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in the arena, part 1
By Amber | August 12, 2008
[Preface: I mentioned that I would be blogging about my studies in Colossians, and here it is. I actually wrote this almost two weeks ago, but was prevented from posting it until now, when it just happens to coincide with Pastor Dave's sermon. As you read, notice the connection between this post and Luke 13:24. If you didn't catch Sunday's sermon, go back and listen to it!]
I’ve been studying Colossians this summer, which just happened to coincide with a challenge from others in the prayer group Watchmen on the Wall to study striving prayer. I’m fortunate enough to be “storing” many of my father’s seminary books while he is out of the country for a couple of years, and among those is a weighty collection entitled Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel. Reading the article on the word group agon, agonizomai changed my life.
You’ll easily recognize the relationship between these Greek words and the English words agony and agonize. The word agon was originally simply a “place of meeting,” but evolved, as words do, to mean the “place of contest” or “stadium,” then the “contest” itself, and finally, in the Greek of the 1st century, to mean any kind of conflict. The related word agonizomai means “to carry on a conflict, contest, debate, or legal suit.” These words carry the connotation of the struggling hero of virtue and the martyr fighting to the death.
If you enjoy etymology, as I do, you probably find this interesting. But you can imagine that this is not what I found life-changing.
Paul was the main author who used this word group in the New Testament, and in his writing you can find five motifs, or main thoughts surrounding his usage of them:
1. The thought of a goal that can only be reached with the full expenditure of all our energies. Work for the gospel is not only faithful fulfillment of duty, but a tense exertion, a passionate struggle, a constantly renewed concentration of forces on the attainment of the goal.
2. Not only full exertion is implied, but rigid denial. This is not the asceticism of the monk, but the control of a fighter. This does not mean contempt for the world, but the insight that the better is enemy to the best. Even what is right and good may have to be renounced for the goal.
3. The thought of obstacles, dangers, and catastrophes through which a Christian must fight his way.
4. The sharpest form this takes is the battle of suffering fulfilled in martyrdom. This is especially clear in Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus).
5. The supreme goal is not our own salvation alone, but that of many. The one stands for the many (Col 4:12) and the many must stand for the one (Rom 15:30). Here you can see that the form of the battle is prayer. In prayer the will of God and the will of man become one; prayer is where human struggling and effective divine operation meet. In prayer also, we can represent one another and stand in the breach.
The word is commonly translated into English as striving or struggling, and in Paul’s writings, it characterizes the Christian life. There is a battle and there is a goal. You’ll find Paul’s goal in various places throughout his epistles, but it seems clearest - and most clearly linked with his striving - in Colossians 1:28-29:
Him [Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
This is the goal. Recognizing this goal and realizing the struggle needed to obtain it are what has changed my life. In the next installment I’ll talk a little more about the struggle specifically - or how to fight the battle - from Colossians 2:1-3.