he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

2 Cor 5:15

No longer live for themselves.…We have a hard time viewing our lives through any other lens than living for ourselves. We evaluate everything with an eye ultimately toward our welfare as the central concern. We are devoted to our selves. If you have ever read any writing on Christian humility like Tim Keller’s The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, Andrew Murray’s Humility, or C.S. Lewis’s chapter in Mere Christianity “The Great Sin”, you will probably be overwhelmed by how deep and pervasive is your concern for yourself and how it influences all of your actions and perspectives. When it comes to our work lives, concern for self can be expressed as a concern to be successful in our work.

When we bring this lens to the negatives of our lives, places where we are suffering (or failing at work), we seek an understanding of our suffering as a short term negative that ultimately is a positive for us in the end. From the last blog, the loving discipline view of suffering is that it is developing something that is good in us. This is true of the distance runner training that I experienced. And it is also true of some of what we suffer. People can tell stories of how a negative in their lives did develop a quality that was ultimately very positive for them. We love those stories, and we can experience this with work circumstances as well. Something can happen that seems like a disaster, but in the end turns out to produce a positive result that we did not anticipate. Testimonies of God working in this way are very popular because we are able to combine embracing the call to suffering with a concern for our own welfare

But I do not think that it is always the case that the negatives in our lives are there to develop something good in us or in our work. Notice that self remains the central concern in this perspective. It is ultimately about who we are becoming and what is being developed in us. This view can be summed up as whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, with the emphasis on me becoming stronger. So with this emphasis, I am able to maintain a devotion to my own welfare while embracing suffering in my life because it is ultimately good for me. Also notice that a secular person would be able to embrace this perspective for their lives as well

But what if it does kill me? The reality of martyrdom for the persecuted church adds a different dimension. And this is where the secular person will not follow. With martyrdom, the self is not enhanced or made stronger, it dies. Martyrdom clearly has no value for our self in this life. It is an expression of devotion to the Lord that is willing to pay the ultimate in sacrificing self. It is the ultimate test of allegiance as to whether we are living for ourselves or for the Lord.

Paul anticipates his own martyrdom with the language of being poured out as drink offering (Phil 2:17, 2 Tim 4:6). But he also talks about aspects of his life in terms of dying. 2 Cor 4:11 “For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” (see also Rom 8:31, 1 Cor 15:31). This dying perspective on the negatives of our lives is different from the discipline perspective. It is not about becoming stronger in our selves or ultimately more successful in our work. It is about our selves being sacrificed as an act of devotion. So with work, it could be about failing at work as an act of devotion, not necessarily as a temporary setback that will lead to ultimate success.

This is not good news if we are still trying to live for ourselves and are devoted to success at work. What it does mean is that when we are encountering negatives in our work, we do not need to see or even believe that God is using these negatives to accomplish something that will eventually lead to work success. That is a possibility, but they also may be experiences of failure that challenge us to sacrifice our devotion to success. And if they are, then we are honoring God when we simply continue to worship Him with our lives when He is not feeding our need for success.

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.