RUNNERS HINDERED by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1901

RUNNERS HINDERED

By Uriah Smith

To some of the Christians in Galatia, Paul wrote as follows: ‘Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?’ Gal. 5:7. In this declaration, we have a sample of the apostle’s tact and skill in reproving sin, yet trying to win the sinner, and bring the erring one back to the right way. The Galatians had been guilty of a very vexatious fault; for they had known the truth, and had run in the right way; and it is much more trying to the friends of truth to see those who have once known it, and loved it, and walked in it, turning away, and becoming indifferent to it, than it is to see those doing this who have never known the way of truth, and have never shown any interest, or manifested any desire to assist or promote its progress, and share in its blessings. And how could anything be more grievous to the Lord than such a course?

So the apostle might have assailed them with a great deal of sharpness and acerbity, and reproved them with cutting words, for their unfaithfulness, heaping upon them grave charges and stinging sarcasms, reproaching them with the miserable work they were doing in the world. He might have said that which would have had a tendency to stir up every evil trait in their natures, and caused a terrible root of bitterness to spring up in their hearts, to bear its baneful fruit.

But he did not do this. Rather he looked around, and first sought for something that he could commend. Having found it, then he was ready to speak; and he spoke of that, ‘Ye did run well.’ Is not this a plain lesson, to all who speak in public of their brethren to-day, against indulging in indiscriminate censure? Is it not a lesson to recognize and praise that which is good, giving due credit for that, thus showing that everything has had due consideration in our minds? May we not thus, with better effect, reprove and remove the evil? There is more of commendation than might at first appear in the apostle’s language. The Galatians had not been idle nor sluggish in their Christian exercises, but had been earnest and active, so much so that they could be commended as ‘running well.’ It is a source of much pleasure to those who have the cause of God at heart, to see Christians running well. The way in which they run is the way of truth; and the ‘running’ is obedience. These Galatians, then, had been running the right road; they had run straight forward; they had run perseveringly, with a good pace, with their eyes fixed on Christ. If they had not so run, they had not run well; but Paul says, ‘Ye did run well.’

But, alas! they had been hindered. ‘Who did hinder you?’ Their experience may be repeated in our lives, if it has not already been. Will it not be well, therefore, to consider what these dangerous things are which may act the insidious part of hindrances to us in the Christian life, that we may avoid or overcome them? Anything to cause us to stumble would, of course, be a hindrance in our religious growth. This is why Paul so earnestly enjoins caution on this point among Christ’s disciples. He says: ‘Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no one put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.’ Rom. 14:13.

One of the principal evidences that we are not running well, but are being hindered, is that failure with which the Faithful Witness charged the church in Ephesus: ‘I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.’ This is one of the prevailing dangers of the last days. ‘Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.’ Matt. 24:12. When love begins to grow cold, we may know that something is hindering us in the Christian race. All the earnest warnings and exhortations of the Scriptures against backsliding, come in here.

Another indication of hindrance is given in the text itself: it is disobedience to the truth: ‘Who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?’ They were once running well, sound in the faith. But when they were hindered, they did not obey the truth. They began to leave the old established faith for new notions. There are well-established truths which are not to be abandoned. Do not give up these for unproved novelties. This is one of the ways to be hindered from running well.

But ‘who did hinder you?’ Was it any one of your brethren? You ought to be proof against any of them, not to let their course or influence have an effect upon you to slacken your pace in the heavenward journey. Did the world hinder you? Then why give the world so large a place in your affairs as to let it mold you in the wrong direction? Did the devil do it? We have this plain instruction respecting him: ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’

Did you not do it yourself? More likely, now, the question comes nearer the truth. Did you not become overcharged with the cares of this life, and perhaps with the surfeiting and drunkenness associated therewith in the prophecy, and so lose your hold on religious things? Did you not by pride and self-righteousness become so self-satisfied as to stop running? Did not self-indulgence come in to act its part? Did you not neglect prayer, Bible reading, public worship, and other means of grace? Arouse then from this condition, and do not hinder your own soul. Did false teachers do it? Then turn away from them, and listen only to the word of God.

When one has less inclination to secret prayer and the study of God’s word, and abbreviates his seasons of devotion, spending fewer moments in self-examination, meditation, and earnest supplications for himself and others, and this, not because he has less time, but only less inclination, he has need to be alarmed; he is being hindered. Is not the Holy Spirit more displeased when neglected by one on whom He has effectually wrought in times past than when slighted by another who has always resisted all impressions for good, and never wooed nor welcomed His presence? The lukewarm person is useless to himself and to others. His religion will never save himself; and he can not be the means of saving others.

The text is an effectual bar against the doctrine of ‘once in grace, always in grace,’ or the idea that every one must be saved who has ever enlisted in the service of Christ; for that which will hinder one from running well, for a time, may continue so long, and increase to that extent, as to cause him to fall beyond the possibility of rising again. To be hindered is to be led into the first step to final apostasy. The evil is that the natural tendency with one hindered will be to let the power of the hindrances increase, so that there will be less and less inclination to try to rise above them, and our condition become more and more dangerous still.

How many professed Christians there are in the world, with no outbreaking sins upon them so far as man sees, but who are yet without one grace of the Spirit to adorn their lives. In the sight of heaven their lives must be a complete blank. Man, to be sure, may see no fault in them; but at the same time God sees no fruit in them. And what will be taken into the account in deciding the eternal destiny?—It is not what man sees, but what God sees. Can a more obnoxious condition in the sight of heaven be imagined? No wonder the Faithful and True Witness tells the Laodiceans that he will spue them out of His mouth.

Many stumble by exposing themselves to temptations under which they have fallen before. Here one becomes weak, and temptations have the strongest power. When persons repent of sin, they do not mean to fall into that sin again. But tinder will catch on the smallest spark. The soul that has known sin may be excited by that which recalls the past sin. Recovered grace is an awful responsibility. It is a great condescension on the part of God to intrust us again with that grace which we had before forfeited. The more carefully, then, it should be guarded. ‘Carelessness before a fall,’ says Dr. Pusey, ‘may be ignorance, passion, an infirmity of nature. But carelessness after you have been restored from falling is sin against light. It is to reject the mercy of God in Christ.’

The people of India have a maxim that ‘it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit.’ But such is not the rule of the gospel, nor the instruction of the Bible. David likens the sun to a strong man that rejoices to run a race, not shrinking away within itself, but glad that it can dispense abroad its beams to gladden and vivify the earth. ‘Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,’ is the instruction of the apostle.

Have some standard by which you can take observations to judge how far you have separated from the world, and how you are running in reference to it. This is illustrated by the remark of a sailor, who said: ‘Sailing from Cuba, we thought we had gained sixty miles in one day. But at the next observation we found that we had lost more than thirty. It was an undercurrent. The ship had been going forward by the wind, but going back by the current.’

So a man’s course in religion may often seem to be right and prosperous, while the undercurrent of his sins may be driving him in the very opposite direction. U. S.