1 Timothy 4:7c-10
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
September 21, 2025
Is the life of following Jesus hard or easy?
In Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Hard is the way that leads to life.” But in Matthew 11, in a word to would-be disciples, He says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light”.
Which is it?
In Matthew 11 Jesus is promising that, if we follow Him and carry the burden of doing what He says, we will “find rest for [our] souls”; because following Him, as He proclaims in Matthew 5, “leads to life”. In other words, we find shalom – peace, wholeness, fulfillment – not from shouldering no burden of responsibility but from shouldering the right burden of responsibility.
The demands that we put upon ourselves and the demands that others put upon us may drive us into the ground and lead to death; but the demands that Jesus puts upon us always lift us up and lead us to life.
That is not to deny, however, that the “easy” life of following Jesus is not simultaneously a “hard” life. For it is exacting, strenuous and often painful.
That’s why Paul, in today’s scripture, urges his beloved mentee, Timothy, to “train yourself in godliness”. The word for training there is the one used to refer to the rigors of constant practice and self-disciplined living that Olympic athletes engage in so as to get into top shape and reach peak performance levels. In urging Timothy to train like an Olympic athlete, Paul is only asking his spiritual son to do what Paul tells the Corinthians he always does in following Jesus: Paul himself, like an Olympic sprinter or boxer, “punishes” his body and “enslaves” it to the pursuit of excellence. No wonder, in this scripture and others, Paul describes those who pursue godliness as those who “toil and struggle” in the effort. The all-out Christian life is definitely hard.
Yet, it is also easy because its strenuous exertions are not the root of the Christian’s blessedness but the fruit of it. Paul’s hard work in serving God is not Paul-generated, but God-generated. His robust efforts on Christ’s behalf are responsive to, and derivative from, God’s prior robust efforts on his behalf: efforts in which God gave Paul the gift of new life in Christ and put into him the energy, strength and drive that would make his vigorous labors in one sense a breeze. For Paul’s hard work is a matter of operating by a might from beyond oneself and advancing by a higher power than one’s own.
What is true for Paul is to be true for every follower of Jesus. We move forward like a canoe carried along by a river’s current, like a sailboat driven along by a strong wind, like a roller-skater pushed along by a companion who gives them a gentle shove forward from time to time. In other words, we don’t just strive in human exertion, but we also glide by divine grace. That’s why Paul tells the Colossians he serves them “with all the energy that [Jesus] powerfully inspires within me”; and tells the Corinthians “it was not I” who created such diligence, “but the grace of God that is with me”. So too, Paul implores the Philippians to “work out your salvation” because God “is at work in you, enabling you…to work.” All this is to say that every good human action or accomplishment originates in God’s grace, with no dependence on any mortal’s contribution.
To sum things up, the right Christian life is hard in one way and easy in another!
Now, in living out our faith, some of us don’t do justice to the striving part and some of us don’t do justice to the gliding part. The former group of us need to take responsibility and to do our fair share in the divine-human collaboration. The latter group of us need to remember that, while our contribution is necessary, it is secondary to God’s and modest in its consequence compared to God’s.
I belong within this latter group and want to linger on their issues today. We who stress striving too much must learn to respect the limitations God puts into His empowerment of us, accept the modesty of the work He expects from us, and refrain from getting ahead of His grace lest we get in His way. He wants us to do our little part, but then do nothing more than wait, with patient expectancy, on His next decisive step of action.
To give gliding on God’s grace its due place, it helps to recall the times when, say, we don’t know how to help someone in distress – but somehow, at the moment they truly need us, the right words pour out of us, seemingly out of nowhere; or when, say, we’ve run out of energy for an assigned responsibility, and we don’t know how to get our vigor back – but somehow, at the last second, the gasoline of the Spirit surges through our soul’s fuel lines and enables us to do what is ours to do.
To give gliding on God’s grace its due place, it also helps to regularly schedule, as a spiritual discipline, times when we refrain from work, enter into a state of repose, and leave everything in God’s hand. One wise spiritual writer confesses that her most essential spiritual discipline is taking a daily nap. For doing that brings home to her heart that God can handle everything just fine without her help and that her ability to work for God arises out her having rested with God.
And then there’s this: The Ten Commandments tell us to take a regularly scheduled time each week for rest and release, a Sabbath in which we might approximate at least the ideal of 100% gliding and 0% striving. I here preach to myself, for this is a commandment I often fail to keep – though that does both myself and God a serious disservice.
A 2023 article in The Atlantic recently spoke to me. Jason Heller wrote about how some years ago he and his wife, Angie, both of whom identify as non-religious people, made a pact to abstain from work every Sunday. He describes how they proceed: “We start our…day by bingeing TV in bed. The door of our apartment is opened only to receive pizza. Chores go undone. Exercise is spurned. Job-related emails and texts are not read…”
Heller notes, “Rest time can feel indulgent or unnatural…The instinct to hustle…is hard to shake. Still we do need respite – not only from our jobs but from all the many obligations that crop up.
“Pre-pact, Angie and I often used Sunday to prep for the coming workweek. We thought we were buying time that we could spend later. The problem is that work is a bottomless pit – there’s always more to do…Taking a break gives Angie and me the opportunity to really see [what and whom really matter]…”
“Heller says, “The most important reason to pause work [is], not just to fuel up in preparation for more work later, but for the sake of the pause itself…Angie and I… think of our secular day of rest as sacred…When you take away all the tasks you might feel pressed to do…what you’re left with isn’t an absence. It’s an opening.”
May we who follow Jesus create openings for God and His grace by sometimes striving and sometimes gliding!
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