Visible Faith

so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ (Philippians 1:13 NKJV).

It is an interesting thought to ponder that when the entire palace guard and “all the rest” – whoever that included – looked at Paul in prison, they all came to one conclusion – he was not a prisoner of Rome; he was a prisoner of Christ.  That alone speaks volumes of Paul’s walk with Jesus.  His complete and total surrender to the situation in which he found himself and the consistency of his ability to let God be supreme in his life, no matter what that meant, spoke to anyone who was watching.  And the message of his life was one of humility, grace, mercy, resolve, and more than anything else, consistency to what he believed.  And when we are consistent with what we believe, that is considered faith.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, according to God’s definition found in Hebrews 11:1.  When you think about the scenario of Paul’s predicament in this Philippian prison – he finds himself without the freedom to leave, without the freedom to do whatever he would determine for his day, without the freedom to even choose what he eats or when he can go to the bathroom, and yet everyone around him sees a man who is completely free – in a way they’ve never witnessed before.  It is a freedom that comes from the innermost part of this man’s soul.  They watch him manifest joy in the midst of sorrow, hope in the most hopeless of situations, and peace when there should be turmoil.  That is a kind of freedom that can only come when someone is completely and totally convinced that they are connected to something outside of their current circumstance and world.  Paul’s joy was in his submission to a God he could not see, his hope was in a pardon he could not purchase himself, and his peace came from the certainty that whatever happened to him in the realm he could see would further and advance a Kingdom he could not see.

It is called eternal perspective and when we embrace our chains in Christ – that is, when we come to realization that our life belongs to a Savior we cannot see, but One in whom we have more certainty than we ever had in anyone we could see – then, we have the kind of faith that is evident to those around us.

I am convicted by the truth that my faith is oftentimes so shallow that it borders on faithless.  My circumstances many times will control my behavior and betray the lack of my focus on eternity.  This is a good reminder that every time I freak out over what is happening to me, I am sending the wrong message to those around me.  If I am truly dead and it is Christ who lives in me, then I should not care a whit about what happens to me in this life because dead men don’t care.

Today I will evaluate my emotional reaction to the things that happen.  When necessary, I will course correct my heart towards the path of faith and eternal perspective when I find myself clearly in chains to this world and not to Christ. 

Righteousness Is In Who, Not What

filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:11 NKJV).

The fruit of righteousness comes through Jesus.  We cannot manufacture it or produce it without Him.  That’s why He told the disciples, us included:

"Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 NLT)

The interesting aspect of the thought in John 15 is that apart from Jesus we can do nothing.  It is interesting because when I was apart from Jesus for 31 years of my life, I did a lot of things.  So the point He’s making is that none of them were righteous – not even the things that I thought were good, like sponsoring a child through Compassion International, going to church every weekend faithfully for seven years, taking up the cause for those who were afraid to speak up in certain settings, and all the other things I did, apart from Christ, that made me feel good about who I was.  In God’s economy, none of that was righteous.  So, what Jesus means in His statement is clearly connected to the “fruit of righteousness” that Paul is talking about.  Apart from Christ, there is nothing righteous because righteous by dictionary definition means “justified” or in right standing with God.  Apart from Christ, we are not in right standing with God no matter what we do, but in Christ, we are in right standing with God no matter what we do.  Being “filled with the fruit of righteousness,” as Paul states, has nothing to do, in fact, with anything we do.  It has everything to do with being full of the Person of Jesus, who is the righteousness of God. 

As believers, we often times get off track in our desire to please God.  We confuse the equation of bringing God glory and pleasure with somehow doing great things for Him, when He has gone out of His way in Scripture to say clearly and plainly that His pleasure is not in what we do on earth, but in what we do with Jesus.  That’s why in the parable of the workers in the field the ones who came in at the end of the day reaped the same reward for their labor as the ones who were there all day.  They were being compensated because of Whom they worked for – not for the work done.

As someone who is a critical thinker and tends to be in the camp of the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, I have a hard time with this.  It is difficult to think that everything I do in my own strength to try and please God and bring Him glory counts for nothing.  It takes faith to stand back and embrace the truth that the fruit of righteousness can only become apparent in my life to the degree that I allow the life of Christ to live and the life of Margaret to die.

Today, I will ask God for the faith to set my heart on this reality – only when I manifest the fruit of the Spirit, which is:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, am I bringing glory and pleasure to God, regardless of what I am doing.