Truth Today Newsletter: Philippians 2:16

You shine as light in the world by holding on to the word of life. That is interesting. You might have thought that shining is because of morality, but it is through fidelity to the word of life.

What Christ has to offer is more than a list of dos and don'ts, rather Himself as the truth, the way, and the life (John 14:6).

What He offers is more than sage words of wisdom, but eternal life, founded on believing the truth of the gospel.

We are called to embrace the truth, the knowledge of Christ, and to have our roots deep in it.

We are not called to boastfulness, where we compare our righteousness to that of our neighbor and we give ourselves the pass mark. Instead, we (regardless of how it sounds to others) hold firmly to the fact that Jesus has become our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30), and that we go from spiritual death to life through faith in Him (John 5:24).

And even though He is not here physically, we go about preaching in His name and persuading people everywhere to believe, saying that new life comes through believing, not through anything we can do or not do.

That is clearly counterintuitive.

Man got into trouble in the Garden of Eden through a physical act of disobedience, but now we come into the good grace of God, we are saved from the damnation that Adam brought upon us by believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths.

There is nothing to do to be saved in the sense of a physical act; rather, believe.

That is counterintuitive.

If Adam ate the forbidden fruit, you would think that we should all try to get into God's good graces, maybe through some kind of induced vomiting. No, it is believing in Jesus. Why? So that no one would boast before God.

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For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

We quit trying. And we believe that the God we have grieved, that we have offended, becomes the solution, becomes the way, the one that goes after us, and we did not go after (1 John 4:10). That is humbling!

We feel the guilt of sin, but the way to handle that is not to climb up a mountain, or go down a valley, or lock ourselves in a room, or hit our heads on the wall.

Look at Paul said:

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For Moses writes about the righteousness that is by the law: “The one who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. For the scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:5-12)

And John wrote this:

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But to all who have received him—those who believe in his name—he has given the right to become God’s children— children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband’s decision, but by God. (John 1:12)

We have been called to eat the fruit of life, which is Jesus, to come to God through the body of Christ, broken for us (Luke 22:19), and through His shed blood that speaks of better things than the blood of Abel (Hebrews 12:24).

We are born by the will of God and not the will of man, born from above (John 1:12-13), imbued with spiritual understanding.

The problem came from one man (Adam), and everyone is born into sin by default. Man ate the fruit and enters death (Romans 5:12-21), and with the same mouth we are to confess, as Paul said, and we go from death to life (Ephesians 2:1).

In Adam, we all died because of what he did; now we enter into life because of what we believe in our hearts and say with our mouths.

It's the ultimate reversal of what happened in the Garden, where Eve believed the wrong thing in her heart and put the wrong fruit in her mouth (Genesis 3). Now we believe, according to Paul, with our heart and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, and we are saved (Romans 10:9-10). Glory to God!

by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ I will have a reason to boast: that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

Again, Paul is persuading the people to hold on (in spite of the opposition), and he is persuading them to do that for his sake. He is saying, "Do it for me. Jesus is coming back, see that I am in pains in these chains, think about me and live right and stand firm immovable, because I don't want to have run in vain or labor in vain when Jesus comes back - the day of Christ."

Hallelujah!

There is a day of Christ, the day of accounting. Paul is thinking of that day and wants the reader to think of him in relation to that day.