Articles
Christ's Love Compels Us
What is your driving force? What motivates you? What is it that keeps you going?
I'm asking this in a Spiritual sense, but anyone who strives to walk in the Spirit will tell you it needs to encompass what happens in our physical lives as well. If we pursue our jobs, families, school, other activities and try to separate them from our Spiritual motivation, we will likely find them in conflict with one another.
The Apostle Paul (2 Cor ch-4) talks about physical weakness, persecution, and troubles in our earthly lives, those things that come from "the god of this age (Satan)". He says Satan is at work to blind people, so they can't see the truth of the gospel. Then he tells his readers the death of Jesus, and the resurrected alive Jesus will still be revealed in Christian living, even in the midst of turmoil. Satan may strike blows, but he won't destroy the faithful. Christ loves us and gave Himself for us, and was resurrected by God after His sacrifice of Himself on our behalf and His Spirit now lives and works within us if we are Christians. With this hope, we can push on.
To his readers, Paul then says, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Cor 4:16-18)
A few verses later in the next chapter, still following that same thought, Paul speaks about awaiting the coming of Christ, fearing God, and trying to persuade others about the gospel message and the saving grace of Jesus. As he sums all this up, Paul says, "For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." (2 Cor 5:14-15).
Hopefully today it is indeed the love of Christ that motivates you to want to walk in step with Him. We pray your eyes are on Jesus, even though He is unseen by our physical eyes, our hearts see Him clearly. He loved us enough to die for us, and our job is to love Him in return, putting aside our desires and following Him in obedience to His teachings. In this way, God can reconcile us to Christ, through His sacrifice, and we can look forward to that eternal home in glory.
