December 3 Daily Devotional

Stone walls do not a prison make
(but Stoicism did)

Stoicism, in the last analysis, was profound pessimism. It really came to this, that this world is hopeless, that nothing can do any good, that the thing you have to do therefore is to get through life as best you can and just refuse to let yourself be hurt by it. The Eastern religions are, of course, entirely pessimistic. They regard matter in itself as evil, they regard the flesh as essentially evil; everything, they say, is evil, and the only thing to do is to get through life with a minimum of pain and to hope that in some subsequent reincarnation you will be rid of it altogether and at last be absorbed and lost for ever in the absolute and the eternal, and cease to be a separate personality.

Now that is the very antithesis of the Christian gospel which is ... essentially positive ... we reject the negative view in toto supremely for this reason, that it fails to give the glory and the honour to the Lord Jesus Christ.... Paul wants us to see that his victory is based upon his association with Christ... that Christ infuses so much strength and power into him that he is strong and able for all things. He is not left to himself, he is not struggling alone and vainly against these mighty odds.... ‘In this’, says Paul, ‘I am able for anything’.

... This is surely one of the most glorious statements he ever made. Here is a man in prison, a man who has already suffered a great deal in his life, a man who knows what it is to be disappointed in so many ways—persecuted, treated with derision and scorn, even disappointed sometimes, as he tells, us in his fellow workers,* there in prison in conditions calculated to produce dejection in the stoutest heart, facing perhaps a cruel martyrdom—yet he is able to send out this mighty challenge. I am able to stand, to bear all things in the One who is constantly infusing strength into me.’

Spiritual Depression, pp. 293–4

* Philippians 1:15–17