Day Four

Bible Reading

Phil 1:15-18 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice,

Devotional

Not only does God use difficult circumstances to bring people to himself, He also uses people who are not right with him to accomplish the very same thing. I know this doesn’t sit well with many legalistic or religiously minded Christians. We think it is our role to call out and judge and label someone a heretic or a false teacher. But we need to be careful with this. This same self-righteous mindset was prevalent in Paul’s time as well and he confronts it directly. “But what does it matter?” Paul says. That statement alone has put me back in my place a number of times when I’ve found myself judging a person’s motives in whether they are pure or selfish when preaching Christ. The important issue isn’t their motives but what they are preaching. If they had been preaching a false gospel, Paul would have taken issue with them, but that wasn’t the case. At the end of the day, Paul rejoiced. He rejoiced that the gospel was being preached; whether it was by him or someone else, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Christ was preached. This is a hard but important lesson for all of us to learn. We must be united as we share Christ with the world and cheer each other on, not worrying about who is getting credit. In the end, our names will not matter, knees will only bow down to one name…the name of Jesus.

Question to Think About

What good work do you think God is working out within you?