The Chariots Are Still On Fire And Liddell Is Still Right

He was meant to dig his running spikes into the cinders, find his balance, wait for the sound of the starter’s gun, and sprint 100 meters to Olympic glory. After all, this was one of the races for which he had trained, his “best event.”1 But when he received the program and saw that it was to be held on the Christian Sabbath, he refused to run. Indeed, despite enormous pressure to compromise his convictions, while his fellow Olympians were running and winning medals and glory, he spent that Lord’s Day in the Scots Church in Paris. According to John W. Keddie, he even preached the evening service.2

Thus, he set his sights on the 400-meter race. That man was Eric Liddell (1902–45). As Paul Emory Putz explains,

He did not arrive in Paris unprepared. He had a supportive trainer who was willing to adapt, working with Liddell for several months to build him up for both of his Olympic events (Liddell also ran the 200 meters).

He also inadvertently had the science of running on his side. As John W. Keddie, another Liddell biographer, has explained, many then believed that the 400 meters required runners to pace themselves for the final stretch. Liddell took a different approach. Instead of holding back for the end, Keddie said, Liddell used his speed to push the boundaries of what was possible, turning the race into a start-to-finish sprint.3

He won that race and Olympic glory. But Liddell’s refusal to compromise his convictions is not, however, just a story about courage and convictions in the face of nearly overwhelming pressure. It is also a story about the death of a once near universal Christian conviction.

Consider the way Liddell’s decision is characterized by this unattributed article on Olympics.com: “Yet when Liddell learned that January that the opening 100m heats would be held on a Sunday (6 July), he refused to take part on account of the fact that he was a devout Christian and was obliged to observe the Sabbath. From that point on he devoted all his energies to preparing for the 400m.”4

What is striking is how matter of fact this 2019 account is about Liddell’s decision. Consider this clause again: “on account of the fact that he was a devout Christian and was obliged to observe the Sabbath.” That sentence might have been written in 1619 or 1719 or even 1819. By 1919, however, as those who have seen the 1981 film Chariots of Fire know, “Sabbath practices in the English-speaking world were rapidly changing.”5 Many made pragmatic arguments about why it would be better for Liddell to run on the Sabbath than to skip the race. After all, it “was just one Sunday” and he would have “plenty of time to attend church services in the morning” and still run the 400 meters in the afternoon.6 Putz is quite correct when he writes that Liddell, as with “many evangelicals,” “continued to see full Sabbath observance as a central part of Christian witness.”7 He rightly observes that the

issue of Sunday sports, on which Liddell took his principled stand, seems like a relic of a bygone era. The question these days is not whether elite Christian athletes should play sports on a select few Sundays; it’s whether ordinary Christian families should skip church multiple weekends of the year so their children can chase travel-team glory.8

Putz’s decision, however, to cast the question in terms of “witness” rather than Christian ethics is part of the problem.9 For Liddell, witness was certainly an issue, but it was not the primary issue. He was born in China while his parents were serving under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, which was inter-denominational but oriented toward the Congregational Churches. He was educated in England and in Edinburgh, which put him in the context of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. In them, Christians had confessed centuries before the Paris Olympics that, in creation, God set aside a Sabbath, a day for rest, worship, and works of mercy. In Westminster Confession chapter 21, the Reformed confess:

  1. As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in his Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord’s day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath.
  2. This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

The Christian doctrine of the Sabbath is grounded not only in the first creation but also in the new creation inaugurated by Christ in his resurrection. On the first day of the week, God claimed that day for himself and Christians observed that day.10

Liddell withdrew from the 100 meters (and other races) on the Christian Sabbath because he was more concerned about what God thought than about what mere creatures thought. In his Manual of Christian Discipleship (date unknown) he wrote,

If you are not guided by God, you will be guided by someone or something else. The Christian who hasn’t the sense of guidance in life is missing something vital. To obey God’s will was like food to Jesus, refreshing his mind, body, and spirit. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” (John 4:34). We can have the same experience if we make God’s will the dominant purpose in our lives.

God speaks to people through the moral law. If we break these laws, and excuse ourselves for doing so, the presence and guidance of God lose their reality in our lives: the freedom and radiance of the Christian life depart.

For Liddell, as it had been for Christians for millennia, observance of Sunday, the Lord’s Day (Rev 1:10), the “first day of the week” (Mark 16:2) was entailed in the fourth commandment (as the Reformed number them):

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exod 20:8–11)

Whereas for most Modern evangelicals and for far too many Presbyterians, the moral law generally seems to be ignored and the fourth commandment especially, for Liddell, it was a part of basic Christianity, part and parcel of his grateful response, in union with Christ, to his Savior who loved him, obeyed for him, died for him, was raised for him, is interceding for him, and who is coming again for him and all his people. As he is quoted in the film, “the Sabbath’s not a day for playing football;” nor is it a day for running footraces. It is a day to rest in the finished work of Christ, to anticipate the consummation, to fellowship with other believers, to receive the means of grace (e.g., the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments), to rest, and for works of mercy. Liddell knew that the Sabbath is not just another day and that it is not our day. There is a reason that Scripture uses the expression, “the Lord’s Day.” All days belong to him, but this one he has claimed by the authority of his Word and the empty tomb.

As much as Liddell would want us to imitate his faithful resistance to the shifting tides of Modernity, he would also want us to appreciate not just that he resisted but also for what he resisted—the abiding validity of God’s holy moral law.11

Notes

  1. The Man Who Wouldn’t Run on a Sunday: Eric Liddell in the SOAS Archives,” SOAS Library, 1st August 2014.
  2. John W. Keddie, “The Remarkable Mr. Liddell: Stories from the Biography of a Missionary,” Reformed/Presbyterian Witness (May/June 2024).
  3. Paul Emory Putz, “The Sprinter Who Held Fast,” Christianity Today volume 68, number 5 (July/August 2024), 95.
  4. The story of Abrahams and Liddell at Paris 1924,” Olympics.com, July 10, 2019.
  5. Putz, “The Sprinter,” 95.
  6. Putz, 95.
  7. Putz, 95.
  8. Putz, 96.
  9. Putz, 96.
  10. For more on the Reformed doctrine of the Christian Sabbath see R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 295–326.
  11. To anticipate the frequent objection that Paul obliterates the Christian Sabbath in Romans 4:5–6, Paul is much more probably replying to the argument of Christian Jews about the Jewish ceremonial calendar. See my account of “Sabbaths” and “Sabbath” in Colossians 2:16–17.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.


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    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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10 comments

  1. It was striking that at the 2012 London Olympics the theme music from Chariots of Fire was played at every medal ceremony. (I witnessed these at one of the Paralympic athletics days). At one and the same time music honouring the greatness of Eric Liddell and bearing witness to the relative value of the medals being awarded that day. What does it profit a man to win an Olympic gold and lose his own soul? How many heard that message? I found it intensely sobering as we sat right underneath the Olympic flame.

  2. Riding home from evening service we pass through the shopping and dining sections of our community. I think one of the most obvious examples that we live in a post Christian society is displayed in that two mile stretch of road.

  3. Hi Scott,
    I go to a 24 hour gym, no employees are in when I go to the gym and push the prowler between services. Am I still breaking the 4th if I don’t make anybody work?

    • Colin,

      I’m not the Lord of your conscience.

      Are you absenting yourself from the due use of ordinary means?

      Does it interfere with your ability to serve brothers & sisters in need?

  4. Thank you for this post!

    In my broader evangelical days, I used to think Christian Sabbath observance was nothing but legalism (misunderstanding both Col 2 and Rom 14).

    Been attending morning and evening Lord’s Day services on Sundays for the past two years now, as well as seeking to utilize the day well with rest and mercy, and have come to embrace the blessing that the Lord’s Day is rather than seeing it as a burden – – I’m sure I’m still observing it far from perfectly just like the rest of the commandments I don’t keep in perfect and perpetual obedience but that is a good reminder of why we need Christ and are to thank him for his work and pray for the grace to respond in gratitude shown in love and obedience unto him.

    I truly believe I was missing out and was robbed of the true joy and blessing of the Lord’s Day for all those years as a Christian where I just went to church in the morning (if I felt like it) and then got home as quickly as possible to watch football for the rest of the day.

    The Lord was gracious, patient, and kind to me, even in my ignorant disobedience.

    Hence, I pray if you are struggling with this, that you might also taste and see the Lord’s goodness in this commandment as it points you to the One who has done the work of your salvation and won your eternal rest so that you might start the week celebrating Christ’s accomplishment in worship with his people, enjoying sweet fellowship with God and them, showing forth hospitality and acts of mercy, and resting from all unnecessary worldly labors unto God’s glory.

    I can assure you the regret will be in not having begun sooner, rather than having begun at all (so long as you’re looking to Jesus’ work and not your Sabbath observance as your just standing before the Father—the human heart has a way of even turning God’s good commandments to our own detriment as we seek salvation in them and not through faith in Jesus alone).

    This won’t reduce Monday morning traffic, and all your stop lights won’t be green, but now you’ll realize that you are working from the rest you already have in Christ and that makes a big difference on the pilgrimage to glory.

    • There are many preachers who proclaim their single Sunday AM message & then devour Sunday sports. The ex-coach of the Indianapolis Colts NFL team was earlier a Reformed Theological Seminary chancellor–Frank Reich. Interestingly, he was the cover story of RTS’s official magazine several years back–all arrayed in head coach regalia. Casual perusal of Reformed ministers’ fb profiles show wide pro-sports interest, so your work is cut out for you curbing Sunday sports’ craze.

  5. Wonderful article, my wife and I are still fairly new to Presbyterianism and the reformed faith, but we are prayerfully committed to observing the Lord’s Day as we continue to be confirmed into His image. Football season is always challenging for me, and the PGA golf majors, but I’ve already seen those desires lose their hold.

  6. This is a message that we should hear more often, and heed more fervently. Few places in the Christian walk does the world hold more sway than the proper and Godly observance of the Sabbath. Thank you Dr. Clark for the way you presented this message here…..well done and much appreciated.

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