What It Is Built On

"What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice." (Philippians 1:18)

Paul writes this from prison, and it is worse than prison, because there are men on the outside preaching Christ precisely to make his chains hurt more. Rivals. Men using the gospel as a weapon against a man who cannot answer back, out of envy and ambition, hoping to afflict him while he sits helpless. And what does he say about them? He says Christ is being preached, and I rejoice.

It should stop us, because most of us cannot do it. Someone takes a shot at us and we carry it for a week. Someone builds himself up by pulling us down and we rehearse the conversation in the shower for days. But Paul looks straight through their motives and finds Christ standing behind them, and that is enough for him. Actually enough.

Comfort has become so treasured a thing in our faith that we can scarcely grasp that faith might be uncomfortable, that it might cost, that the way forward might require us to see past a whole cloud of unfairness and misrepresentation, find Christ above it, and keep walking. Paul could do that because his life was not built on being treated fairly. It was built on Christ, and Christ was not going anywhere, and so neither was he.

The question is not whether you will be treated unfairly. You will. The question is what your life is built on underneath the unfairness, because a life built on fair treatment collapses the first time the treatment is unfair. What is yours built on? You will find out the day it is taken.