Thank God that He can cause the fallen sons of Adam to stand! In I Corinthians 15:1 the Apostle Paul writes of “the gospel … wherein ye stand,” and in Romans 5:2 of “this grace wherein we stand,” while in Galatians 5:1 he bids us: “Stand fast … in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free….”
The apostle deals with the believer’s stand under three general headings as follows:
Stand Fast In The Lord
Philippians 4:1, “Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so STAND FAST IN THE LORD, my dearly beloved.” There was a time when the writer thought that this blessed verse was merely an exhortation to stand fast by His help, but we have come to see much more in it now. God has given us a position in Christ. The apostle tells us in Ephesians 1:6 that we have been “accepted in the Beloved” while in Colossians 2:9,10 he says, “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him…”
If God, then, sees us in Christ, let us take our stand there.
Would men require of us works for salvation or have us append to our salvation works once required? Would they tell us what more we must do to belong to the Church or to be complete as Christians? Let us tell them that we have been accepted in the Beloved and that God sees us complete in Him. Let us “stand fast in the Lord.”
Would the world allure us or Satan tempt us to doubt our salvation by pointing to our failures? Let us remember that God, in His own sovereign grace, has made us accepted in Christ and let us “stand fast in the Lord.”
Stand fast in the faith
In I Corinthians 16:13 our apostle goes a step farther: “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” This follows naturally.
It is blessed to know that God accepts us in the Beloved and to take our stand in Christ, but it is more blessed to know why, — to be “established in the faith,” to have “the full assurance of understanding.”
By “the faith,” of course, is meant the doctrine
It is this message of grace and glory which our adversary so bitterly hates and so violently opposes.
Stand fast in the fight
Little wonder that the apostle says in Philippians 1:27: “Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye STAND FAST IN ONE SPIRIT, WITH ONE MIND STRIVING TOGETHER FOR THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL.”
Depend upon it — where there is faith there is a fight. Satan will see to that. So many of God’s dear people fail to realize this. They gladly accept His love and grace, but draw back when called upon to stand in battle for Him. They do not seem to realize that God has committed to us His precious deposit — the most glorious message ever proclaimed on earth — and that we are responsible to guard and defend it. They do not feel keenly enough their responsibility to keep God’s message of grace pure and unsullied. While Satan continues to use even Church leaders to adulterate and neutralize that powerful message they allow the process to go on without a protest. They say “Let us not have trouble. Anything to keep peace” — as though our adversary would ever let us proclaim God’s truth in peace! In common parlance, “They do not have what it takes.”
Timothy, though such an earnest man of God, had some of this timidity about him and Paul seems concerned about it as he writes exhorting him: “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God” (II Timothy 1:8).
“Fight the good fight of [the] faith” (I Timothy 6:12). “Endure hardness as a good soldier of jesus christ” (II Timothy 2:3).
Surely in these crucial times we need particular grace lest we withdraw from the fight or — God forbid! — fail to see why there should be any fight at all.
It is remarkable that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” but God has done this “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us,” and weak as we are in ourselves, He will enable us to “keep” that sacred deposit “by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us” (II Corinthians 4:7, II Timothy 1:14).
By God’s grace, then, let us stand fast in the Lord, in the faith, in the fight. — C.R. Stam
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