A Disciple is Durable

Just a few weeks ago, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, Cal Ripkin Jr. the shortstop of the Baltimore Orioles showed up for work. Nothing unusual about that, except that on that day he set a baseball record which may never be broken.

That day, Ripkin played in his 2,131st consecutive game, meaning that he had broken the old record held by Lou Gehrig—a record once thought unbreakable. In thirteen seasons since 1982, day in and day out, Cal never missed a game.

He played even when he didn’t feel like playing. He played when he was hurt. He played when the team was winning, and when the team was losing—and they lost 21 in a row one year. He played when the attendance was good and when the attendance was bad. He played when he was hot at the plate and he played through many a batting slump.

Every day, Cal Ripkin would just put on his uniform, head out for his position at shortstop, and give it his very best.

In the Baltimore crowd back on Sept. 6 were many famous dignitaries, including both the President and the Vice President of the United States. They had come to the ballpark to pay tribute to a man whose primary claim to fame was not a tremendous batting average or a home run swing. No, Cal Ripkin’s legacy was simply that he had “staying power”. He was faithful to his calling, and the nation saluted him for it.

There’s something in that lesson for us as followers of Jesus Christ. Because being a Christian is first and foremost a matter of faithfulness. It’s just a matter of suiting up and taking the field for Jesus, no matter how you feel on a given day. That isn’t very glamorous.

And to do it, we need spiritual staying power—the power to walk the Christian walk day in and day out, through good times and bad. Staying power will enable us to build a track record of consistency and faithfulness—a long obedience in the same direction.

The Apostle Paul talked about staying power when he wrote to his young friend Timothy. They were both living in a time and a place where it was not especially easy to be a Christian. In fact, Paul himself was chained in a dungeon when he wrote this letter we call 2 Timothy. He was there for preaching the gospel.

And he wrote to encourage Timothy to just keep on keeping on. “Hang in there, Tim.” he said. “Keep living for the Lord. Be faithful to your calling. Even when the going gets tough, stay with it. Don’t bail out as some Christians have done.”

And we need to hear that same message today. Because its very tempting to give up living for Jesus. It’s tempting to “take a day off” spiritually speaking. So we need to find out how we can make spiritual staying power an integral part of our life.

Let’s look at 2 Timothy 2:8:

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

He starts out by saying to Timothy “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering…”

Here’s where spiritual staying power comes from. It comes from remembering Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.

Now what exactly is Paul getting at here? He’s saying “Remember who Jesus is. Remember that Jesus is both God and man—he’s the God-man. He proved that he was God by rising from the dead. And he is a man because he has a family tree—he’s a member of the family of David. He’s got ancestors just like you and I do.

Now you might say “So what? How is “remembering who Jesus is” supposed to help me have spiritual staying power?” Well, the fact is, this God-man has come to earth. He has come to save us from our sins. He has come to defeat death and bring immortality to us, and he did that when he died on the cross and rose from the dead.

And that’s Good News. In fact, that’s exactly what Paul says. He says “this is my gospel”. The word “gospel” means “good news”. The good news is that the God-man has come! And staying power starts with that: it starts by believing the Good News.

You see, you can be going through the worst kind of trials—you can be suffering from some terrible terminal illness. You can be facing financial crisis. You can be experiencing the wrenching sorrow of a broken relationship.

But when you remember that “God so loved the world—and that includes you—that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him—and that includes you—should not perish but have everlasting life” it gives you the desire and the ability to hang in there through the trials.

Because you know that God loves you. You know that your life matters to God. You know that he cares about you and about what you’re going through and that your life has meaning, and your pain has meaning, even though you might not know what it is at the moment.

Staying power comes from believing the Good News. And staying power helps you through the Grim News. The times when life seems to be falling apart all around you.

Look at Paul. He said “This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal.” He said “Timothy, at the center of my life—at the very root of my belief system—is the Good News. The Good News that Jesus came.

“But when I look at the outward circumstances of my life, I only see Grim News. I’m here in this dungeon. I’m in shackles—chained like a desperate criminal. (That word “criminal” in Greek is only used in two places in the NT—here, and in reference to the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus. The word doesn’t just mean “a common criminal”; it means “a really bad guy—someone extremely wicked and dangerous—someone you chain up like a wild animal.)

And Paul said “That’s how I’m being treated. I’m suffering. And the date of my execution is just around the corner. I’m on death row. But that’s okay, because I know that my suffering has a purpose; has a reason.”

First of all, the Word of God isn’t chained. The message that I’ve staked my life on isn’t shackled here in this dungeon with me. No, it’s out there changing lives. There are people getting saved here in Rome—some of them even in Caesar’s household.

Like Martin Luther said “The body they may kill; but God’s truth abideth still.”

And Paul said “I’m willing to endure all this if it means that one more person can come to Jesus. That’s what he means in v. 10 when he says ”Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.”

Who are the elect? They’re the people whom God has chosen to be saved. But notice in this verse that they haven’t reached that point yet. They haven’t become followers of Jesus Christ yet. They’re not saved yet.

Paul says “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus”. In other words, they haven’t got it yet. You know what that means? It means that Paul was suffering what he was suffering for the sake of people who weren’t even Christians yet.

Boy, I look at my life and I wonder how much I’m willing to go through for the sake of my neighbor who doesn’t know Christ. Am I willing to undergo hardship and pain and inconvenience if that’s what God wants to use to bring that person one step closer to meeting Jesus? Am I wiling to lay my life on the line for the sake of a non-Christian’s salvation?

Paul had this incredible sense of purpose about his life. And he had that purpose because he had built his life on the right premise: that God loves people and wants to save them and wants to use us to help make it happen.

You see, Paul had experienced an incredible transformation in his own life when he met Jesus Christ. He went from being a hard-bitten enemy of the Gospel—a guy who went around persecuting Christians—to being a champion of the cause of Christ. And Paul knew that Jesus Christ could change other people’s lives like that, too.

Yes, Paul had staying power, and that helped him through those days when the news was only grim.

There’s one more thing about staying power:

1. It comes from believing the Good News

2. It helps me though the Grim News

3. It keeps me focused on the Grace News

Look at verses 11–13:

This is a piece of early Christian poetry. It was probably set to music—a chorus that the early Christians sang. It has four lines:

If we died with him, we will also live with him.

If you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior, there is a sense in which you have died with him. In God’s eyes, there’s an identification of your life with Jesus’ life. When he died on the cross for your sins, you were, in a sense, dying there too. And when he rose again, you rose again too. He was your representative in doing those things—and because he did it, you did it.

That’s what Paul means when he says in Romans 6: “…all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

So now we’re living with Christ. Paul said in Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

The second line of the chorus says: “if we endure, we will also reign with him.”

The Bible talks a lot about Christian endurance. Maybe that’s because the early Christians were undergoing a lot of persecution. Many of them lost their lives for being Christians. And that is true to this day. More people have lost their lives for the sake of the Gospel in the 20th century than in all the previous centuries put together.

And there are special rewards waiting in heaven for those who endure suffering and hardship for the sake of the Gospel. This verse is not talking about the security of your salvation; it’s talking about whether you’ll get a reward for enduring suffering for Christ’s sake.

James 1:12 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

Revelation 2:10 (Jesus says to the Church in Smyrna) Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution… Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.

A crown is a symbol of rulership and authority. Those who go through suffering for the sake of the gospel—and endure it—will one day wear that crown of life and reign with Christ.

The third line of the chorus goes: If we disown him, he will also disown us

This refers to the people who reject Jesus Christ. The word “disown” (or in the KJV - “deny”) means literally to disavow that you have any connection with a person.

Now this is not referring to the kind of denial that Peter made on Good Friday, although the same word is used in that connection. We know that Peter came back to Christ in repentance. He still loved Jesus. He still wanted to follow Jesus. He turned his back on Jesus, but it wasn’t a permanent turning away.

This verse, though, is talking about when a person makes a permanent, settled decision to just to go it alone, without Jesus. And there are millions of people who go through life like that. They simply live and act as though they have no particular concern for who Jesus Christ is or what he did for them. They don’t really want to have anything to do with him. They want to live their lives without reference to Jesus Christ.

And, in the final judgment day, when these people stand before God, Jesus is going to say to them, in effect “Since you always acted as though you just wanted Me to go away and leave you alone, then you may have your wish. I will leave you alone—for all eternity.”

You know where that is? That’s hell—a place where people live forever out of the presence of God. It’s not a very nice place. They disowned Jesus; so Jesus will disown them. He will give them what they want. Every person who ends up in hell will be there because he chose to be.

The last line of this hymn says: if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

This is talking more about the Peter situation. There are times in our Christian life when we fall down. We fail. We stop following Jesus. We turn our back on him. Our faith runs out, and we are faithless.

What happens to us then? Do we lose our salvation? Does God kick us out of his family? No, absolutely not.

God remains faithful to his promises, because if he were to do otherwise, he would be disowning himself. He would be denying his own character and integrity and trustworthiness.

God will always live up to the commitments he has made to his children. If you are a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ, God has made a covenant with you. Not a contract—which depends on both parties carrying out their side of the bargain—but a covenant, which depends totally on the one who made it.

So that means that even when I fall down and make a mess out of my Christian life, God is faithful. He’s going to bring me through.

Oh, he’ll discipline me along the way when I mess up, but that’s good. Because God’s discipline proves that he cares about me and that I belong to him and that he wants what’s best for me.

You know what you call that? Grace. That’s the Grace News. Grace is when God treats us in a way that we don’t deserve. Grace is knowing that my destiny is riding on God’s faithfulness to me, not my faithfulness to him. And if you keep focused on that, that’ll give you real staying power.

You may be going through a tough time in your life right now. You may be experiencing a lot of pain. Maybe physical pain. Maybe emotional or spiritual pain. But if you just hang in there and keep clinging to Jesus, God can make something beautiful out of that pain.

You know that little oyster that lives on the bottom of the ocean? Like a lot of people, inside that hard shell, there’s a very tender soft heart. And sometimes, a little grain of sand gets inside that shell and that gives the oyster a lot of pain. The oyster has no way of getting rid of that little grain of sand.

So God designed the oyster—not to recoil from the pain or try to eject it—but to move toward it and make something beautiful out of it. By simply hanging in there and exhibiting staying power the oyster produces a pearl. God wants to do the same thing in your life.

When they filmed the movie Ben Hur way back in 1959, the star of the movie, Charleton Heston, had a lot of trouble learning to drive a chariot. (Who wouldn’t?) Finally, with a lot of practice, he was able to learn how to control the vehicle, but he still had some doubts. He went to the director of the movie, Cecil B. DeMille, and he said “Look, I think I can drive this chariot, but I’m not sure I can win the race.”

To which the great director replied “You just stay in the race and I’ll make sure you win.”

Jesus Christ gives us the same assurance: “You just stay in the race, and I’ll make sure you win.” Staying power.