Living Mosaic’s motto - know freedom (part 2)

Back in January I encouraged us to think about making Paul's breathtaking statement from Philippians 1:21, "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain," our motto for the year and how if we did this it would lead to true freedom. We're now coming up to halfway through the year and I wonder how you feel you are getting on? Can you say that for the first 5 months of 2009 "for me to live is Christ"? Today I want to look at the second part of the statement "to die is gain" and again help us understand what it is to live 'in freedom'.

magine if you met someone in the streets who said “I would like to die”. What would you think? You’d probably think they needed help and were emotionally unstable. You’d probably try and comfort them and persuade them that wishing to die wasn’t a very good thing. However, the great apostle Paul was so confident of what would happen when he died that he was looking forward to it. Although death is an evil intruder into God’s perfect world, through his death and resurrection Christ defeated death once and for all meaning that those who are “in Christ” have no need to fear death; death has lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15:43-57). For a Christian, death is no more than falling asleep and waking up in the arms of your Creator and Paul knew that. He knew that if he died he’d go to a place that was “better by far”.

The practical implications of this are enormous because if you do not fear death then you will not fear anything. If death doesn’t threaten you, nothing will. If you can stare death in the face with confidence you can stare anything in the face with confidence. If you know death can’t ultimately harm you then you’ll know that nothing can ultimately harm you.

Look at Paul’s example: Paul sits in a prison cell, his freedom and comfortable lifestyle have been taken away from him (1:12-14); Paul is being slandered by fellow Christian leaders who are using his imprisonment as a way of ‘getting one up’ on him (1:15-18). However Paul is not down, Paul is not fearful, Paul is not anxious; he is full of confidence and joy. For Paul, knowing Christ and knowing that death was defeated meant that he could lose his physical freedom, lose his reputation and even lose his very life but he could never lose his greatest joy, Jesus. That is why he says “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”. He was free! Nothing could take Jesus away from him - not even death. In fact, death was only “gain” because then he would see Jesus face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).

If you want to know true freedom, you not only have to put Christ first and know him as your greatest joy; you also need to be confident that nothing, not even death, can take away that joy. Why not take a few moments now to (1) ask yourself if Christ really is your greatest joy in life and (2) whether you really do know that he has conquered the grave and that “to die is gain”.

Let’s live by this motto and know true freedom.

God bless
STEVE