If you’ve never read the Screwtape Letters before, I’d encourage you to grab a copy. The book consists of 31 letters from a senior demon Screwtape to his nephew, a junior demon, named Wormwood. This is arguably Lewis’s most influential work. You can read it in a month just doing one letter a day. They give powerful insights into what it feels like to be tempted in a fallen world and the glory that awaits believers on the other side. I’m staring a new podcast this month called “Mere Caffeination.”

It was a hot dry summer in 1940 in Oxford, England. That ended in July when the heavens opened up with deluge rainfalls. It must have been a wet Saturday evening when C.S. Lewis, the man who would take to speaking over the radio in the very near future, turned on his own radio on and tuned in to listen to an influential political speech. History was being made in more ways than one
“In looking back upon the last ten months we are all struck by the grace of Providence that has allowed us to succeed in our great work,” the speaker’s voice proclaimed through the crackly speakers. “Providence has blessed our great resolves and guided us in our difficult matters. As for myself, I am deeply moved, realizing that Providence has called on me to restore to my people their freedom and honor.”
Lewis admitted to being affected by the rhetoric. “I don’t know if I’m weaker than other people, Lewis said, “but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little.” Lewis wrote these words describing how it felt to hear what is described as Hitler’s last appeal to Britain to remove themselves from the war, before he promised to unleash Hell. Within a couple months it would be far more than rain falling from the English sky.
In his speech, Hitler claimed to be the voice of reason pleading for common sense. It was Churchill who was evil and illogical, Hitler claimed, referencing the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister no less than fourteen times in the address.
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
In many ways, Haynes could be considered a kind of American Spurgeon—a faithful preacher and pastor, beloved for decades by his church and his family, and concerned to see the implications of the gospel fleshed out in homes and in society.

An Unquestionable Legacy
Lemuel Haynes is perhaps the single most important American figure most Christians have never heard of. Born July 18th in 1753 to a Black man and a White woman, Haynes was abandoned by his parents in the home of a family friend who sold the infant Haynes into indentured servitude. By the providential hand of God, however, young Lemuel was placed into a Christian home, where by all accounts, including his own, he was treated as a member of the family and raised to love the things of God.1
Growing up in colonial Vermont, Haynes worked hard and studied hard, proving himself quite adept at intellectual pursuits despite being largely self-taught. He has affectionately been called a “disciple of the chimney-corner” as that is where he would spend most evenings after work reading and memorizing while other children were out playing or engaging in other diversions.
Haynes’s commitment to theology began in that chimney-corner, and eventually he was born again. Not long after his conversion, he turned his followership of Christ and his intellectual bent into a serious endeavor by writing and preaching. An oft-told anecdote about Haynes concerns a scene of family devotions at the Rose household where he was indentured. Given his adeptness at reading and his deep concern for spiritual matters, the Rose family would often ask Haynes to read a portion of Scripture or a published sermon. One night, Haynes read a homily of his own without credit (apparently the sermon on John 3:3 included in this volume). At the end, members of the family remarked at its quality and wondered, “Was that a Whitefield?” “No,” Haynes is said to have replied, “it was a Haynes.”
The few sermons we have of Lemuel Haynes prove him to be an exceptional expositor in the Puritan tradition, similar to Edwards or Whitefield though simpler than the former and more substantive than the latter. And yet, what Haynes may have lacked in eloquence compared to his contemporaries, he more than made up for in biblicism and applicational insight.
Officially licensed to preach in 1780 by the Congregational Association, Haynes soon after preached his first public sermon (on Psalm 96). He was then ordained in 1785 and would go on to receive an honorary Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College.

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I am in the process of writing a commentary on 1 Timothy (for the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary Series). When I came to 1 Timothy 1:18, I noticed that the phrase “fight the good fight” is composed of a verb (strateuō) and a noun (strateia) that is a cognate word with the verb. The use of the noun “fight” after the verb “to fight” in this phrase is a figure of speech whereby there “is a repetition of the same basic word with the same sense” to underscore the meaning of the redundant wording. The redundant wording had a ring to it, so I decided to see if this repeated wording was used elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world, since it did not appear anywhere else in the New Testament or the Greek Old Testament. What I found after many hours of research surprised me and encouraged my faith very much. I hope what you are about to read will not only surprise you but also encourage your faith amid the trials of this world.
A Patriotic Warfare Idiom Underscoring a Reputation of Good Character
To my amazement, when I looked at the standard online concordance to the literature of the ancient Greek world, I found that this redundant wording was used very often (from the fifth century BC up to the third century AD and onward). I began to study the meaning of the redundant expression in all their various contexts. The expression can be translated as “battle the battle” or “serve as a soldier in warfare,” or more generally as “perform military service” or “serve in a military campaign.” The wording typically is a patriotic warfare idiom for good character revealed by persevering through not merely one battle but military campaigns extending over a period of time. We need further to see how this idiom is used in the ancient Greek world before we can understand how it is applied to Timothy and Paul and to Christians in general.
In the Roman military system, in times of danger from foreign powers, citizens who enlisted in the army were “obligated to serve as soldiers in warfare service [strateuō + strateia] for twenty years,” though only ten years were required for being “eligible for any political office” (Polybius, Histories VI.19). The point here was that an extended period of military service was a requirement for political office, since it demonstrated a person’s honorable character as a loyal citizen, willing to persevere in service in order to protect the home country. A military commander named Astyphilus “fought first at Corinth, then in Thessaly and again throughout the Theban war, and wherever else he heard of an army being collected, he went abroad holding a command.” Afterward, “he was fighting in other war campaigns [strateia + strateuō] and was well aware that he was going to run risks on all of them.” Then “he was about to set out on his last expedition, going out as a volunteer with every prospect of returning safe and sound from this campaign” when he finally died in battle at Mytilene (Isaeus, IX. On the Estate of Astyphilus 15,). His patriotism is expressed both through his amazing perseverance in fighting for his country until death and his religious and civic commitments (for these commitments, see 13, 21, and 30).
Similarly, the Roman commander Pompey affirmed that he had received “the greatest honor” as a result of “the battle campaigns he had fought” (strateia + strateuō; Dio Cassius, Roman History XXXVI.25). On another occasion, while dying, a Jewish martyr executed by the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes encourages his brothers to persevere in their faith and to be “of good courage” and to “fight [strateuō] the sacred and noble fight [strateia] for godliness.”
In a Greek papyrus from the second century AD, a father writes a letter to his son who was “persuaded . . . not [to] enlist to fight [strateuō] at [a city called] Klassan.” The father “grieved” over what appeared to be his son’s lack of patriotism. The father said, “from now on, take care not to be so persuaded . . . not [to] enlist to fight, or you will no longer be my son. You know you have every advantage over your brothers, and all the authority. Therefore, you will do well to fight [strateuō] the good fight [strateia]. . . . Therefore, do not transgress my instructions and you will have an inheritance.” The son’s willingness to “fight the good fight” will certainly enhance his reputation before his father (enough to receive the father’s inheritance) and likely in the eyes of others. “Good fight” refers here to a war in which it is “honorable” to participate in fighting for one’s country (or city) because fighting for one’s country (or city) and overcoming the enemy is “good.” Once again, the idiom demonstrates a person’s good character as a loyal citizen to his king and kingdom.