Live For Christ
“For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.”
Philippians 1:21 NET
Philippians is a stunning picture of what our hope looks like in Christ. Paul says again and again to rejoice in the Lord at all times, even though his situation was far from hopeful. He wrote these words under house arrest by the Romans. Could you imagine having such hope in the face of a hopeless situation? However, where it would be easy to think this imprisonment was a hindrance to the advancement of the gospel, the result was the good news was proclaimed to the whole imperial guard!
Philippians shows us that we don’t always know the best path forward. We don’t know how to maximize our effectiveness for the kingdom of God. The small strategy and vision we might have can’t compare to the ways God can break boundaries and transform any situation into an opportunity for grace.
So Paul sums it up with a statement of humility and surrender: If I live, it’s for Christ, and if I die, I get the greater thing: life with Christ forever.
How many things in our lives are fruitless because our attitude is more about living for ourselves and fearing death? I’m not saying this is a simple switch to flip. Probably the greatest journey of maturity is becoming selfless, and perhaps the greatest evidence of faith in God is fearlessness and peace as we pass from this life to the next.
I don’t expect a blog post to make much of a difference in that development. That will come through years of abiding and surrender. But I do want to plant a seed.
I often write about the power of abiding in the vine of Christ, as Jesus explained in John 15. Have you ever considered that to abide in Christ requires us to break off every other source of hope and strength? Choosing to be grafted into the tree of Christ requires us to be broken off from the wild and fruitless trees of our past. To step into grace with Christ requires a death of the old ways.
And if our old ways are completely broken off, like a branch sawn off and grafted into another vine, then we ought to put our hope fully in the one who sustains us and stop looking out into the forest with a longing for past days.
These longings and temptations will certainly rise up in our flesh. The draw to come back to the bondage of slavery has been in the hearts of God’s people all the way back to the Israelites in the desert, begging Moses to bring them back to Egypt. But the freedom we have in Christ gives us an assurance of hope that we can rely on God in life and in death to be our sustainer and guide.
As you go through your day, remember that everything you do can be filled and sustained by the grace of God. Let your living be for Christ, and fearlessly look to eternity with him.
