To Encourage You

Philippians 1:19-20 “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . .  Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

With the words Paul wrote from prison and recorded in Philippians 1 above, we see His true heart as a Christian.  In this one who had spent his earlier years as a terrorist who persecuted Christians to their death, we see the total and complete transformation that Christ had worked in his life.  Throughout Philippians we see that Paul’s concern was now primarily for two things: that Christ be honored and that the church be blessed, no matter what happened to him personally.  Paul now understood that life was not about himself anymore.  It was about the love of God and the love of his neighbor.  This one that had hated both Christ and Christians now loved them both more than he loved himself.  It didn’t matter to him now whether he lived or died, so long as whatever happened to him worked to further these two goals. 

Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi reveals that he was optimistic that he would eventually be released from prison, but his optimism wasn’t rooted in the hope of an elimination of his suffering there. It was rooted in his anticipation of being able to serve the church in a greater capacity if and when he was released. Yet, his attitude was that if he was not released but rather executed, that would actually be “far better,” for in that situation, he would be “with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). Think of the transformation in this man’s life.  This same man whom Jesus had struck with blindness and the realization that his persecution of Christians was, at its heart, a persecution of Christ himself, now could not wait to be with Christ for all eternity. 

So much of what purports to be “Christian” today is all about becoming successful in life, of being perpetually wealthy and healthy.  How foreign this “me-centered” attitude is to the true Christianity modeled by the apostle Paul as described in the Word of God.  Any true Christianity will be manifest by such a heart rather than the false substitution for this that we see so widely practiced in the church today.  May God examine our hearts to reveal what is truly in them, whether it is the love of God, His Truth, and His followers, or the love of some other thing, especially the love of ourselves masquerading as the real thing.