Mount Isa Baptist Church

What are you living for?

Your answer to that question will determine the direction of your life. If your purpose is wrong, your direction will be wrong. If your purpose is vague or fuzzy, your direction will be fuzzy. If you don't know your purpose, you’ll just be swept along by the currents of our age, doing what seems to bring you happiness. It is crucial that you be clear and correct in answering the question, “What are you living for?” Paul's purpose is found in verse 21a: “For to me, to live is Christ.” Every person who professes Christ as Saviour must grapple with the question, Can I honestly say, “For to me, to live is Christ.”

What does it mean “To live Christ?” To “live Christ” means to live in union with Christ, so that He becomes my all in all. To be “in Christ” means that all that is true of Christ should be true of us as believers. While that is our true standing before God, we must grow in our experience of the reality of that standing so that in our daily lives, we live in fellowship with Christ and be depending on Him for everything.

What does that mean? It means growing to know Christ not just as somebody we read about in a book but knowing Christ intimately. Having an intimate personal walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. It means growing to love the Lord Jesus with all of my heart, with all of my soul, with all of my mind, and with all of my strength. It means growing to experience Christ as my “all in all.”

So, what should our desire be? Our desire should be to do the will of God because that’s what lasts forever. Each of us who are truly children of God will have as our focus to live in union with Christ, so that he becomes our “all in all.”

What does Paul mean by this? Paul found that Jesus Christ completely, totally, absolutely, satisfied him in every respect. That will also be true in each of us as we grow in our relationship with the Lord Jesus.

People should see Jesus Christ reflected in how we act and in the things we say.

Paul, as should all Christians, desired to have Jesus Christ seen in his life in everything he did.

Can people say that of us today? As they look at us, they see the reflection of the Lord Jesus.

He described it this way in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”

Is that the way you identify with Christ? ls your view of the world and the purpose of your existence increasingly that of Christ? Is your will daily more in submission to His? Are you getting better at responding to the world the way He did? Is the purpose of your existence found in your own glory, pleasure, and desire, or is the purpose of your existence found in His glory, pleasure, and desire? Is it our desire to become more like the Lord Jesus Christ? For the Christian, it should always be an increasing amount of Jesus Christ and a decreasing amount of self. Perhaps you are not mature and bold enough to make the claim with Paul that for you, to live is Christ, but the question is whether that is what you want your life to become like or not? If it is, then take heart even as Paul did, through the prayers of others and the work of the Holy Spirit, it will become that way more each day as we grow in our relationship with the Lord Jesus.