NOT FAINTING OR GIVING UP
G. C. McKay
Galatians 6: 7–10; Hebrews 12: 1–6; Luke 18: 1–8; 2 Corinthians 4: 1–18
These are some of the scriptures in the New Testament, dear brethren, that speak about not fainting, and I would like to speak of this practical matter, which no doubt would have its application to us all at some time, that there might be a danger with us that we might give up, we might lose heart, we might faint. Every eventuality that may arise and every exercise that may come up in our paths is foreseen and is provided for in the Holy Scriptures. One of them is that for various reasons we might feel faint, not having the strength to go on. These scriptures, I trust under the Lord’s hand, might give us some instruction and encouragement as to this matter as to how we may continue in faith and in energy and committal with the glory before us rather than giving in. According to a concordance there are two words used for ‘to faint’ in the New Testament and one of them means to cave in. The believer is not to do that, but to continue.
Now the section in Galatians would apply to us all generally in the Christian pathway as to the spiritual progress we are making. It is a question of sowing, either sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit, and the question arises there as to continuing in what is good, “let us not lose heart in doing good; for in due time, if we do not faint, we shall reap”. Now, God is not mocked, that is, He has certain immutable ways and one of them is that what a man sows he reaps. It just follows, what you sow, you reap. You can look ahead and say, What am I going to reap from what I am doing now? Am I sowing to the flesh or am I sowing to the Spirit? A lapse of time must take place. This scripture says, “in due time”; it comes to light and it becomes
recognised in our experience what we are reaping. Now the great thing then obviously is to be sowing to the Spirit so that we might reap eternal life. God is not mocked, you see. We can put on some kind of conformity and come to the meetings, appear interested in the truth, and assemble with the brethren, but what are we actually doing in our lives? What are we occupied with? If we are occupied with the gratification of the flesh, then we are going to reap corruption. God is not mocked. It is a question of what I am actually doing in my life, whether I am catering to the flesh, or whether I am sowing to the Holy Spirit; whichever sowing takes place the harvest will be according to that. It is a very solemn thing because it says from the flesh corruption is reaped. That is the result, not life and incorruptibility, not eternal life, but corruption, it is a serious matter to consider.
As believers we ought to know what the flesh is and judge it. We should have links with the Holy Spirit, and we should be able to differentiate between flesh and spirit. It should be something that we are accustomed to doing through the exercises of Romans, to understand what the flesh is, that “in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell”, Romans 7: 18. As we understand what it is to prove the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, and what He would build up in our souls, how much would rise in us, in our affections and minds as we walk according to Spirit and as we mind the things of the Spirit! The test seems to be the waiting until the full harvest comes. Let us not lose heart in doing good. If you are going on in right exercises, you might think, When am I going to arrive at the end of this line of things? When am I really going to come into the joy of eternal life? Well, in due time, if we do not faint, we shall reap. Let us not faint, let us go on sowing to the Spirit, dear brethren. What a result it will be, “he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life”! Think of having that from the Holy Spirit on account of the way I have been devoting my mind and affections, think of reaping from the Spirit eternal life, having entry into that blessed realm of eternal life, where divine Persons are known and where there are precious links known.
It is a very practical matter, and I think what tests us is practical Christianity. The light of the truth is important to pursue, but Christianity is practical. Indeed it says in this section, “he that sows to his own flesh”, it is individual, not the flesh generally, but your own flesh. In one sense the flesh is the same in us all, but yet we have different proclivities, so it is a question of your own flesh. You know what the flesh in you would desire, you know what your own weakness is, and instead of catering for that, you deny it and you sow to the Spirit. You lay yourself out for the operations of the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is very gracious in His operations, He does not force Himself. There is a certain responsibility attaching to us, as having the Holy Spirit, to provide conditions in which He can operate, to make room for Him, and we do that by sowing to the Spirit. Then verse 10 says, “So then, as we have occasion, let us do good towards all, and specially towards those of the household of faith”.
Mr. Darby notes that “do good” in verse 10 is a more positive activity of service than “doing good” in verse 9. In accepting this exhortation there will be an energy with us in doing good in view of such a blessed end as reaping eternal life.
We often speak of the race of faith in Hebrews 12 and continuance in it, and of the great cloud of witnesses. Here again we have twice the thought that we should not faint. The race as set before us involves that we lay aside every weight. It might be something quite legitimate as we often say, not necessarily something evil, but it is a weight, it is hindering.
Why are you going in for that? It is going to hinder you from getting to the meetings. You are not going to have time to read the ministry if you devote so much time to something that is a weight. Throw it off, “laying aside every weight, and sin “. You do not want to be entangled by sin, you want to run with endurance the race. The power for it all, as set out for us in this scripture, is that we look on Jesus, “looking stedfastly on Jesus”. It is not looking to Him for help, although it would be a right thing too to call upon Him. The positive power that will help us is looking on Jesus, and indeed considering Him well. It is not a casual look, it is a considering look on “Jesus the leader and completer of faith”. There is virtue in looking on Him because in His own life and course He expressed the whole matter of faith. He is the originator of it indeed; He originated the faith that was shown in the cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12. He Himself walked in the path of faith and completed it. He did so as none of these witnesses did. The features of faith were seen in them, “by faith” they did such and such, and a great amount of detail is given, but in Jesus the life of faith was seen in detail and in perfection and in completeness. From the beginning of His life until He delivered up His spirit it was a life of faith. Indeed the psalm says, “thou didst make me trust, upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb”, Psalm 22: 9, 10. From the outset of His being here the Lord Jesus walked in the path of faith. Much of it we do not know, the details of that path, but we can be assured of this, that He was in communion with God and walked in faith. He was the Man of prayer as Luke tells us. We can look in the gospels and see these things, the Lord Jesus and His faith, step by step in His pathway here. And so He completed faith and endured the cross, having despised the shame, and He has arrived there at the right hand of God.
As we fix our eyes on that blessed Man there, a certain power enters our souls. Do you know you can be affected by looking on Jesus? There is an effect on your spirit and soul and mind because you look on Him. What you read there imparts power to your soul to cast away the weights, to get clear of the sin that so easily entangles us and to run with endurance this race.
Then He “endured so great contradiction from sinners against himself”. Each of the gospels shows the contradiction of sinners against the Lord Jesus, perhaps John’s gospel more than any.
How hurtful it was to Him! Largely the contradiction was from the Jews, His own people, from those who had the light. They contradicted Him and set themselves against Him, not only what He said, but against Himself. He was there in grace available to them and presenting the truth to them, presenting the grace of God to them and they just set themselves against Him in contradiction. He endured that and graciously went on. It is set out as the great example for us and encouragement comes into our souls as we see what He endured.
Then it says, “that ye be not weary, fainting in your minds”. The first fainting here is an allusion to fainting in our minds. You have to be careful with your mind. That is another thing that the believer knows about, he knows about the mind in a way that no unregenerate man or any psychologist or scientist can. He knows what it is to bring his mind under control.
As having gone through the truth of Romans, he knows what the mind of the flesh is, he has proved it and he knows what the mind of the Spirit is, life and peace. So the mind has to be protected. Be careful what you read, be careful what you are affected by so that you do not damage your mind. You can devote your mind to certain things and go into certain evil areas that you need not touch, and you can cause a certain damage to your mind. Various problems can arise, obsessions and that kind of thing, so we have to protect our minds. One of the things we have to protect our minds from is fainting, that in your mind you begin to say, Is it really worth it? Can I continue in the race until the end? The answer is to consider well the Lord Jesus. That is not a moment’s task to consider Him well; it is a devoted study to consider Jesus and the perfect life and faith that marked Him, so that something of that might mark ourselves.
Then the section goes on to say, “And ye have quite forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons”. How attractive that is; this is an exhortation to sons. It must therefore be an exhortation of love. Think of the grace that lies behind chastening, the grace of the Father of spirits, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives”. Well, how much chastening there is! We are conscious of that, it has rolled in upon us. Brethren are chastened in bereavements and in illness and weakness of body, in assembly sorrows and in family sorrows. How much comes in and how much it chastens the spirit; yet it is all allowed, and the hand that allows it is the hand of love. He says, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord”. If you despise the chastening you shrug it off. It makes no impression on you, you harden yourself in regard to it and try to pass it by without really feeling it. You ought to treat it as coming from the Lord.
Then you have not to faint either. If He reproves love is behind it—we are not to faint but to go on because it is the portion of sons. You can see the great end in view, that when He chastens it is “for profit, in order to the partaking of his holiness”. I think that is more than that we become holy. No doubt that is involved in it, that certain features fall off as we are chastened, but partaking of His holiness suggests a very deep intimacy of communion with God Himself, partakers of His holiness. What a blessed end is in mind in all this! This scripture again then encourages us to go on, not to faint in our minds, and not to faint in the face of the chastening that comes upon us, but to endure the chastening and prove the blessed end that God has in mind for us. Sometimes we speak about wasted suffering; there can be such a thing. Matters may come in and we miss the benefit of them, but God’s thought is that whatever we pass through we should not miss the blessing, but that there might be result, indeed result for God Himself.
Now in Luke’s gospel, chapter 18, the thought that is presented very explicitly is that we should always pray and not faint. Over against fainting is the thought that we should always pray. What a circumstance for this woman, a widow, vulnerable, with no one to stand up for her, no one to take her part! She has an adverse party too, someone is against her. As we go on in the Christian path we will find that there are adversaries. Paul says in one place, “the adversaries many” (1 Corinthians 16: 9), but he went on in energy despite the adversaries.
Here this woman is troubled by the adversary and her recourse is to a judge, and such a judge that he does not fear God and does not respect man. There is nothing to be hoped for from such a man, godless, with no right feelings, showing features of the apostasy in the last days I believe. What can she do? She is a widow and she has her adverse party and she has a judge of such a character, so what does she do? She always prays and does not faint. She goes on then, and the Lord uses the parable to illustrate the fact that God will surely come in for us, although there may be a delay. “And shall not God at all avenge his elect ...?” It is a beautiful expression, the elect of God.
It is wonderful to take account of yourself as among God’s elect. We might think of election in regard to the blessed purposes of God that place us on high, and no doubt that is true, but the thought of the elect of God sometimes comes in in adverse circumstances. For example, when Peter, in his first epistle, addresses the sojourners of the dispersion, who no doubt had been through a very bad time, the first thing he reminds them about is the fact of their election. He says, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”, 1 Peter 1: 2. He presents that to them, that is, that God has set out in mercy to secure them for Himself and nothing will turn that aside. God will come in for His elect. It is a strengthening thought in the face of circumstances that seem hopeless—God’s election must go through. There is something else about the elect of God—they have their own quality. It is not simply that God has elected them but quality comes out in them.
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion”, Colossians 3: 12. There is a quality about them, something that God has put there that corresponds with His thoughts for them. In Matthew 24 the Lord speaks about false prophets arising with signs and wonders that they might deceive, if it were possible, even the elect. It is as if the elect are guarded against deception because they are the elect of God. God will come in for us. There may be an interval. It is the delay before God comes in that tests us, but we should be assured in faith that God will come in.
Dear brethren, whatever besets us, God will come in but we must always pray. I wonder, and I speak for myself, Do we pray enough? Scripture says extraordinary things about prayer. We are told to pray without ceasing, and we read of continual prayer, and here it is always praying. The Lord Jesus says, “But when the Son of man comes, shall he indeed find faith on the earth?” I think He will find faith on the earth. The line of faith has existed from the beginning. Adam was marked by faith, and there is a line of faith. Abraham being the father of those that believe; the whole matter has run through. Jesus is the originator and completer of faith, and the faith line continues. It continues in certain characteristics, and one of them is that we should always pray and not faint. Dear brethren, let us resort to prayer. There may be a delay. God will bring things about for us, no matter the circumstances or the seeming lack of resource. We have resource in God and surely He will come in for us as we always pray.
Now in this as in many other things, Paul is a great example to us, and twice in 2 Corinthians 4 he says he does not faint. Why was he not going to faint in verse 1? He says, I have this glorious ministry, the glory shining with unveiled face in the face of Jesus. There is new covenant glory and I have seen it and I am looking on that glory. “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face”, 2 Corinthians 3: 18. This matter is too great, he says, for me to give up. I have this wonderful ministry. The God that spoke that out of darkness light should shine, has brought this light into my heart and there is the “shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. Having such truth committed to him, he says, “as we have had mercy shewn us, we faint not”. He had that wonderful ministry and also he was conscious of the mercy of God. If you read the beginning of this epistle you can see that Paul must have been on the verge of fainting at times. He speaks in the first chapter of how he had been brought low, in some experiences that he does not describe, so that he got to the point that he despaired even of living, but God brought him up again. God encourages those that have been brought low, and He brought him up again, so Paul says, We have had mercy shown us. Mercy will come in, dear brethren, as we go on committed to the truth and the glory of what lies before us. How wonderful to think that in sovereign mercy God took us up at all! Surely as we continue in the truth we will experience mercy as Paul did.
Then he speaks of himself, how clear and transparent he was, rejecting the hidden things of shame. The truth shone out in Paul. He was able to say, “if also our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are lost”. It was not veiled in Christ; the glory was shining out in the face of Jesus. The wonderful ministry of the glad tidings, the new covenant, God’s disposition was shining in the face of Jesus. And as it shone out it came through in vessels like Paul, and he says, if it is veiled it is not veiled in me either because I am transparent; “by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every conscience of men before God”. A great feature of Christianity is transparency. It is a feature of the holy city, the crystal-like jasper stone, and it is to mark our relations together—everything is clear in our souls, clear in our relations together, clear in our lives, that is the thought. And in service that should be so; how often it is that what we are ourselves detracts from what we say, but in Paul it did not.
What is so touching in this section is that he brings out this thought of earthen vessels, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels”. Surely, dear brethren, with the bereavements and with the illnesses amongst us, this thought of the earthen vessel has been brought home to us afresh, the weakness of this mortal frame. We have the thought here of an earthen vessel that can be broken. The idea is fragility and yet Paul was prepared to go on despite that fragility and to accept “bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”. How wonderful that God should use such vessels! You might think that the fragility of the vessel might cause fainting, but no.
It is a remarkable thing that God is able to use fragile vessels such as ourselves. He is able to do it morally, for death can work in such persons, the dying of Jesus, so that there might be a manifestation of the life of Jesus. Not only so, but as death worked in Paul, the result of his ministry was that life worked in the saints. What a wonderful matter, someone prepared to accept death working in him, so that there should be spiritual life in the saints. What a sacrificial service it was! I cannot speak adequately of this wonderful chapter but you can see the bent of it, the energy of it. Paul is going on and he is not fainting; he is marked by the spirit of faith. He says, “having the same spirit of faith”. It is the spirit of the thing, his whole pathway was imbued by faith, “we also believe, therefore also we speak”.
Well, things were testing for Paul. He speaks about some of the things he went through—you wonder that he went through so much. How it must have affected his body physically. There were these scourgings and shipwrecks and the stoning, the journeys, and the privations he suffered. It was only through the power of God that he came through, but in the earthen vessel there was the treasure and it was shining out. This is a Gideon chapter. Gideon and his men broke their pitchers and the light shone out in their torches. Paul was like that, there had to be the breaking of the vessel. There had to be death working in him so that the light might shine.
The fainting refers to Gideon too, because Gideon with his three hundred men crossed the Jordan, “faint, yet pursuing”, Judges 8: 4. Gideon was faced with tremendous opposition, the hordes of Midian and Amalek, a whole alliance of evil to crush the people of God and destroy life. Not only that, but some of his own brethren opposed him. The men of Ephraim quarrelled with him because he did not call them down to the battle, and he had to appease them. He appealed for help too when he was faint and pursuing; he appealed to the men of Succoth and the men of Penuel and they refused any help. What did he do? He went on and he accomplished what he was sent to do, the destruction of the two kings of Midian. Despite the lack of support Gideon went on in the power of faith, faint yet pursuing.
Paul speaks of the fact that he did not faint. “Wherefore we faint not; but if indeed our outward man is consumed, yet the inward is renewed day by day”. As he goes on his soul moves out towards the eternal weight of glory. O how blessed that is! How could he faint? He had such a ministry of the grace and disposition of God, that he could not faint, and God’s mercy was coming in for him. At the end of the chapter he has the consciousness of an inward renewal, the inward man being renewed day by day, what was spiritual being refreshed and renewed in him; and then he was looking forward to an eternal weight of glory, “while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are for a time, but those that are not seen eternal”. Dear brethren, we are on the verge of the greatest and most glorious things. In a sense we are in the presence of them, in the presence of the testimony of them, and in measure in the enjoyment of them by the Spirit.
The fulness of them lies just ahead, these wonderful things that God has in His heart for us, “the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”, Philippians 3: 14. What glory lies ahead! It is an eternal weight of glory, and we will share in that glory. What a glorious future the believer has and therefore, Paul says, “we faint not”. Paul did not faint. There are other allusions in the New and Old Testaments to this subject, but I have felt the need of it, that we might be encouraged to go on with a certain energy and with the encouragement of the Scriptures. May we do so, for His name’s sake.
Address at Glasgow
24 February 2001