WATCH YE, STAND FAST IN THE FAITH

As he concludes this first epistle, this is Paul’s final counsel to the saints at Corinth. He seems to be describing a battlefield where the commander is giving his final message to the troops. He encourages them to:

Watch - be alert to danger as the enemy is always at hand and can approach disguised as an ‘angel of light’ or a ‘roaring lion’. Paul warned the elders at Ephesus about false teachers who would come like wolves and ravage the flock of God, Acts 20. 29-31, and encouraged the Thessalonians to watch and maintain self control, 1 Thess. 5. 6.

Stand fast in the faith, be strong - means to have maturity and stability. Paul is referring to the sound doctrine which constitutes the Christian faith. He has already warned them that like immature children they needed to grow up, 1 Cor. 3. 1-3. He now urges them to act like responsible men in an era when mature spiritual leadership was going to be essential if no ground was to be surrendered when the assault came. It’s a time for courage. Sometimes God places us in circumstances where we too have to grow up quickly and learn fast. We suddenly appreciate the reality of being in a battle against a foe that will use any tactic of subtlety and deception as well as frontal attack to weaken his opponents. In the face of such peril, we are to hold our ground by putting on the ‘whole armour of God’, that we ‘may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand’, Eph. 6. 13.

Yet the Christian soldier is not simply a hardened man of steel who sturdily resists the assaults of the enemy. Verse 14 teaches us that everything we say and do has to be done in the spirit of love. Abraham Lincoln was once described as a man of ‘velvet steel’. That is a good image for what the Christian ought to be. The Lord Jesus is of course the perfect example of a balanced individual in that He never displayed love without reference to the truth and never dispensed judgement without love. Paul says quite plainly that if we have no love we have nothing, but if we have love, though we may lack much else, then we have what matters most.