This quarter, on Wednesday nights, we’re working our way through 2 Corinthians (in the old fellowship hall in case you missed the memo) so naturally, I’m reading ahead and thinking about little lessons and applications I can bring out of the text as we go through it verse by verse. For example, there is a gem of a verse found in chapter five. Listen to Paul…

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:

(2 Corinthians 5:14)

In the context, Paul has been slandered by false teachers, hoping to silence the Apostle. Specifically, they were saying that Paul was crazy, and that you’d have to be crazy to listen to him. That’s a tactic still being used today, and often to good success: There’s no easier way to destroy someone’s credibility than to cast doubt on their mental stability. No one wants to follow someone they think is nuts. In this case, the attack says more about the character of the attacker than it does the one under assault: The false teachers believed their attack would work because they knew it would work on them: They’re only proving how shallow and vain they are.

Paul, on the other hand, shrugs off their attack, because he is not so superficial as to let the insults of false teachers get him down. He says “the love of Christ constrains” him. The word “constrain” literally means “to hold together.” The love he has for Christ (and Christ’s love for him) is the glue that keeps him together. He doesn’t need the approval of men, only the approval of God. Paul’s perspective is not to worry about what his enemies think about him. He has bigger fish to fry: The whole world is dead and in need of the life which Christ provides. Who has time for trivial arguments when you’re trying to preach the Gospel to a lost and dying world?! Listen to the next verse…

  And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.

(2 Corinthians 5:15)

A life that is devoted to caring what other people think and say about you is not just a shallow life, but a wasted one too. Jesus did not die just so we could continue living for ourselves. Living for ourselves is what put Jesus on the cross in the first place! Jesus died and rose again for all so that we could live for Him, live with Him, and live in Him. That’s all that matters. That’s the perspective we need to have. When we do, the troubles of this world are exposed as petty things not worth bothering with.

~Matthew