As Christians, and even as people, when we like something we want to know everything there is to know about it and if it means reading to find out the really cool stuff then we will generally do it. A desire to know God grows into a desire to know his word, the Bible, because it is his! It has to do with him, it talks about him and it shows what he has done for generations of other people that live in this very same world in a time that really wasn't all that long ago.
Philipians 1:1
Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
Ok, so freeze right here. Something that I've discovered is that you miss a lot of interesting things that tie into other things later if you simply skip around and read what you "want" to of the Bible, which leads to misunderstanding and discontent from a personal view, most because you miss a part of the message that is being presented. So right here in this verse we are introduced to the author of this letter, Paul and Timothy who are called bondservants of Jesus... A bondservant is a servant that has devoted his life to his master, this servant goes above and beyond the call of duty for his master because he "wants" to, at least that is the definition that I am familiar with.
So we can see from the first sentance that Paul and Timothy are "bondservants" of Christ, meaning that they love Jesus and they are proclaiming that they serve him with full devotion intending to offer their life to their Lord... Incredible. What if we could be that kind of servant to Christ? Serving him wholeheartedly, unwaveringly with all of our ability for every day of our life and finding joy in it, doing all of the above because we "want" to. That is the point that I want to get to, that is the place where I want to be in my relationship with God, that's where I hope to get with the prayer in my previous post entitled "A Silent Prayer from a Silent Servant"
The idea is not to do radical and wonderous things for God, because we are supposed to but rather that radical and wonderous things simply start to happen when we truly start to love God, because when we truly start to love God then he starts to use us to make great things happen.
Look at the next part of the verse: "To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons"
This tells us that Paul is addressing the letter to all the saints that live in a certain place......... along with the bishops and deacons? Bishops and Deacons are simply names for church leaders, members of the church that offer guidance and/or assistance in the form of prayer or advice to other members of the church.... this is interesting right here! If you've missed it then re-read the line again, this verse is implying that as a Christian we are considered "saints" because of the simple fact that there is no other party mentioned... and I'm assuming that he was writing to Christians of the Church.
This was a little startling when I first understood what I was reading thought to myself "I don't feel like a saint... I don't even know what a saint is..." so I went and looked it up a bit. A saint is simply a person that has set themselves aside for God, in this context, and dedicated their life to him so that in effect their life is no longer theirs to command but it belongs to God... because they love God... just because they love God... that is really similar to a bondservant.
So in other words you're either a Saint or ya ain't!
When we accept Christ as savior we set our life aside to belong to him, I know that I've looked at my life lately and what I see really doesn't look like it's been sanctified (set aside for God) in fact it looks like I am living for myself about 90% of the time. This is something that I'm praying to change, from the inside out and I've begun to see results.
This isn't the kind of relationship with God that anyone wants, what we want is a real and alive relationship with the God of the universe. I'm finding out more and more each day that everything falls back to loving God and understanding how he loves us, if we are to get any closer to devoting ourselves to God then we need to start truly and undeniably loving God, then our lives will follow accordingly.
So in one verse we have figured out what kind of a life that Paul and Timothy had commited themselves to in the way of Christ followers AND we see what the standard for being a Christian should be... and in the second verse we are shown are current status in the Kingdom of God as Christians:
Philipians 1:2
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Children of the Kingdom is a term that most people can recognize but do they really understand it? We as people get an earthly father regardless if we like him or not, some of us have never known our earthly fathers and others have had bad experiences with the term "father" but in this context Paul is asserting the fact that: if we are Christians, if we have sanctified our lives for God, if we have become bondservants of Christ... then God acknowledges us as blood relation. We gain an all loving and all powerful heavenly father because we want him to be our father, this means that we love him to the point that we want him to be family and we want him to be an active part of our lives because of who he is and how he has acted toward us. All of which can be seen in the Gospel and throughout the Bible.
This is what being a Christian means, it means an incredible love based relationship with God that can only be described as a father and son or a father and daughter relationship. I'll continue with my study in the next post but consider what being a Christian really means today, think about what exactly a "sucessful" Christian relationship with God seems to imply in the context of the two verses that I've brought up today.
