[[31]] 1 Cor. vii. 21, 23.
[[32]] Philem. 16.
[[33]] 1 Tim. vi. 1.
DIVISION II. § 6. CHAPTER VI. 10-20.
The personal spiritual struggle.
The spiritual struggle
The ethics of Christianity are, as has appeared, social ethics, the ethics of a society organized in mutual relationships: and Christianity is concerned with the whole life of man, body as well as soul, his commerce and his politics as well as his religion. But because this requires to be made emphatic, does it follow that we are to neglect or depreciate the inward, personal, spiritual struggle? Are we to give a reduced, because we give a better balanced, importance to 'saving one's own soul,' that is preserving or recovering into its full power and supremacy one's own spiritual personality? Of course not: because social health depends on personal character. The more a good man throws himself into social, including ecclesiastical, duties the more he feels the need of character in himself and others. And the more serious a man is about his character, the more deeply he feels the attention and self-discipline that character needs. Certainly the most ascetic words of our Lord—those in which He speaks of the necessity for cutting off or plucking out hand or eye if hand or eye cause us to stumble, and warns us that we must be strong at the spiritual centre of our being, before we can be free in exterior action—are likely to come home to no one with more force than to one who would do his duty in Church or state. Christ cannot redeem the world without Himself passing through the temptation and the agony in the garden. And thus St. Paul, after he has been dwelling on the fraternal and corporate character of the Christian life, comes back at the last to emphasize the personal spiritual struggle. To be a good member of the body, he says in effect, you must be in personal character a strong man, strong enough in Christ's might to win the victory in a fearful struggle.
Against what is our spiritual struggle? It is against the weakness and lawlessness of our own flesh. 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.' 'Our eye and hand and foot cause us to stumble.' Or again it is the world which is too much for us. 'We seek honour one of another and not the glory that cometh from the only God.' Quite true. But behind the manifest disorder of our nature and the insistence of worldly motives there are other less apparent forces; and these, in St. Paul's mind, so overshadow the more visible and tangible ones that, in the Biblical manner of speech, he denies for the moment the reality of the latter. 'We wrestle not against flesh and blood,' not against our own flesh or a visibly corrupt public, but against an unseen spiritual host organized for evil.