Philippians 1:29

“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29 ESV).

The context of this verse is life worthy of the gospel. No matter what happens, we are to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. We are to strive together for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose us. We are to honor Jesus Christ as a witness of the gospel.

This verse references two gifts: salvation and suffering. Jesus suffered and died on the cross, in our place, to purchase our salvation, a salvation that is a gift of grace received through faith. Having been saved from our sin, obtaining peace with God, we need to obey the command to bear fruit by making known the gospel of our salvation to others. As Jesus suffered to provide our salvation, we should expect, as a normal part of Christian life, to suffer while sharing the gospel with others. This verse clearly indicates that belief in Jesus is to be associated with the willingness to suffer for him. Unfortunately, in the west we tend to embrace safety, security and comfort and as a result we tend to preach and teach about the salvation part of this verse and ignore the suffering part. I believe this has resulted in a harvest of lukewarm believers, which are unwilling to suffer by learning about and living Biblical Christian lives of obedience.

Prayer

Father, we seem to embrace the habit of picking and choosing verses we want to live by that tend to strengthen our position of safety, security and comfort and ignore those verses that might result in a form of suffering. As a result, we have become a body of lukewarm believers that have little effect on our culture. The suffering we have been trying to avoid, through selective Christian living, may soon overtake us as society continues to disintegrate. Not only will we suffer now for our disobedience, but we will suffer shame as we stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Father, have mercy on us.