Manhood, Masculinity, and Christian CharacterSýnishorn

The Good Fight

We have already described the setting of Paul’s advice to the young man Timothy. Paul was trying to encourage Timothy’s work and perseverance in the difficult task of leading the Ephesian church.

Paul’s final charge to Timothy is to “fight the good fight.” Paul, by his choice of images, recognizes that the work before Timothy is not easy. Prior to this passage, Paul had outlined all of the challenges of false teaching, endless controversies, and the temptation of wealth. It would be a fight for Timothy to remain committed.

Paul opens the charge by referring to Timothy as a man of God. It is a strong and confident language. Timothy may have been second-guessing himself, he may have even felt defeated by his situation and lack of ability, but Paul saw him as a man of God, strong, and ready for the fight.

With all of this fight language central to the passage, you would imagine Paul ready to encourage Timothy into masculine battle virtues: strength, focus, determination, courage, bravery. But Paul echoed language he had previously shared with the Galatians. Paul called Timothy to the fruit of the Spirit. Timothy was to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” He would fight the good fight with the fruit of the Spirit.

Paul, and the other New Testament writers were fond of using fruit analogies for the way character and virtue grew in a person’s life. Fruit is not something we can produce on our own. You can plant a fruit tree. You can protect it, water it, and fertilize the ground, but you can’t make fruit. You care for the tree and trust that buds will come and that from those buds fruit will grow.

Christian character is like that too. We can’t produce it on our own. We can’t decide to be better and wake up the next day fully formed. It takes time and a certain kind of attention.

One of my favorite of Jesus’s parables tells of a man who owned an orchard of fig trees. He came out to check on the status of a particular tree and found that it still had not produced any figs. He had waited several years and was tired of its fruitlessness. He ordered his servant to dig up the tree and plant something else. But the servant requested more time. “Let’s spread some more manure and give it another year,” the servant suggested.

That is the end of Jesus's parable. We don’t find out what the owner decided nor if the tree produced fruit the following year. But the parable does focus our attention where it is supposed to, the actual work in front of us. We can’t bear fruit, but we can care for the ground. We can spread manure. We can wait.

Do the work, be patient, and when you need it, it will be there. Character will be there. That is what it means to be a man of God.

What role do we play in cultivating character as a man?