Living is Christ

What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose? Why are we here?

These questions plague the minds of nearly every person, if not individually, then collectively. It’s been the struggle of secular humanity since the beginning of time due to the belief that life was created by mere accident.

As believers, we know we have a purpose; we know we’re here for a reason, but I honestly find myself thinking that even we sometimes don’t grasp the “why” fully, even though it’s written out for us plain as day in the Bible.

The Problem with our Purpose Vocabulary

As is often the case, I find that our vocabulary starts the problem. I hear this around the church fairly often: God’s got a purpose for you; you may not know what it is yet, but you’re still here to do something. The problem with this phrase is that you do know what your purpose is already. What you might not know is the method by which you fulfill that purpose.

Here’s the thing. Once you become a believer, your purpose is the exact same as every other believer’s purpose: to make disciples. Your only goal, your only reason for still being alive is to point nonbelievers to Christ. That’s it. It really is that simple. If you don’t believe me, allow me to point you to Philippians 1:21, which says, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

More on the second part later, but for now, let’s break down the first part. To live is Christ means that while you are alive, you are to be Christ. Disregarding all the things about Christ that we can’t achieve, such as perfection and sacrificing ourselves for the sins of all, what was Jesus’s purpose while He was here? His purpose was to make disciples so that people could be saved!

So, if we follow the Bible, which we should be doing, every believer’s goal is to be like Christ while they live. This means the purpose for each Christian life is the exact same; the only difference is the method. Just like Jesus fulfilled His purpose in a variety of ways: teaching, preaching, healing, etc. so are we to fulfill our purpose in varying ways. Believe it or not, this is also biblically sound.

Spiritual Gifts Give us the Means to Fulfill our Shared Purpose

Whether you get your list of spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, they’re both a list of ways for believers to show the power and glory of God to the world. What they are not is a list of purposes for you to fulfill. If your spiritual gift is wisdom, you are not in this world to be wise. You are in this world to use the wisdom God has granted you to point people to Him. Likewise, if your gift is healing or prophecy, your purpose is not to heal or prophesy. Your purpose is to point people to Christ by providing mental, physical, or emotional healing or by speaking the Word of God to those who need to hear the message.

I’ve already written on this, too, but it needs repeating for context here, so I’ll cover it briefly. Paul provides us yet more proof that our purposes are one and the same following his list of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. (You can check out the original post here: https://nathanielgevans.net/blog/unique-positioning.)

Every last part of your body serves the same purpose: keeping you alive. Your liver does it by purging toxins. Your heart does it by pumping blood. Your lungs do it by giving you oxygen. Your intestines do it by gathering nutrients from the food you eat. If the body of Christ is a body, each part is unified in fulfilling the purpose of the body while diversified in how they go about the process.

By this point, I’m hopefully beating a dead horse about our purpose being the same, so I’ll move on.

Lack of Purpose Fulfillment

Earlier, I quoted Philippians 1:21 and mentioned I’d get back to the second part later. Later is now. Something that disturbs me about Christians nowadays is the penchant for ignoring 1:21a and skipping straight to the second half of the verse: to die is gain.

For whatever reason, a number of Christians are so focused on the end times, on Jesus coming back, that they aren’t bothering to fulfill their purpose. They just want to die so they can get to Heaven; they just want the second coming so they can end their existence on this planet and be completed with God.

And to be fair, the desire to be complete and in Heaven is a good one. I can’t begrudge that because I believe that growing closer to God implants an intense desire to be with Him in our glorified bodies. There’s not even anything wrong with being prepared for Jesus’s second coming. The Bible says we must be ready for it to occur at any time (Matthew 24:42-44). What I can begrudge is those who neglect their purpose while on the path to true sanctification.

End Times Preparation

So, if just waiting in anticipation isn’t what you should be doing, what should you be doing? Why, fulfilling your purpose, of course; it’s selfish to do otherwise and in complete contradiction to God’s character. You can even see a clear example right at the crucifixion.

Even unto the moment of His death, Jesus was saving people. Luke 23:42-43 depicts Jesus saving one of the men being crucified with Him right before they were both to die on crosses. There’s even a chance that a Roman centurion who was there was saved as Jesus died. Three of the gospels include text indicating that at least one man knew Jesus to be the Son of God at the moment of His death.

What believers should be focusing on in Philippians 1:21 is the first half of the verse: living as Christ. We should settle for nothing less than doing as He did, preaching, teaching, healing, loving as He did. Whatever the method we were granted by God to fulfill our purpose, every action we take should be tailored toward making Heaven more crowded, right up until our dying breath. We should even hope for our actions to be so purpose-driven that they inspire people to turn to Christ after our death. If your every action isn’t directing people to Jesus, you’re doing it wrong.

A Peacemaker's Peace

Do you have peace? Do you truly know what peace even is? I thought I did, and then I started doing a little digging into the Hebrew word for peace, into the Biblical definition of peace, and I found that my understanding was far too humanistic, much like my understanding of love was until I truly found the meaning of the Gospel.

There’s no better time to be thinking about this than now, when peace in the world is threatened. I’m glad my pastor taught about it this past Sunday because it’s relevant, and it led me to my own ideas I want to portray.

The King James Version of the Bible has the word “peace” written more than 400 times. Even the NIV, which substitutes more contextual English words in place of peace fairly often, has it written 263 times. Clearly, the word, and more importantly, the idea behind it, is integral for believers to understand and apply.

So, what do we understand about peace? In most English dictionaries, you’ll find the definition of peace to include things such as tranquility, freedom from disturbance, a period of no war, etc. Typical synonyms include harmony, safety, silence, tranquility, calmness, amity, etc.

And yet, these definitions haven’t even begun to scrape the surface of peace as the Hebrew word, shalom, describes it. To take from the definition provided in another’s blog post, which I have linked down below, shalom means “to be safe, sound, healthy, perfect, complete.” It “signifies a sense of well-being and harmony both within and without.” It also “includes the idea of vigour (that’s vigor, for us Americans) and vitality in all dimensions in life … shalom speaks of holistic (‘holy’) health for our souls and spirits.”

I want you to pay close attention to this next description of shalom, though, because this is how it’s best described in totality biblically: “shalom is the gift of precious well-being … it is the establishment of a lasting, righteous, good.”

A couple things to break down here: the first is that peace is something that starts within you. You cannot effectively have a peaceful life if your inner turmoil is not settled. Your life is not performed within a vacuum; anything that causes troubles in your heart and mind will cause trouble in visible character. As I wrote two weeks ago (nathanielgevans.net/blog-1/controlling-your-character) the things that create your character are not what you take in but what you give out.

In the worldly vision of identity, we become what our surroundings make us. Metaphorically, the world believes us to be like a sculpture that is carved out and chipped away at by forces around us until we assume the shape we were forced to become by those forces. But God tells us differently. He says that we are more like extremely intricate balloons. We shape ourselves from within using the breath of God to provide form and pressure, and as we grow, we exert ourselves on the world around us, carving out our own unique space to influence our surroundings.

That’s why peace must start within you. You cannot apply peace to the situations and people around you if you have no inner force of peace to exert upon them. We see this consistently described in the Bible as those with wisdom, joy, peace, knowledge, etc. influence and inspire those around them to have the same qualities. You can even see this in the world at large now. Leaders with confidence inspire confidence. Happiness is infectious.

Peace, like joy, is not something that comes from circumstances. It’s something that comes directly from your relationship with God. I think that’s why one of the things Jesus says to the disciples at Passover before He goes to the cross is about the peace He was leaving them with.

John 14:27 says, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

The disciples are about to go through quite the rough time as Jesus is crucified; clearly it was going to impact them considerably. Jesus doesn’t say, “have faith,” or “be strong.” He says, “you will have My peace.” And that peace is something that they had to have to get through the ordeal of losing their teacher. It’s something Paul had to have to survive his imprisonment as long as he did.

Speaking of Paul, the influence of inner peace from Jesus has no better example than when he calmed the Roman guard who was planning to kill himself when the doors to the prison shook open in Acts 16:25-34. In fact, the peace that he inspired was so strong, the man immediately rushed to him asking how to be saved, how to have the peace that Paul did. And Paul went on to introduce the man’s whole household to Christ. Just from a little peaceful influence.

Okay, now I get to my real point, and one that my pastor stressed in his sermon briefly. Peace is mentioned often in the Bible, but the ability to make peace is, though highly praised, minuscule in its comparative presence. Peacemakers are mentioned but one time—in the Sermon on the Mount. And that’s intentional in a couple of ways.

The first is that there is a lot of peace to be made but few peacemakers to actually make it. As I said before, peacemakers can only be those who have true peace from God; therefore, only believers can be peacemakers, and we’ve got a lot of peace we need to inspire. The whole world relies on us to be the ones to confront that which causes anger, pain, injustice, and fear, and make things right; we’re the only ones who can.

The second is that few peacemakers are able to inspire a lot of peace. Just like Paul’s peace was enough to inspire a whole family to Christ, so, too can the peace of one person make a difference in the lives of many. You may have even noticed this if you’ve paid attention. It’s likely that, when people close to you struggle, they come to you for help because they know they’re going to find some form of solace in your advice and companionship.

The affect of even one peacemaker can be incredibly significant, as expressed with an image I’ve provided below. If hostility is like fire and people are like matches, there is a massive chain reaction that occurs when one person steps away from inspiring conflict. The actions of that one person can save hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands from being burned uncontrollably.

You’ll find that the peace of this world is brittle, taut, and actually nearly as peaceless as full out war. The tension in the air in times of worldly peace is so thick it can be cut with a knife, but the true peace of God is malleable, flexible, and able to be applied at all times without breaking. It can lift any weight, stop every flood, calm every fight, drown every fire.

As believers, we are the only ones capable of being peacemakers; it’s important that we step up to the task and provide what so many are seeking but cannot find. We must be the voice of completeness to the incomplete, the level-headed tranquility to explosive hostility. It’s just one more way we are meant to live out the Great Commission.

https://www.preceptaustin.org/shalom_-_definition

The power of just one peacemaker can show true peace to many, saving them from so much pain.