boast, and yet to be humble and to be lowly. And there is no contradiction, because the boast of the Christian is not in himself but in the Lord.
Paul was very fond of saying that. Take, for instance, the statement: ‘God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’, or again: ‘He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord’. There is the exhortation on the one hand for us to be boasting; yes, but always boasting in Him.
Now this statement belongs to that particular category and perhaps the best way for us to approach it is to give an alternative translation. The Authorized Version is in a sense quite correct, but it does not really bring out the particular shade of meaning the apostle was anxious to convey. It says: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’. But I suggest that a better translation would be: ‘I am strong for all things in the One who constantly infuses strength into me’. That gives the exact meaning—‘I am strong or made strong, for all things in the One who constantly infuses strength into me’. The authorities are agreed that the word ‘Christ’ should not appear in this text, and we need not boggle at that. Paul actually put it like that—‘I am strong for all things in the One (Christ) who constantly infuses strength into me’. What the apostle is really saying is not so much that he can do certain things himself, as that he is enabled to do certain things, indeed all things, by this One who infuses His strength into him. In other words we have in this verse the ultimate and the final explanation of what Paul has been saying in the preceding verses. There, you remember, he says—‘I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein (or therewith) to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound, everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need’. We have seen that there the apostle is saying that he has come to learn. He was not always able to do this. Paul had had to learn how to be content in every state, how to be self-sufficient, how to be independent of circumstances and surroundings. He had had to learn, indeed he goes on to say that he had been ‘initiated’ into the secret of how to do this. That is the meaning of ‘I have been instructed’, and we have seen some of the ways in which the apostle had been led. We have seen that he had come to this knowledge by experience, by logical reasoning out of his Christian faith and by cultivating a personal intimate knowledge of the Lord, looking to Him and His glorious example.
But it is here in this thirteenth verse that we have the ultimate explanation. The real secret, says Paul, which I have discovered is that I am made strong for all things in the One who constantly is infusing strength into me. That is his final explanation. Now I need scarcely remind you that that is the point to which the apostle always returns. Paul never works out an argument without coming back to it. That is the point to which he always brings every argument and discussion, everything always ends in Christ and with Christ. He is the final point, He is the explanation of Paul’s living and his whole outlook upon life. That is the doctrine which he commends to us here. In other words he is telling us that Christ is all-sufficient for every circumstance, for every eventuality and for every possibility. And, of course, in saying that, he is introducing us to what in many ways we may describe as the cardinal New Testament doctrine. The Christian life after all is a life, it is a power, it is an activity. That is the thing we so constantly tend to forget. It is not just a philosophy, it is not just a point of view, it is not just a teaching that we take up and try to put into practice. It is all that, but it is something infinitely more. The very essence of the Christian life, according to the New Testament teaching everywhere, is that it is a mighty power that enters into us; it is a life, if you like, that is pulsating in us. It is an activity, and an activity on the part of God.
The apostle has already been emphasizing that, in several places in this very Epistle. Let me remind you of some of them. In the first chapter he says that he is ‘confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’ (verse 6). ‘I want you,’ says Paul, ‘to think of yourselves as Christians in that way. You are the people in whom God has started to work; God has entered into you, God is working in you.’ That is what Christians really are. They are not just men who have taken up a certain theory and are trying to practise it; it is God doing something in them and through them. Or listen again in the second chapter, verses 12 and 13: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure’. It is of His own good pleasure that God is working in us both to will and to do—our highest thoughts, our noblest aspirations, our every righteous inclination is from and of God, is something that is brought into being in us by God Himself. It is God’s activity and not merely our activity, and that is why Paul tells us in the third chapter verse 10 that his supreme ambition in life was: ‘That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection. . . .’ All along he is interested in this question of the power and of the life.
You find him saying exactly the same thing in other Epistles. What is Paul’s great prayer for the Ephesians? He prays that they might know ‘the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead’ (chapter 1. 19, 20). He goes on in chapter 2. 10 to say that we are ‘His workmanship created anew in Christ Jesus’. You remember also the great statement at the end of the third chapter: ‘He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us’. Now, that is typical and characteristic New Testament doctrine, and if we have not grasped it we are surely missing one of the most glorious things about the Christian life and position. The Christian, essentially, is a man who has received a new life. We come back again to what I am never tired of quoting, namely, John Wesley’s favourite definition of a Christian. He found it in that book by Henry Scougal, a Scotsman who lived in the seventeenth century, and in the very title—‘The life of God in the souls of men’. That is what makes a Christian. The Christian is not just a good, decent, moral man; the life of God has entered into him, there is an energy, a power, a life in him and it is that that makes him peculiarly and specifically Christian, and that is exactly what Paul is telling us here.
Let me begin by putting this negatively. The apostle is not telling us in this great verse that he has become a Stoic. He is not saying that as the result of much self-culture, he has developed an indifference to the world and its surroundings, and that as a result of discipline he has at last been able to see that he can do all things or bear all things because of this culture. It is not that. Let me remind you that the Stoic could do that. Stoicism was not only a theory, it was in fact a way of life for many people. Read the lives of some of the Stoics and you will find that as a result of this outlook they had developed a kind of passive indifference to what might happen in the world. In the same way you may have heard or read of the Indian fakirs, men who have so developed the power of the mind that they can control their physical bodies, and by concentration on mind culture can develop this kind of immunity or indifference to what may be happening to them and round and about them. It is also the great principle which characterizes many Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. All those religions are basically religions which are designed to help people to die to circumstances and surroundings, and to develop an indifference to the world that is round and about them, to go through this life and world unaffected by circumstances. Now the point I want to make is that the apostle is not teaching some such doctrine. Paul is not telling us that he has become like the Eastern mystics, he is not saying that he has developed this stoical philosophy to such a point that nothing can affect him.
Why am I concerned about this negative emphasis? The reason which compels me to do so is that all such teaching is really hopeless, all those religions are finally pessimistic. Stoicism, in the last analysis, was profound pessimism. It really came to this, that this world is hopeless, that nothing can do any good, that the thing you have to do therefore is to get through life as best you can and just refuse to let yourself be hurt by it. The Eastern religions are, of course, entirely pessimistic. They regard matter in itself as evil, they regard the flesh as essentially evil; everything, they say, is evil, and the only thing to do is to get through life with a minimum of pain and to hope that in some subsequent reincarnation you will be rid of it altogether and at last be absorbed and lost for ever in the absolute and the eternal, and cease to be as a separate personality.
Now that is the very antithesis of the Christian Gospel which is not negative but essentially positive. It does not regard matter as essentially evil nor the world as essentially evil in and of itself in a material sense. But we reject the negative view in toto supremely for this reason, that it fails to give the glory and the honour to the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the thing about which Paul is most concerned. Paul wants us to see that his victory is based upon his association with Christ. In other words, we come back to our original definition once more—to be a Christian is not only to believe the teaching of Christ and to practise it; it is not only to try to follow the pattern and example of Christ; it is to be so vitally related to Christ that His life and His power are working in us. It is to be ‘in Christ’, it is for Christ to be in us. Now these are New Testament terms—‘in Christ’, ‘Christ in you the hope of glory’. They are found everywhere in these New Testament Epistles.
In other words, we can put our doctrine in this form. What Paul is saying here is that Christ infuses so much strength and power into him that he is strong and able for all things. He is not left to himself, he is not struggling alone and vainly against these mighty odds. It is a great power from Christ Himself which is entering, and has entered, into his life, and it is there as a dynamo, as an energy and strength. ‘In this,’ says Paul, ‘I am able for anything.’
Now this is surely one of the most glorious statements he ever made. Here is a man in prison, a man who has already suffered a great deal in his life, a man who knows what it is to be disappointed in so many ways—persecuted, treated with derision and scorn, even disappointed sometimes, as he tells us in the first chapter, in his fellow workers, there in prison in conditions calculated to produce dejection in the stoutest heart, facing perhaps a cruel martyrdom—yet he is able to send out this mighty challenge. ‘I am able to stand, to bear all things in the One who is constantly infusing strength into me.’
I am anxious to put this doctrine in this form at the present time. There are those who feel that at a time like this, it is the business of the Christian preacher and the Christian Church constantly to be making comments on the general situation. There are many people who say: ‘Are you dealing only with matters of personal experience while the world is as it is? Is it not remote from life? Have you not read your newspaper or even heard the report on the wireless? Don’t you see the whole state of the world? Why don’t you make some pronouncement on the world situation or on the state of the nations!’ My simple answer to such talk is this. What I, or a number of preachers, or the entire Christian Church, may say about the whole situation will probably not affect it at all. The Church has been talking about politics and the economic situation for many years but with no noticeable effect. That is not the business of Christian preaching. The business of Christian preaching is to put this to the people: In this uncertain world, where we have already experienced two world wars within a quarter of a century, and where we may have to face yet another and things that are even worse, here is the question—How are you going to face it all, how can you meet it all? For me to give my views on international politics will not help anybody; but thank God there is something I can do. I can tell you of something, I can tell you of a way which, if you but practise and follow it, will enable you, with the Apostle Paul to say: ‘I am strong, I am able for anything that may happen to me, whether it be peace or war, whether it be freedom or slavery, whether it be the kind of life we have known for so long or whether it be entirely different, I am ready for it’. It does not mean, I must repeat, a passive, negative acquiescence in that which is wrong. Not at all—but it does mean that whatever may come, you are ready for it.
Are we able to speak the language of St. Paul? We have already known certain tests and trials, and more may well be coming. Can we say with this man that we have such strength and power that whatever may come we are ready for it? The apostle had power that enabled him to bear anything that might happen. How are we to obtain this power?
There is a great deal of confusion concerning this, and all I want to do is to try to lessen that confusion.
There are many people who spend the whole of their lives in trying to obtain this power, and yet they never seem to have it. They say: ‘I meet other Christians who have this, but I never seem to get it’. Or, ‘I would give the whole world if I could only get this power into my life. How can I get this power?’ They spend their life trying to obtain it and yet they never do. Why is this? I think the main trouble is due to a failure on their part to recognize and to realize the right respective positions of the ‘I’ and the ‘Him’ or the ‘One’ who is mentioned by the apostle. ‘I can do all things’, or ‘I am able for all things through the One who is constantly infusing strength into me’, or, to put it in the Authorized Version, ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’. Now there is the crux of the whole matter—the right relationship and the correct balance between ‘I’ and ‘Christ’.
There is a great deal of confusion at this point. The first cause of confusion is to emphasize the ‘I’ only. In a sense I have already dealt with that. It is what the Stoic does, it is what the Hindu or the Buddhist does, it is what all these people who go in for ‘mind culture’ are constantly doing. And we have seen that this is inadequate. But perhaps the final reason for its inadequacy is that it is a type of teaching that is possible only for people who have a strong will power and who have time to cultivate this will power. Indeed, I agree entirely with what Mr. G. K. Chesterton said was his main objection to the simple life, namely, that you have to be a millionaire in order to live it. You need the time, and if you are a working man you have neither the leisure nor the opportunity—you have to be a millionaire before you can live the simple life. Is it not exactly the same, or indeed more so, with this other teaching? If you happen to be born a highly intellectual person and have the time and the leisure, you can give your days and your weeks to concentration and to the culture of the mind and spirit. That is no gospel for the person who has not the leisure nor the energy, and especially not for those who have not the intelligence. We must not over-emphasize the ‘I’.
That is one error, but there is another which is at the other extreme. As there are some who over-emphasize the ‘I’ there are those who tend to obliterate the ‘I’. Let me put it in terms of something which I read this very week in a religious journal. This is their definition of a Christian.
The Christian, said that article, is:
‘A mind through which Christ thinks,
A voice through which Christ speaks,
A heart through which Christ loves,
A hand through which Christ helps’.
My reply to that in terms of my text is—Nonsense. And it is not only nonsense but a travesty of Christian teaching. If the Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a voice through which Christ speaks, a heart through which Christ loves and a hand through which Christ helps, where is the ‘I’? The ‘I’ has vanished, the ‘I’ has been obliterated, the ‘I’ is no longer present and in existence. The teaching represented by that quotation is that the Christian is a man whose personality has gone out of existence, while Christ is using his various powers and faculties. Not using him but using his voice, using his mind, using his heart, using his hand. But that is not what Paul says. Paul says: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’. Or listen to him elsewhere. You remember what he says in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’. Is there in these verses an obliteration of the ‘I’? ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ The ‘I’ is still there.
We must, therefore, if we are to be just to this doctrine, safeguard the true position. The Christian life is not a life that I live myself and by my own power; neither is it a life in which I am obliterated and Christ does all. No, ‘I can do all things through Christ’. I wonder if I can best put this by telling you of how an old preacher, famous in the last century, once put it when preaching on this very text. Those old preachers used sometimes to preach in a dramatic way. They would have a kind of dialogue with the apostle in the pulpit. So this old preacher began to preach on this text in this way: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ ‘Wait a minute, Paul, what did I hear you say?’ ‘I can do all things.’ ‘Paul, surely that is boasting, surely you are just claiming for yourself that you are a super-man?’ ‘No, no, I can do all things.’ Well, the old preacher kept up the dialogue. He questioned Paul and quoted every statement made by Paul in which he says that he is the least of all saints, etc. ‘You are generally so humble, Paul, but now you say “I can do all things’’, haven’t you started boasting?’ And then at last Paul says: ‘I can do all things through Christ’. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said the old preacher, ‘I beg your pardon, Paul, I did not realize there were two of you.’ Now I think that puts it perfectly. ‘I can do all things through Christ.’ ‘There are two of you.’ Not I only, not Christ only, I and Christ, Christ and I, two of us.
Very well, then, let us put the doctrine like this. What is the right way to approach this question of power? How can I get this power which Paul tells us was being infused into him and which made him strong and able to stand and bear all things? May I suggest an analogy? I do so with hesitancy and trepidation because no analogy is perfect in this matter, and yet to use one can help us to arrive at the truth. The vital matter in this connection is the matter of the approach, or if you prefer a military term, the strategy. Never is the strategy of ‘the indirect approach’ more important than it is here. You know that in military strategy you do not always go straight at the objective. Sometimes you may appear to be going in the opposite direction but you come back. That is the strategy of the indirect approach. Now that is the strategy that is needed here.
Let me put it, then, in terms of an illustration. This question of power in the Christian life is like the question of health, physical health. There are many people in this world who spend most of their lives in seeking health. They spend their time and money going round from Spa to Spa, from treatment to treatment, from physician to physician. They are seeking health. Whenever you meet them they begin at once to talk about their health. The big thing in their lives is this question of health and yet they are never well. What is the matter? Sometimes the trouble is due to the fact that they forget first principles, and the whole explanation of the state they are in, is that they eat too much, or take too little exercise. They are living an unnatural life, and because they eat too much they produce certain acids and these acids produce conditions that call for treatment. They have to be told to eat less or to exercise more, or whatever it may chance to be. Their problem would never have arisen were it not that they had forgotten the first principles, the fundamental rules of life and living. Because of this they develop an unnatural situation and a condition that needs treatment. Now I suggest that that is analogous to this whole subject of power in one’s life as a Christian. Health is something that results from right living. Health cannot be obtained directly or immediately or in and of itself. There is a sense in which I am prepared to say that a man should not think of his health as such at all. Health is the result of right living, and I say exactly the same thing about this question of power in our Christian lives.
Or let me use another illustration. Take this question of preaching. No subject is discussed more often than power in preaching. ‘Oh, that I might have power in preaching’, says the preacher and he goes on his knees and prays for power. I think that that may be quite wrong. It certainly is if it is the only thing that the preacher does. The way to have power is to prepare your message carefully. Study the Word of God, think it out, analyse it, put it in order, do your utmost. That is the message God is most likely to bless—the indirect approach rather than the direct. It is exactly the same in this matter of power and ability to live the Christian life. In addition to our prayer for power and ability we must obey certain primary rules and laws.
I can therefore summarise the teaching like this. The secret of power is to discover and to learn from the New Testament what is possible for us in Christ. What I have to do is to go to Christ. I must spend my time with Him, I must meditate upon Him, I must get to know Him. That was Paul’s ambition—‘that I might know Him’. I must maintain my contact and communion with Christ and I must concentrate on knowing Him.
What else? I must do exactly what He tells me. I must avoid things that would hamper. To use my illustration, I must not eat too much, I must not get into an atmosphere that is bad for me, I must not expose myself to chills if I want to be well. In the same way, if we do not keep the spiritual rules we may pray endlessly for power but we shall never get it. There are no short cuts in the Christian life. If in the midst of persecution we want to feel as Paul felt, we must live as Paul lived. I must do what He tells me, both to do and not to do. I must read the Bible, I must exercise, I must practise the Christian life, I must live the Christian life in all its fullness. In other words I must implement what Paul has been teaching in verses eight and nine. This, as I understand it, is the New Testament doctrine of abiding in Christ. Now the word ‘abiding’ makes people become sentimental. They think of abiding as something passive and clinging, but to abide in Christ is to do what He tells you, positively, and to pray without ceasing. Abiding is a tremendously active thing.
‘Well,’ says the apostle, ‘if you do all that He will infuse His strength into you.’ What a wonderful idea. This is a kind of spiritual blood transfusion—that is what Paul is teaching here. Here is a patient who has lost much blood for some reason or another. He is faint and gasping for breath. It is no use giving him drugs because he has not enough blood to absorb them and use them. The man is anaemic. The only thing you can do for him is to give him a blood transfusion, infuse blood into him. That is what Paul tells us the Lord Jesus Christ was doing for him. ‘I find I am very feeble,’ says Paul, ‘my energy seems to flag and sometimes I feel I have no life blood in me at all. But, you know, because of this relationship, I find He infuses it into me. He knows my every state and condition, He knows exactly what I need. Oh, how much He gives me! He says, “My grace is sufficient for thee’’, and so I can say, “when I am weak then I am strong’’. Sometimes I am conscious of great power; there are other times when I expect nothing, but He gives everything.’
That is the romance of the Christian life. Nowhere does one experience it more than in a Christian pulpit. There is certainly romance in preaching. I often say that the most romantic place on earth is the pulpit. I ascend the pulpit stairs Sunday after Sunday; I never know what is going to happen. I confess that sometimes for various reasons I come expecting nothing; but suddenly the power is given. At other times I think I have a great deal because of my preparation; but, alas, I find there is no power in it. Thank God it is like that. I do my utmost, but He controls the supply and the power, He infuses it. He is the heavenly physician and He knows every variation in my condition. He sees my complexion, He feels my pulse. He knows my inadequate preaching, He knows everything. ‘That is it,’ says Paul, ‘and therefore I am able for all things through the One who is constantly infusing strength into me.’
That, then, is the prescription. Do not agonize in prayer beseeching Him for power. Do what He has told you to do. Live the Christian life. Pray, and meditate upon Him. Spend time with Him and ask Him to manifest Himself to you. And as long as you do that you can leave the rest to Him. He will give you strength—‘as thy days so shall thy strength be’. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and according to our need so will be our supply. Do that and you will be able to say with the apostle: ‘I am able (made strong) for all things through the One who is constantly infusing strength into me’.