Friday, March 15, 2019
Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. Philippians 3:17-20(NLT)
Paul said
two things here that make us sit up and take notice.
1.
Follow me…pattern your life after the way I act in following Jesus.
2.
When it comes to Jesus, there are only two possibilities – you believe,
or you don’t; the difference is that black and white!
In making
this point Paul says that those who are not truly citizens of heaven
are enemies
of the cross. Most of the
people I’ve known who refuse to be identified as a follower of Christ don’t
really consider themselves “enemies of Jesus” or His gospel…they just don’t believe
or think all the “religious stuff” is silly.
But Jesus
made it that plain. And when he said
those words to his disciples it must have been a memorable statement, because
both Matthew and Luke record it with precisely the same words Jesus gave to
them:
Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me. Matthew 12:30(NLT) & Luke 11:23(NLT)
So, if you
refuse to be a disciple, you don’t have to set up a war room against the
kingdom; just by not serving Christ and His Kingdom, you are still an enemy of
the cross. In or out…that’s not hard to
understand!
The other
statement Paul makes is to encourage the Philippian believers to follow his
example in following Christ. I have to
say, as a pastor this one gives me the willies!
It’s one thing to personally-accept the responsibility to follow Christ
and do your utmost to surrender your life to His leading; it’s quite another to
put yourself out there as a pattern for other people. It seems somehow either arrogant (do this
like me…I’m your pattern) or it seems dangerous, like you are taking-on the
responsibility of success or failure in someone else’s eternal spiritual life. Paul was a million-times more a faithful
disciple of Jesus than I am, but he wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes.
Now if
that’s the case, there must be something more here. It’s my opinion that Paul was looking back
over his life at how he’d tried with everything in him to do right, and to
proclaim the name of Jesus. In the process
he’d learned how to follow Jesus (and how NOT to follow Jesus). And in that he could say to his beloved
Philippian clan: do what I did…give it your all,
right sometimes, blowing it at other times…but don’t just stand there waiting for
holiness to fall into your lap…stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the
cross.
For You Today
So, what
pattern is your life taking-on?
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