Three saints to help you grow stronger in the Lord

…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
- Ephesians 3:17-19

The Apostle Paul reminded us that bad company ruins good morals (1 Cor. 15:33). Put rather more positively we might say that a man is known by the company he keeps. Among Christians we understand the importance of maintaining fellowship with other believers, that we may encourage and support one another, bear one another’s burdens, teach and admonish one another, and stimulate one another to love and good works.

But an important aspect of our fellowship with the saints is in danger of being overlooked by a great many contemporary believers. That is the fellowship we must seek out and sustain with the saints who have gone on before us, those whose sacrifices and labors have made it possible for the Gospel to come down to us today. As Christians we are but the latest in a long line of the followers of Christ, many of whom have left us examples and writings that can be invaluable in our walk with the Lord in these secular and relativistic times.

In our text Paul implies that the strength of the Christian – that inner rejuvenation of heart, mind, and conscience whereby we are daily renewed for service to the Lord – is only completed within the company of the saints. The saints have much to offer in the way of insight, advice, and example to guide us as we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. This is why we join churches, participate in Bible study groups, and maintain Christian friendships. It’s also why we listen to preaching and teaching, read Christian books, and go to seminars and conferences. We look to our fellow believers today to help us grow stronger in the Lord.

But we must not be so foolish as to suppose that only contemporary believers can aid us in this high and holy calling. The saints from previous generations have much to contribute to our walk with the Lord as well.

And, as it happens, many of their works have been kept available for us in books, anthologies, readers, and a wealth of devotional material. C. S. Lewis stressed the importance of reading old books as well as new, and Jesus’ comment about the wise scribe might be seen to support such a practice as well (Matt. 13:51, 52).

I’d like to recommend three readily available writings from the saints of the past from which every follower of Christ today can profit.

First, I mention Augustine’s Confessions. Here in this lengthy prayer of praise and thanks to God we hear the great doctor explain his journey to faith in Christ, and we share in the intimacy of the relationship of grace and truth he sustained with God after so many years of selfish wandering and waste. From the Confessions we have much to learn about God’s persistent grace, His glory in the creation and the scholarship of great thinkers, the way He changes and strengthens us from within, and how we may live in a manner befitting His glory and truth.

Many editions of the Confessions are available and if you add just a page or two per day to your reading, whether in the morning or evening, you can easily finish this great work in just a few months.

Second, let me recommend you read Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? or, Why Did God Become Man? This is the first great work of scholastic theology from the high middle ages, and it is cast in the form of a dialog between Anselm and his student, Boso. In the conversation Anselm leads Boso to reason through the question of why it was necessary for God to become a man, as Christians claim. The discussion moves quickly, can be easily followed, and addresses a timeless question which every generation of believers must be prepared to explain. God became man because man owed a debt he could not pay; so God, in His infinite grace, took it upon Himself to pay the debt He did not owe so that men might be redeemed and saved.

Finally, I suggest you read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, a brief study of how to nurture true Christian community. Any church would benefit from all its members reading and discussing this book. The chapters on worship, personal spirituality, and ministry together are as fine as any you will read on these subjects. The emphasis on loving one another, needing one another, and growing together in the grace of the Lord is a message every congregation needs to review again and again.

The saints of old have much to offer us as we seek to grow stronger in the Lord. We must not fail to gain the profit of their labors by neglecting our heritage as Christians. Let Augustine, Anselm, and Bonhoeffer into your life during the second half of this year and you’ll discover two things: first, the saints who have preceded us can, indeed, speak in a lively and profitable manner to us yet today; and second, your desire to learn from more of the saints of old will be stimulated so that such reading will henceforth ever be part of your own personal rule of spiritual disciplines.

Read the old saints and you’ll find yourself saying with the psalmist, “As for the saints who are in the ground, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Ps. 16:3, my translation).

For more insight to this topic, get the book, Ancient Christian Devotional, edited by Thomas Oden and Cindy Crosby, from our online store.