ENGLISH
REFERENCE

fight the good fight

idiom
Meaning

To persevere with determination in a worthy and difficult struggle.


Origin

The phrase comes from Paul's letters to Timothy. In 1 Timothy 6:12 he urges, "Fight the good fight of faith," and near the end of his life, in 2 Timothy 4:7, he looks back and declares, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

Paul's "fight" is a metaphor drawn from the athletic contest and the battlefield — a sustained effort of endurance rather than a single clash. What makes the fight good is not victory but the worth of the cause and the refusal to give up on it.

English kept both the spirit and the wording. To fight the good fight is to keep struggling for something worthwhile against the odds — a cause, a principle, a long recovery — with the emphasis on perseverance and integrity rather than on winning.

Examples
SIMPLE

Keep fighting the good fight.

CONTEXTUAL

For thirty years she fought the good fight for cleaner rivers, winning slowly and losing often.

COMPLEX

Underfunded and outnumbered, the small legal-aid team kept fighting the good fight, taking on cases nobody else would touch and measuring success one client at a time.

Paul & the Early Churchconnected storiesSee all Biblical origin →

Acts and the letters of Paul to the first churches.

  1. 01

    reap what you sow (idiom)

    Your actions produce their own inevitable consequences, good or bad.

  2. 02

    the root of all evil (idiom)

    The underlying source of much wrongdoing — most often applied to money.

  3. 03

    a thorn in the side (idiom)

    A persistent source of irritation, trouble, or difficulty.

  4. 04

    road to Damascus (idiom)

    An important point in someone's life where a great change, or reversal, of ideas or beliefs occurs.

  5. 05

    the wages of sin (idiom)

    The inevitable painful consequences of wrongdoing.

  6. 06

    in the twinkling of an eye (idiom)

    In an instant; extremely quickly.

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