“Fight the good fight of the faith…” (1 Tim. 6:12).
To “fight the good fight” is to be upstanding in a good cause, in spite of opposition. Sometimes we congratulate people for fighting the good fight even though they’ve lost the contest. What makes the fight “good” is not victory, but the goodness of the cause. Winning doesn’t make the fight worth it, but rather persevering in the struggle. You may have bruises; you may have cuts; your opponent may have mopped the floor with you. Still, you’ve fought the good fight.
When St. Paul uses the expression “fight the good fight” in our second reading today, it caps a series of metaphors used elsewhere to describe the Christian life, ones drawn from the world of athletic contest. “Do you not know,” St. Paul writes, “that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may win it… So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:24-26). In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul is describing the kind of training that Christians undertake in order to win the spiritual race, to be standing at the end of the round after delivering the knockout blow. To “fight the good fight” (1 Tim. 6:12), as St. Paul uses it here, involves a struggle, a spiritual contest against forces and powers that stand in opposition to God.
For instance, the Christian liturgy of baptism that we celebrate today posits a spiritual struggle, with a definite antagonist. “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?”, we ask the candidates, or the sponsors that present a child for baptism. To drive the point home, we then ask, “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” Wickedness is personified in Satan, the tempter, or other evil powers, who stand in rebellion against God.
You know the stories that provide the context of these questions: Adam and Eve in the garden, tempted by the serpent. They disobey God’s commandment and fall into sin and death. The story is then reversed when the devil comes to Jesus in the wilderness to tempt him to disobey God. The Lord is obedient to the commandments, even when the devil quotes the Holy Scriptures in order to lead him astray! Satan is the tempter, who gets under our skin and into our heads, so that what is evil and what is good becomes all mixed up. As St. Peter writes in his letter, “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Pet. 5:8-9).
There’s another piece of this that we don’t want to lose sight of. When we speak about an antagonist, an adversary, a personified force like Satan, or even about particular “evil powers of this world,” we shouldn’t forget where the real struggle lies. It’s easy to push on to the devil or onto our opponents responsibility for all the wickedness and evil in the world. To “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12) then comes to mean destroying those who are out to get us. What a temptation! Human history is littered with examples of these kind of struggles.
But the real fight is within each one of us. Our liturgies for baptism and confirmation home in on this crucial point. “Do you renounce all evil desires that draw you from the love of God?”, we ask at baptism. Those desires are within us, and are the means by which we are tempted. Without them, within ourselves, there would hardly be a struggle. To the question “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”, our confirmands respond, “I will, with God’s help.” Repentance takes place within each one of us; our sins are our own and can’t be blamed on the devil or anyone else. The real fight, the real struggle, is within each one of us.
As for our antagonists, this is the Lord’s teaching: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:44-45, 48). The true spiritual temptation that our adversaries represent may in fact be the exposure of our own hateful hearts, our own sinful desires. We’re actually our own worst enemies. So our prayer for our enemies ought to be, as our we pray in the Litany, “That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts. We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”
I said at the beginning that what makes fighting the good fight “good” was the goodness of the cause rather than the result. But in Christ Jesus, we have the assurance that the good fight of faith is not only good, but that the victory is secure. It is Jesus Christ himself who fights for us. The sacraments we share today are signs of the victory that Christ has won for us, through his death and resurrection. Today, at the Church of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, we celebrate the new life that begins here today, as vows are made and reaffirmed, and grace is given. Without that grace, we’re worth nothing in the fight. We fight the good fight of faith, knowing that Jesus has already won the day.
