Heaven is very far away, and the way there is strewn with difficulties, even before we factor in our own lack of stamina and various disabilities. Will we ever make it to the finishing line in the Christian race? The Epistle to the Hebrews provides some good advice. In the following updated extract from a sermon preached by Samuel Rutherford in preparation for the communion at Kirkcudbright in 1634, Rutherford discusses what we must do, and how it’s possible for us to persevere, and win the prize of glory.

“Let us run the race.” But how shall we run? “So run that ye may obtain.” Many run in hope of heaven and get hell in the end. But hear what the Spirit of God says: “Lay aside every weight,” every clog.

Lay aside every weight

What is the weight? The world, the love of riches and honour, and lusts. He speaks to us as to people having their backs burdened with clay, or clogged with heavy lumps of earth and great bunches of the world’s glory. For that matter, a number of devils of pride, lust, and covetousness hang on us. “Give them a shake,” says He, “Down with them! Let the ground bear them all!”

What then shall we do to be quit of these weights?

Watch your feet

The world is a foul way, like deep, watery new-tilled ground, where pound weights hang to the traveller’s heel and hold him back, and as he shakes off one, another comes on, so that he cannot go fast on his way.

The affections are the feet of the soul. Take heed to your feet, and come off the deep wet land. Use the world as if you used it not. There is a dry way to heaven! Hold off the deep way, and be content with food and raiment. Go the way that Christ and the saints went before you, who scarce ever wet their feet. Indeed, Jesus was never wet-shod in the world. He had so good mind of His errand and His home that the world got no room in His heart.

They who will not keep this clean dry causeway, it is no marvel to see them get stuck in the miry world, be drowned and never make it home. It is with many, as was said, “Their adulteries lie between their breasts” (Hos. 2:2) Is it any wonder to see such heavy-headed dolts get the maul in this race, like stiff horses unfit for a journey? And how can they so much as trot? They only walk in a circle!

Watch your conscience

Satan and the world will give you foul play. They will stick out their feet before you and make you fall. But don’t worry about that. Get up again!

But please beware of sore falls — sins against the conscience, light, and love. For the conscience is like an earthen vessel. If you break it you won’t be able to mend it again. Some in their race gave their conscience such a blow that they break their legs, and are never fit for the race again. Whatever you do, keep the conscience whole.

Keep going

Cast off all things that make you heavy. Make yourself light, so that you may be nimble, and skip and spur away. Run, run! Don’t look behind you. Remember Lot’s wife. Although you are like to burst, don’t tarry. You will mend of a sweat and a heat. God has a napkin to rub the sweat off you, and He has a chair and a cushion for you for when the race is ended, and He will lay your head in His bosom. Put in a bit of effort in the daytime, for I promise you, you’ll get rest at evening.

Lay aside the sin that so easily besets us

“Cast off the sin that doth so easily beset us,” or goes round about us. This is the body of sin that remains in our nature. The apostle speaks of it as if someone had us clasped in his arms, for original sin has us in fetters as captives.

It is a thing we cannot get away from, go where we please. It is like a ghost, ever in our eye — behind us, pulling us back; before us, standing in our way; at our right hand, hindering us to hear, pray, believe, repent, hope, etc. It is like the wind in our face, or in the face of a weak traveller, blowing him some steps back where he goes one forward. It is as a man going round about us. It is in the mind, darkening the judgment; in the will, throwing it the contrary way. God bids us walk in the lowest room, down in the affections; but we do the contrary.

And this sin, as woodbind goes about a tree, wraps about us in every good way. It is a serpent biting our heel, and cries, “A lion in the way!” When God draws, sin holds under — at meat, drink, and sleep. It is a joker — it promises us much, but gives us the wind, and yet we believe it.

How can we do this?

But here a question may be asked. How does the apostle bid us shake off this sin which dwells in us so long as we live? It is death and the kirkyard that make us quit of this sin. How then we can shake it off?

By grace

The dominion of it we break by grace. Every grieving heart we have for this indwelling sin breaks a bone of old Adam, gives his back a crack and makes him cry. As we repent and advance in holiness, we break a leg or an arm of this sin. The root of it, God only, in death, can pluck out. Yet we must be hacking and cutting the branches and roots of it, else we cannot make progress in our race. We must not take this defiling sin forward with us in our race. We must leave it where we start, and deliver it over to Christ, that He may put it on His cross and nail it to His gallows.

By regeneration

The apostle speaks of sin as of a thing going round about us like a stone wall in our very way to heaven. Until, by regeneration, Christ make a gap in the wall that we may pass over, there is no possibility of going one foot.

And even when the wall is broken we shall see this sin hanging on our legs and arms. This sin keeps a lodge by the gate for Satan, and is a common robber, who slays many by the way.

Some it tricks out of the way, and lulls asleep in security, like a drunken traveller who sleeps in a moor till the sun be down, then wakes from his sleep and cries.

Others it blinds, such as Paul while he was still a Pharisee, and papists, and chases them a wrong way — to hell instead of heaven — when they make a fashion of repentance, to slay their sins, and go again to their old pass. Such are those who, with willingness, walk softly, and go to sin again.

Run the race

Now he sets down the exhortation, “Let us run the race.” This is more than to walk and step at our own leisure. “Running” shows there is a set time, which will run out, a short day, and that the way is long, and we have much to do to get sin slain. And, therefore, we must get underway with speed, and run fast.

In Matthew 11, the kingdom of heaven is said to be taken with violence. Luke 13:24 tells us, “Strive to enter in.” The word is, “Fight, and throng in by force.” When God, by faith, lets a man see heaven, he resolves that in he must be, come what will. “Reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press forward toward the mark” (Phil. 3:13–14). The word is, “I follow after, I reach out my hand.” The apostle means he ran so that his head and chest pressed forward before his feet, and his two arms reached out to catch hold of Christ. He chases Christ and heaven, so to speak, and they seem to run away from him, and he follows. So should we do. Then chase on! The prize seems to flee from us, but it cannot flee further than to heaven’s gates, and there we will get a hold of it.

But how will they do who say, “Easy does it! Slow and steady wins the race. What’s the need of all this fuss, all these prayers, all this flocking to communions? I’ll be in heaven as soon as the best of you!”

Don’t deceive yourselves, loiterers and drowsy persons, who don’t go one mile of twenty in a year — you who walk in a circle round and round, from pride to lust, from lust to drunkenness, from that to covetousness, and from that to pride again, like as if you were in a fairies’ dance, and don’t run at all! Can you get to heaven lying on your back? “The good lucky old religion made a sonsy world,” they say. Yet they use religion like a post-horse — as one wears out of fashion they take another.

Looking to Jesus

“But what good will looking to Jesus do us?” Very much. He is the captain of our salvation, “the author and finisher of our faith.” For Christ is all. He draws with His Spirit, and He leads us through the mire, and goes before us.

And we have this advantage, that when we faint, He looks back over His shoulder with a smile, takes us by the hand, and says, “Fear not, little flock …” (Luke 12:32), “Yet a little while, and I am with you” (John 15). Just as a loving guide says to the tired man, “We only have a little water or two to pass through, and see there is only that one hill between us and the town, we’re very near.”

Jesus Himself took the castle of heaven first. It cost Him blood to get in and break open the doors. Now He stands in the entrance and cries, “Come in! I have broken the gate, I have won the city. Don’t be afraid!” That’s why He is called a “fore-runner,” because He went before to open the doors and the gates, and take the stones out of the way, and says, “Step forward, my brethren, don’t be frightened.” So then, when we run, we are not to lean to our own strength, for fear we get a fall.

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