The Man Who Left Gold Behind

In 1925, just months after winning Olympic gold in the 400 meters in Paris, Eric Liddell boarded a ship for northern China. The Scottish sprinter had become a national hero — crowds chanted his name, newspapers printed his face, and the world laid earthly glory at his feet. He walked away from all of it.

For nearly twenty years, Liddell served as a missionary teacher in Tianjin and later in the rural countryside of Xiaochang. When Japan invaded, he sent his pregnant wife and daughters to safety in Canada and stayed behind to serve. He was eventually interned at the Weifang civilian camp, where he taught Bible classes, organized games for children, and gave away his few provisions to the sick. Fellow prisoners called him the most Christlike person they had ever met.

Liddell died in that camp in February 1945, five months before liberation. He was forty-three. The gold medal that once defined him to the world meant nothing in that place. What sustained him was something the other prisoners could see but not quite name — a life oriented entirely upward.

Paul wrote to the Colossians, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Eric Liddell understood this. He had died to the applause, and his real life was hidden somewhere the world could not reach — safe with Christ, awaiting a glory no internment camp could touch.