To Encourage You

1 Corinthians 3:21-23 “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”

The possessions of the Christian are beyond description.  Paul expresses this here in 1 Corinthian 3.   God has given spiritual gifts to teachers, enabling them to give us understanding of His infinite, inerrant Word.  Examples are Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (Peter).  These gifts – any spiritual gifts – are not meant just for those that possess them, but for everyone in the church who derives benefits from them.  

As Christians, we are reminded here that our God, the One Who has redeemed us and placed us in His family, has gifted us with every possession He has.  The world is ours.  All of life is ours. Even death is ours – something we don’t fear, but something we can actually look forward to, because at that moment we will dwell in the awesome presence of Christ in heaven – which Paul reminds us is “far better” than remaining here on earth (Philippians 1:23).  

The present is ours – for we realize that every moment of every day is time spent in the presence, protection, and fellowship of our Lord. And the future is ours – for we know that, like Job –  the Lord will bless the latter days of our life more than the beginning (Job 42:12).  Everything that is good, anything that is God’s, is ours.  

How foolish, then, to trade material and temporal things for this. As the apostle Paul said, from prison no less,  about his life before he knew Christ, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8).  And in the more contemporary words of the martyr, Jim Elliott, “He is no fool that gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”