For Your sake or for the sake of Christ?
For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. (Philippians 1)
Believe and suffer.
Doesn’t sound very like a very good tagline for a consumer does it? And in this day and age of consumerism the Church has often changed our tagline for the sake of communicating to the culture in a way that is relevant.
Believe and you will be saved from Hell.
Believe and you get eternal life.
Believe and you will become God’s son or daughter.
Believe and God will fix your spouse, or your kids, or your parents, or your boss.
Believe and God will make you wealthy.
Believe and God will make you well.
When our belief is focused upon us…when your belief is focused upon you, and is for the sake of you, then we will always view Jesus through the eyes of the consumer. There is plenty of evidence that any one of these belief statements may be true for you, but in the end if our belief is built on any one of them we may be setting ourselves up for disaster. In the end if our belief is built upon our willingness to do believe and suffer for the sake of Jesus, then suffering can bring joy and a new depth of our worth becomes evident.
But to be willing to believe and suffer for the sake of Jesus requires that we become familiar with the depth of our own fallen state, our own hopelessness without Jesus, our own desperate need of Jesus, and that can be a humiliating experience…but one worthy of enduring.
What suffering might you be avoiding for the sake of your comfort?
God’s Motivation
22 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. (Ezekiel 36)
We often confuse God’s love for us with His motivation for acting on our behalf when we find ourselves at the ground zero of our sin. We have been willingly disobedient, and after experiencing the pain that comes with that we attempt to turn back to God looking for some kind of restoration to our previous glory. But for those of us who have been redeemed by Jesus and have been adopted as God’s kids He is most likely to act on our behalf in order to prove that He is who He says He is. As He did for Israel, God will continually restore us for His Glory because it is His greatness that needs to shine into the lives of the lost.
So, while it might be a little depressive to think that God isn’t primarily motivated by His love for us we should be all the more encouraged that He will NEVER forsake us because His reputation is at stake.
What are you chasing?
You have been spared. Either you have over corrected only to find no oncoming car, or you have jumped before looking, or you have arrived late or early instead of on time, but regardless of the situation we all have been spared. There have been multiple moments in my life where it could have been the end, but the situation or circumstances just didn’t play out that way. It was either luck or providence. In either case I still am left with the question of why?
Why have you been spared?