What Are You Living For?

 


1 So, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same attitude, because the one who has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin, 2 in that he spends the rest of his time on earth concerned about the will of God and not human desires. 3 For the time that has passed was sufficient for you to do what the non-Christians desire. You lived then in debauchery, evil desires, drunkenness, carousing, drinking bouts, and wanton idolatries. 4 So they are astonished when you do not rush with them into the same flood of wickedness, and they vilify you. 5 They will face a reckoning before Jesus Christ who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 Now it was for this very purpose that the gospel was preached to those who are now dead, so that though they were judged in the flesh by human standards they may live spiritually by God's standards.   1Pe 4:1-6 NET

What kind of life has Christ saved you from? What kind of life has Christ saved you for? If the two are basically the same, it's time to take a real accounting of your heart. Yes, Christ's sacrifice cleanses us from all sin both in the past and the future. It is a sacrifice once and for all. But it is not a license to sin. That would spit upon the great gift He gave us. 

When we are saved, we are freed from our enslavement to sin. What that means is that now we have a very real ability to say, "No," where before we did not. What it does not mean is that we will never sin again. We are still human and still flawed. We still have the sin nature, the seed of Adam, within us. Temptation is very real, but now as Christians God has given us a way of escape from temptation. We are no longer hopelessly entrapped by it. However, at times, we will fail, and we will have to fall on our knees and ask forgiveness once more. 

The thing is, we shouldn't be living in a sinful pattern of behavior anymore. While we might mess up and fail here and there, we shouldn't be doing the same thing over and over as a matter of course. I shouldn't be cheating on my taxes every year or lying about whether I completed my exercises each week. Our lives should stand out as different from the rest of the world, marked by love and compassion. 

Here's the Thing: When Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, I long to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant." In order to hear that, I need to be faithful with what He has entrusted me with. This life He has given me, the relationships in it, the time and energy I have, I will be held accountable for it. He's not going to hold me accountable for what He's given to someone else, just for what He's trusting me with. I need to steward it well.

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