Our Goal

"So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it." (2Co 5:9)

I awakened this morning with this thought in mind: "We make it our aim to please Him."  I had to look it up. A biblegateway.com keyword search found the verse. Paul is talking about being away from the body or in the body.  To be away from the body is to be with the Lord. To be in the body requires faith to gain confidence that, no matter what, the Lord is with us.  He has given us the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of, or to use Paul's words a guaranteeing "deposit" on, our heavenly home.

Because Paul knows he will spend eternity with the Lord, he lives his life according to what pleases the Lord. He urges the church to live consistently with the kind of things we will experience in heaven. Sin will be no more in heaven, therefore we do not sin.  When we fail we seek reconciliation with God and continue on trying to live a life pleasing to our Father in heaven.

Paul wants the church to recognize that when Christ Jesus died on the cross, we all died with Him. And when Christ rose from the grave, we all were raised into new life as new creations with Him.  We are to understand that we died to our old bodies controlled and harassed by selfishness and sinful urges and raised into a new body free from the power of sin by the greater power of divine grace.  With grace at work in us we can resist sin at every turn.  Christ have made us free.  We are not helpless.  His victorious power displayed in His perfect sinless life and upon the cross is a power that now resides in the heart of everyone who has faith in Jesus.

So why then do so many believers fail to lead lives pleasing to God?  Why is the divorce rate inside the church as bad as it is outside the church? Why do pastor's commit adultery and run off with another cheating their spouses?  Why is pornography consumed by both men and women in the church at alarming rates? Why are there scandals and ugly politics ruining the reputation of God's children?

The answer is simple.  We are looking at what is seen as a means for self pleasure and not at what is unseen as a means to gain the enduring life God offers through faith.  We are living like Jesus' death and resurrection is of no value other than a consolation that we will get into heaven when we die for simply believing God forgives.

Paul writes at the end of 2 Corithians 4, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2Co 4:17-18) There is real life is inside of each one of us.  If only we would go there for fulfillment, we would learn that walking by faith in the unseen Lord who lives in us is true to who we are and who we are becoming. This is eternal life: to deepen our knowledge and experience of Christ within us through the Spirit.

Saying it and living it are two very different things. All week I've struggled with the old self, the former person I used to be, a slave to my body's cravings.  I am not perfected.  Yet Paul's words compel me to believe in Christ's all surpassing power within me to become who He raised me up to be.  I am dead to the old self and alive to Christ.  I live not as a slave to my former self, but I live for Christ who died for me.  This ideal keeps me in the game.  This thought changes me. I am not alone in this struggle. Christ, the victorious One is in me.  He will give me the victory at every turn when I yield to Him.

So I make it my goal in life to please Him and not myself. In gratitude I long to please God my savior.
Foods that I long for must wait. I long to please Jesus more than I long for certain foods.  Deep down that is my heart's truest desire. I often fail to live according to this desire to please God because I focus on what is immediately seen or experienced. 

There is real wisdom to this discipline of self-denial. It forces our bodies to yield to the Christ made new creature within us.  We begin to see and experience in a very real way the war going on inside between the old fallen creation and the new creation. I am being made new every single day. What a thought!  While my aging body reminds me of deteriorating health and abilities, the Spirit within me reminds me that I am the new creation, a new man in Jesus Christ.  As I live to please Him, I am growing into my new life that lasts forever. I am growing out of the old mortality because it is begin swallowed up by Life! (2Co 5:4)


Lord Jesus, thank You for dying for me and rising for me.  Thank You for making me a new creation!  Help me, empowered by Your grace through the Holy Spirit, to live a life pleasing to You. Help me to forever keep this goal in mind that my heart and my mind and my body might be set free to pursue Your holiness unfettered. In Your Name, Lord. Amen