Live For the Gospel of Christ
- Living Waters Church
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
(Following is an excerpt from one of our recent sermons, "Live for the Gospel of Christ - Philippians 1:12-18" )
Living for the Gospel of Christ
Paul's Epistle to the Philippians contends that we as Christians should be living for the gospel of Christ.
The gospel of Christ is both the foundational and the core aspect of our lives in Christ.
And when we move farther away from that, then the more fearful we get, the more uncertain we get, the more difficult things get to us, because we have not allowed ourselves to dwell in the gospel of Christ and really make that our central focus.
Because that's what it was for Paul here [in Philippians 1:12-18].
People will say that a person, "that soldier" or so on was very, very courageous. "They demonstrated great courage in what they did. And they were fearless."
And you talk to that person concerned and they say, "Well, I wasn't without fear. It's just that I had to go in and protect my mates."
Or there is a situation where somebody's rescued from a car, a burning car, and somebody else goes in there and takes the person out of the car and another says, "You were so brave", to this regular person.
They say, "I couldn't do any different because there was somebody there in the car and I had to save them and I went in."
So they ignored the fear and went in.
We so often prohibit ourselves from doing things because we fear something, and we get all wrapped up in that fear and daily life becomes something where we say, "what if this happens? What if that happens? What if this happens?"
Instead of saying, "No, there's an actual purpose behind things here."
And that's really what we see in Paul's example.
The brethren in the Lord, becoming confident by his chains, were much more bold to speak the word without fear.
Why is that?
Because the fear of the thing often is worse than the reality of the thing.
You can fear going to jail, but then once you get in there you say, "What? I've been there, I've done that!". As it says in Psalm 118, we say, "What can man do to me?"
The other brethren, seeing that Paul was in jail and continued to speak out, they said, "We can be fearless that way too!"
"God did it through him, he can do it through me, he can do it through us. "
And for the Christian, for somebody who is in Christ, we are not being called to just be saved and be happy, happy clappy people, where Christ called you and then said, "Okay, you're done, you've got salvation, now go your way."
In all of His pattern of speaking, everything throughout the Gospels that we see, and of course reiterated throughout the epistles, Christ is saying, "Follow me, take up your cross and follow me", not "go your own way."
It is "follow me!"
And what was Christ's mission?
It was to reveal the Father, to preach the gospel of the kingdom, to anoint people for baptism, repentance, to turn to God, and then to build his body of the church, and then for that church to continue the preaching of that gospel.
And why is that? Why is the gospel important? Why is the gospel about Christ and about the kingdom of God at all important? Well, because as the apostles say, it is the "power of salvation from God".
The gospel itself is not just a message.
It's not just something that you take and you tack up on the fridge and you say, "Look, there you go, I've got the gospel message here and I can look at it once in a while".
The gospel is a living message, a living word from God that is his saving power in people because it presents the good news about Christ, it presents the good news about entry into the kingdom of God and about all of his plan forever and about how that will be accomplished and about the ways in which lives will be transformed through the gospel.
So the book of Philippians goes on to talk about (and of course many of the epistles go on to talk about) how the gospel should transform people's lives in their daily life.
So it's not just a matter of, again, I've got a message that I hang up on the wall, but rather, no, "every day this affects my choices. This affects how I regard things. This affects how I think about things every single day."
So that what happens is the gospel transforms you, but then you live in the gospel as well.
In this way you are in Christ. It's His message, His Word.
And so that's what he was saying to the Philippians here.
It is the gospel that binds us together.
Otherwise, we wouldn't even know each other.
It's the fellowship of the gospel.
That's what brings us together.
That's what unites us and it's what keeps us together.
Watch the entire sermon:
Comments