Romans 15:3 For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”
Here is one of the greatest challenges we face: can we give up our lives to the point of sacrifice in order to bring others to salvation? This is the ultimate step of faith and love. Jesus is the model for this. He did nothing selfishly. He is the image of self-giving, unconditional love. He willingly accepted insults and went to the cross when there were other options. How could he do that? He had total faith in the Father, that the promises of resurrection were true. Jesus was fully human, like us, and experienced the same kinds of emotions. But he set those aside in his confidence in the Father. We see hints of that as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He also went to the cross because of his unfathomable and uncompromising love. This type of faith and love come only to the fully sanctified life. Jesus is the perfect model of the sanctified life. For us to become like him requires that we also be entirely sanctified. That is our primary goal in life. It is why we were created. This life is where we learn to experience this level of faith and love. It is not an easy journey because it requires giving up our old ways which are like a net around our hearts. We have to extract each filament and strand of this net so that the world has less and less hold of us. As we find release from pleasing ourselves, two things happen. We will become more like Christ in faith and love, and this will send us out into the world with this same message of release that brings hope and renewal. Paul had keen insight into that as he writes this letter. It stands behind all of his writings, as well as the other writers of the New Testament. This is the Christian gospel. Sadly, too many Christians miss this simple message.
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