Moving to Sainthood! PART ONE (1/2)

This message begins with a text: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." The apostle Paul wrote those words as he looked back over his life to review the course he had covered.

The words remind us that people can be divided, into two groups; those who handle their lives well, and those who don't.

Most of us know the bare outline of Paul’s life, and we can look back at his life and say something like this: "You, Paul, had a catastrophic religious experience. A great many people have had similar experiences and some of them have squandered them, but you made the most of it.

You had a tantalizing, tormenting, nervous system but you never gave into it and you turned your liability into a magnificent asset.

You had opponents within the Church: the narrow-minded, legalistic, unimaginative people who wanted to keep Christianity a small sect within Judaism, but you never let them get you down.

You had opponents everywhere you went, but you never let them stop you/ or break you.

You were not a born public speaker,  but when you spoke, everybody listened and they have been listening ever since. You may not have won every fight, but you always fought a "good fight".

There are thousands who have followed in his trail.  

It's not that they have overcome every handicap in their lives. But they have handled themselves well. It's not that they have been spectacular successes, some have been miserable failures. But in the situation in which God set them, they have behaved themselves well.

It's not that they have always been victorious, as it is that in victory and in defeat they handled themselves well. But think how many others there are, who don't handle themselves well.

We get an indication of it in this letter, for Paul goes on to say, "Demas, my friend, has deserted me." He deserted Paul at the time he needed him most, when he was facing the prospect of death. Undoubtedly, there were people in the same prison that Paul was in who were ruined permanently by the experience. 

And there were others all over the city of Rome who had everything in their favor, wealth, education, culture, opportunity, but were nevertheless squandering what they had.

It has always been so; it's so right now. There are people who are riding the storms of life magnificently. turning tragedy into triumph.

And there are others, who are deluged by the storms, washed up and washed out by them. It's not so much that they're fighting a poor fight, they're not fighting at all. That, may be one reason why the Church observes two days

in remembrance of the dead: All Soul's Day and All Saint's Day. It reminds us that every human being is a soul and therefore precious in the sight of God no matter what its merits, or its achievements, and in spite of the mess it may have made of life.

It also makes it clear that some souls become saints. And I'm talking about the saints now not in terms of "haloes", but in terms of those people who handle their lives well.

We think of ourselves. It's hard to make a judgment on our own lives

because we're too much involved in them; but we can't help, asking:
"Am I a soul putting up a poor fight, a fair fight, or no fight at all,

or am I becoming a saint?

Paul representing all those, who have become saints, gives us two practical suggestions.  The first is this: he had one thing in life that he wanted to do above everything else. In his own words, he had a "course". He described his life as a race, and a person who runs a race has a course that is set before one.

Paul had a course and a goal at the end of it which was his loyalty to this one basic conviction that the love he found in Christ was the love of God, which could free people from their sins.  That course kept him out of a lot of trouble. For instance, he couldn't do what he might want to do and settle down in the comfort of legalistic religion. He was a man of many and varied temptations like ourselves.

When he came to Corinth, it was the center of moral corruption, some of which would have repelled him by its ugliness and some of which might have attracted him by its interest.

He couldn't preach the gospel and be involved in that at the same time. The course was not only something that he had to keep to, but the course kept him out of a lot of trouble.

People will not make much of life until they have a course. Doctors, who have one goal, are kept out of a lot of trouble by the fact that they must stay on the course. The can't over-indulge themselves and perform a skillful operation. They may do one or the other, but not both.

END PART ONE (1/2)

Dr. John Sullivan

Former Officer Canada & Bermuda

Ordained Minister The United Church of Canada   

Studied Homiletics and Liturgics at Claremont School of Theology 

Princeton Theological Seminary
University of Toronto
Salvation Army Training College, Canada