Lay Hold On Eternal Life

1 Tim 6:12 Lay hold on eternal life.

1. What does it mean to lay hold on something

2. This laying hold may come from fighting the good fight. You might not lay hold until you fight.

3. What is eternal life?

Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, tells of a time when he was especially discouraged during a political campaign: “I couldn’t help wondering what Poppa would have said if I told him I was tired or--God forbid--discouraged. A thousand pictures flashed through my mind, but one scene came sharply into view.”

The Cuomo family had just moved into a new house, their first house with some trees. One tree, a great blue spruce, stood about 40 feet tall. But one night, less than a week after they moved in, they came home in a terrible storm to find that tree fallen, its roots pulled almost entirely from the ground. The family was dejected as they stood looking at this fallen giant. But Poppa, who stood barely five feet six, was determined. He declared, “Okay, we gonna push ‘im up!”

“What are you talking about, Poppa? the roots are out of the ground!” “Shut up, we gonna push ‘im up!” You couldn’t say no to him, so they got a rope and stood, pushing and pulling in the rain, and eventually got that great tree back in the hole, and then propped and staked upright again. Poppa declared, “Don’t worry, he’s gonna grow again.”

Cuomo reports that if you were to drive past that house today, you would see a straight, 65-foot blue spruce, pointing up to the heavens, with no hint that it once had its nose on the asphalt (cited in Leadership [Winter, 1993], p. 49).

Fight because

There is A fight - Struggle with (Matthew Henry's comment maybe)

Greco-Roman moralists often described moral struggles in terms of warfare, as did Jewish texts influenced by them (e.g., 4 Maccabees, where it refers to martyrdom). The image in the Greek here is not that of a war, however, but of another image the moralists equally exploited in a figurative manner: the wrestling match or athletic contest.

Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary – New Testament, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, Under: "1 Timothy 6:11-16 Fleeing the Evil Lifestyle".

Fleeing sin is not running away from the field of action. To fight the good fight of the faith is still Timothy’s assignment. This is the same idea Paul expressed in 1 Tim. 1:18, but not the same imagery. In chapter 1, Paul used “the good fight” as a military metaphor; the phrase there means literally the good warfare. In chapter 6, the allusion is to athletics—literally, the good contest. It is this phrase from the athletic arena that Paul uses in his famous farewell at the close of 2 Timothy (4:7).

Paul now speaks about the prize for victory in the contest: take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. Eternal life is not merely waiting for us at the end of this life; it is a present possession of the faithful (see John 3:36, 5:24, 10:28; 1 John 5:11–12).

Black, Robert ; McClung, Ronald: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon: A Commentary for Bible Students. Indianapolis, IN : Wesleyan Publishing House, 2004, S. 120

The fight is good -

Good because sometimes you win - There are still souls being won - There are still victories in our life

Good because in the end you win - Possess now eternal life

Will live eternally with Jesus.

Recount some of Nabeel Qureshi