The Incentive for Faith and Service

(#856, Imperial, 1960, 1968 CE Sing)

Read 2 Timothy 2:1-8.

Easter is past, with its blaze of victory, its worshiping crowds, its flowers and celebrations.  We are again face to face with life and its sunshine and clouds, its realities, its problems, its sorrows, its trials and hardships.  Here we find the real test of Easter -- what does the Risen Christ mean to us now?  It was in the darkest hour when all the reward of fidelity to Christ seemed to be the dungeon and death that the elderly Apostle Paul charged Timothy:

Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead.

ƒ      The need of remembering the Risen Christ.

Paul presents three pictures of the Christian life and service.

w    The life of a soldier.  A soldier's life involves self-sacrifice, endurance, discipline, obedience.  He is to endure hardness.  He cannot be entangled with the affairs of this life.  So we as Christian soldiers must guard against letting earthly affairs interfere with our soldiering.

w    The life of an athlete.  Again, discipline and training are involved in this life.  "Lay aside every weight and sin" (Heb. 12:1-2).  We must recognize and abide by the rules.  This discipline is described in 1 Cor. 9:24-27.

w    The life of a farmer.  This life involves hard work.  There must be plowing, sowing, and watering before we can reap.

Christians need the quality of the soldier, the quality of the athlete, the toil of the farmer.  Who is sufficient for these things?  Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead!!!

ƒ      The method of remembering the Risen Christ.

How do we remember Christ?  Strictly, the word here does not mean remembrance or recollection, but rather fixation, having in mind, keeping it there.  This is not something spasmodic but a faculty of the soul which is charged forever with this wonderful image of the risen Christ.

Memory involved knowledge, then thought, and then application.  Isaiah put it this way: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him.  Let the Risen Christ be your incentive for faith and service.

As we become occupied with the Risen Savior we will fulfill the place that God has for us.