To Live Is Christ by Matt ChandlerSample

“Living is Christ”

It’s easy to confess that living is Christ, isn’t it?

Not so fast.

The confession and the conviction don’t always go together. Paul’s confession erupts from deep conviction. He’s seen that living could be nothing else but Christ. He’s seen it in his ministry over and over again.

Lydia has everything. She has everything any of us could ever want. She’s wealthy, intelligent, powerful. She’s got those things most of us spend up our lives to get. But where would she end up without Christ? Spiritually bankrupt. All of her treasures come with expiration dates. Would Paul live for that?

The little girl who let the bitterness and anger at being sold into slavery corrode her soul to the point of vulnerability to demonic oppression? Is that a fair life option for Paul? He’s certainly been betrayed and assaulted and thrown into captivity. He is no stranger to the temptation of vengeance.

Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer—they were all slaves in their own ways to the kind of lives men and women choose all the time, and Paul saw the moral brokenness and spiritual dysfunction of it all. He also saw the joy that comes when the gospel heals, transforms, and restores. Paul himself once lived out of bitterness and malice, persecuting the church he later came to love. Then God hijacked his life. The zealous Pharisee became the apostle with the gospeled heart.

So of course he would say, “To live is Christ.” In the logic of the gospel, there are no alternatives to Christ. Every other option is no option at all. When everything considered valuable in life is seen to be nothing in comparison to the glory of Christ, you learn rather well that Christ alone is worth living for. Christ alone is worthy of an entire life’s affections and devotions. He is worthy of so much more, in fact, which is why Paul completes his declaration “to live is Christ” this way: “to die is gain.”

* What alternatives have you been living for beside Christ? Do you truly believe that He alone is worthy of your entire life’s affections and devotions?