1/20/52

Scripture: Philippians 4: 1-13

Text: Philippians 4: 13; “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.” If one had never heard of Saint Paul, nor of the Christ from whom he said he received his strength, this saying would sound like a little boy’s boasting. It does not sound unlike the talk of a kid who has moved into a new neighborhood where he thinks that the way to get acquainted is to see how many other kids he can lick. Or it is suggestive of the pugnacious individual who talks the loudest and biggest when fortified with too much liquor.

And yet these are not the words of a bully, nor even those of a self-confident youth. They were spoken late in Paul’s life, and from prison. They are not bragging, nor boasting in the common sense, but are his expression of a confident faith in his ability to meet and master what really called for his trust. At that time, Paul was in prison in the city of Rome, far off from the east Mediterranean coast where he had begun his ministry. Prison is not exactly the rostrum from which to fling a boast.

But there is a kind of confidence that is not necessarily restricted by prison confinement. What Paul had was an abounding faith in spite of the restrictions, the confinement and chains of prison. Prisons are not, in every respect, places of confinement; they may be places of release to some folk. John Bunyan was cooped up in the cold, stuffy, Bedford prison; but his soul was not confined there. In that prison, he wrote his “Pilgrim’s Progress” which lives beyond the confinement of any walls.

Toyohiko Kagawa has often been imprisoned for thoughts considered dangerous by the jingoists among his fellow countrymen. And yet he says that he found spiritual rest, and the freedom to meditate there, that he enjoyed nowhere else.

Mahatma Gandhi was never a more powerful personality than when he was imprisoned, fasting in self-negation, for the errors of others, or for the freedom of his people.

Much of the conquest of the pagan world was accomplished by the early Christians from dungeon, cave and catacomb. The power of the life that cannot be contained within prison walls is something more than self. For Paul, it was the power of Christ. Bunyan and Kagawa found their strength in the same faith.

Paul is one of the most contagious personalities of history. He was never down save when brought to his knees by the converting force of Christ’s presence. He was never overcome by personal or political opposition. He was never vanquished. He could be chained, yet free; confined in prison, yet cheerful and even singing. He could be beaten severely and yet go on with his preaching. He could face the impossible with the affirmation: “I can.” Nothing has wiped his memory from history.

Paul’s independence grew out of real dependence. Here is an essential difference between the Stoic and the Christian. The Stoic, determined to endure what comes to him in the fortitude of his own decision, endeavors to be absolute in his own strength. The self-sufficient adequacy of the Christian is different; he becomes independent of the world’s pressures through dependence on God.

The words of Paul represent a confidence which grew out of innumerable experiences in Christian faith. The exuberance of his confidence in Christ had carried him through the night in many dangers, much persecution and over many discouragements.

Self-confidence is a necessary quality of normal life. The occasional person who has had it, and lost it, is one who needs to regain spiritual health. And anyone who robs another of legitimate belief in himself has done a serious injustice and a great harm.

It is Jesus Christ’s effort and genius, to take us as ordinary folk, with the capacities into which we were born, and to lift us to extraordinary living. The New Testament presents “power to become” which is stronger than any of our present day destructive tensions. Jesus’ invitation to people was “Follow after me, and I will make you to become....” If the follower were a fisherman, he would make him to become a fisher of men; if a sheep herder, then a shepherd of souls; if a carpenter, then a builder of righteousness; if a farmer, then a sower of spiritual truth; if a financier, then a steward of all life. Ordinary people have become extraordinary through association with the Master. And the companionship of the Christ accomplishes the same result for those who find him at their side today.

The conversion experience of Paul, (described in the book of Acts as well as words may describe a spiritual experience), reveals the power of Christ to make a man great and strong of spirit despite his former errors or perversity.

Paul had no inferiority complex! Yet it was not vain or idle boasting when he said “I can” or “I am able” or “I am strong.” It was the assurance of a great faith. He had learned to say “I can” with great assurance, instead of the plaintive “I can’t” of so many of us.

One of the most pathetic chapters of the modern book of acts is written by those who only say “I can’t.” What a new day of achievement would arrive for the church if all its members on the record were inspired to say, “I can.” Its “book of members” might suddenly become altogether its “book of acts.”

And that is the way it can be, and will be, if you and I let Christ have his way with us. It is not, for us, a matter of making the world over by the power of our selves, but of so putting our lives in the will of Christ that his power changes the world.

This much ought to be said repeatedly, for it is the truth. the kind of strength and triumph which one finds in Christ is not precisely what the world calls success. There are times when it looks like failure by the world’s standards. Jesus might have appeared to be a success on the day he defied the ecclesiastical rules, turned over the money changers’ tables, and drove all merchandising from the outer court of the temple. Probably no one thought of it then as success when, later on in the same week, he was put to death with a couple of thieves in ignominy. And yet centuries of thoughtful scrutiny have acclaimed even his death as a triumph for every noble truth he defended.

Out in China, some years ago, a Japanese soldier was charging at Merlin Bishop with a bayonet, and coming fast. (That was because he had declined to give up the keys to the mission.) When the point of the bayonet was only a foot from Bishop, he stepped aside. With one hand he seized hold of the Japanese gun and with the other arm he hugged the soldier tightly. Bishop smiled and kept praying in his heart that God’s love might pour some fully through him. At last the other’s face relaxed in an answering smile. A so-called “happy ending” like that can be seen as success by the world.

The world does not see it so easily in the case of a Korean pastor. This minister served the lepers of a certain district. During early hostilities of the recent conflict there two sons of this pastor were killed in guerrilla action. The murderer was captured, tried and sentenced to die. But the Christian peacemaker made a plea before the court. This minister asked the court to turn over this Communist killer of his sons to him so that he could show him the superiority of Christianity over Communism. The plea was granted and the culprit went to live in the pastor’s own home.

But that was not all. The reporter writes that the pastor’s daughter went to the murderer’s home and village to live among them as a daughter. There are some human beings with mind so simple and purpose so pure as to be willing to seal their faith with all their lives. Here was such a pastor and household.

Months later another group of Communists came to the minister’s village. As they approached, friends begged him to escape. He must make a quick, and momentous decision. Korea would need men like him. But could he leave the lepers who could not get away? He decided to stay, and was soon shot, loyal to an insight that neither bullets, sword, nor cross and nails have been able to destroy.

Much of the world would sigh or shrug and call that “failure.” Almost surly the Communists who shot this Korean pastor believed that they had brought about his failure. But better life of the spirit -- more hope, more love, more trust, truer insights, a better happier understanding of the right have always been the harvest reaped from the sacrificial blood of the martyrs!

The religion of the Christian is by no means a guarantee of comfort or contentment. Very often it is quite the opposite! And in times of crisis it may be what the world regards as exceedingly dangerous. For its motivation is not the apparent security of men’s approval, but the unchanging, righteous spirit of Christ!

“No religion,” says the philosopher, William Earnest Hocking, “is a true religion which does not make men tingle to their fingertips with a sense of infinite hazard.” The Christian religion involves great hazards, but hazard in the right direction, with the will to save, not to destroy.

There was a time when Jesus had given his disciples teachings which underline the truth that his way is more than just a few lessons in self improvement. His way is a whole viewpoint commandeered by his own spirit. “Apart from me,” he had said, “ye can do nothing.” And he said, “Abide in me;” [John 15: 4, 7]; that is, “stay in me,” or “remain always in my spirit,” or “live where I am.” The extraordinary strength of character which makes his devoted followers so confident comes to those who maintain their relationship to him constantly.

This man Paul had no new philosophy to teach, no new political theory, no new science, no new psychology, no pet schemes. He only preached and lived the Christ whom he had earlier resisted and opposed.

In all the flood of varied suggestions for man’s triumph over life today, there is only one that will work as surely as it has worked for more than 19 centuries. No new thought, new way, new light, new engineering, new economics, new political alignment, new military balance, new anything, will do for us, and all mankind, what the power of Christ can do among, and through, faithful and consecrated Christian people.

It is reported that a conference was being held in India among representatives of the varied religions represented there. During the conference, someone asked Stanley Jones this question: “Will you tell us, Dr. Jones, what you have in your religion that we in India have not got in ours?” Stanley Jones replied, “Shall I tell you in one sentence? You haven’t got Jesus.”

Well, Paul had Jesus Christ. And through Christ, he could do all things righteous and needful. Hosts of people have found a measure of the same strength, the same power, the same adequacy to meet and overcome temptation and burden that Paul had, and from the same source!

It is not the power one may just turn on, like an electric current, to do what we want done, while we attend to something else. It is the power to be added to our own best, most sincere efforts; correcting, redirecting, and multiplying the best that we could dream of doing.

Paul did not always get his way. It was not his choice to go to prison. But when prison came for him he had the power to bear it, not stoically but victoriously.

Paul suffered all his life from some affliction, some “thorn in the flesh” from which he was never relieved. What it was, we do not know. He did refer to it, but he never described it. Without being able to escape it, he yet received grace to be triumphant over it.

He did not have the joy of seeing his associates in the Christian churches always in harmony or agreement. There were sharp differences of opinion and there was sometimes sinful conduct and there were sometimes destructive attitudes. But Paul could persuade -- and how persuasively he could speak, because he did so in the strength and the love of Christ!

That power is still available.

On an evening of May 24, 1738 a man came into a midweek meeting in a little Moravian Church on Aldersgate Street in London. This man had not been very successful in his pursuit of happiness in his profession. He had recently returned from across the Atlantic in Georgia, where his mission had been a failure partly through his own overbearing attitude. He had failed once at the age of 26 and now again at 35. Life was futile and desolate.

At this prayer meeting, something happened, and, to quote his own words in his “Journal”: “At about a quarter to nine, while he [the leader] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

That was the beginning of a new life and a new movement which transformed England and rebuilt mightily in the world. He was small of stature, light in weight, tubercular, and had been twice a failure. He was frozen out of the ministry of the church of his fathers, hated by the rich, despised by the clergy, suspected by the poor. But this man, John Wesley, after his heart had been “strangely warmed,” rode on horseback (or walked) 5,000 miles, preached 42,000 sermons in 50 years, and was the moving spirit of what became after him a great church. He had learned, “I can do all things, through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

And so may you; and so may I. [prayer]

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids January 20, 1952; also August 11, 1957 (union service).