3 June 2014 - success and failure

3 June 2014 - success and failure

Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.

This is the goal every Christian should have.  Eternal life is what ultimately matters. The world imagines success as money, power, and pleasure.  It imagines a life of comfort apart from pain.  But such things cannot last.  If we live for these things we set ourselves up to fail.  A successful life is one which leads day by day to eternal life.  To that end we need to grow in knowledge of the one true God and Jesus Christ because this knowledge is eternal life. 

Jesus wants to share the revelation of this knowledge with us.  He wants to share the words of the Father with us so that we can know that they are one and keep their word.  The Father gives us to Jesus (if we let him), just as he gives his words to Jesus.  Jesus in turn offers us with himself to the Father, most especially when he commends his Spirit into his hands.  We become very much like the words which the Father gives to Jesus and, by which, Jesus glorifies the Father in turn.  Something supernatural about these words can draw us up into the life of the Trinity and teach us that Jesus is indeed sent by the Father.

The life and words of Jesus show us that our worldly definitions of success are not true, if not diabolical lies.  Suffering, pain, and death do not mean failure.  Pleasure, power, and wealth do not mean success.  Jesus is the definition of a successful life because he offers it to the Father.  The ridicule, the shame, the torture, the rejection, the suffering, and ultimately death do not make it less successful but more so.  The silver pieces Judas receives do not make his ultimate end more successful but less so.  "It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (cf. Mar. 14:21). This is the only true failure. 

If someone asks us who is the most successful person we know our answer should be Jesus.  If they ask about the second and third we should start listing the martyrs.  But what about us?  Which definition of success do we buy into?  Even if we theoretically know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light, do our lives say something different?

Even Paul doesn't want the tears and the trials, the imprisonment and the hardships, but that doesn't stop him from pursuing kingdom success rather than his own.  Even though he feels all of that suffering he prioritizes it differently.  He says, "I consider life of no importance to me, if only I may finish my course."  He means that he is going to pursue true success even if it costs him everything that the world regards as success.  How does he do it? 

But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.

He does it because the Holy Spirit empowers him to do it.  On his own Paul pursues worldly success as much as anyone.  He attains a fair amount of it by the standards of his own time.

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today (cf. Act. 22:3).

There is more.

If anyone else thinks he can be confident in flesh, all the more can I. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, in observance of the law a Pharisee, in zeal I persecuted the church, in righteousness based on the law I was blameless (cf. Phi. 3:4-5). 

It is the Holy Spirit that allows him to consider worldly success as rubbish.

More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ (cf. Phi. 3:8).

This is success.  In it we Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions share.  In it we too are called to share.  Even if we aren't called to die for the kingdom we all must live for it.  And in these times we ought not to be unprepared to die if we are called.

The Spirit empowers this in us because the LORD "controls the passageways of death".  No threat the world can make is of concern to us any longer.  There is nothing to hold us back.

 Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.