It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. – Philippians 1:20.

Surrendered Lives

A final truth arising from our text in Philippians is that if the Lord Jesus Christ is to be magnified in our bodies, our bodies must be surrendered to Him fully. Romans 12:1 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Two things are involved here: our innermost selves who do the offering and our bodies that are offered. Clearly we must first belong to God ourselves before anything can be offered to Him.

This means that the kind of life the Bible advocates is totally impossible for the non-Christian; it is impossible for anyone who has failed to come to God solely on the merits of Christ and His atoning death on Calvary. Nothing in the unsaved person can satisfy God in the slightest degree. All acts of human sacrifice apart from Christ, all acts of self-denial apart from Christ, all acts of penance apart from Christ, all these are acts of human righteousness. It is only after a person has come to Christ irrevocably that God moves him to make that sacrifice of his body through which Jesus Christ is magnified. Have you made this first and great commitment? If not, you need to, for all other steps in the Christian life flow from it.

Then too we must surrender our bodies to the Lord to use as He determines. His plans and His will for us is perfected in Him. Merely to see this truth is not sufficient; you must also practice yielding your body to Christ. You must practice living to His glory as He gives you grace to do so. You must wake with the name of Jesus on your lips and commit the day to Him. You must surrender your thoughts to Him at breakfast. You must ask Him to take control of your eyes and tongue that they might be given to His service. Moreover, you must do so each moment as each is yielded to His direction.

In such a way Jesus Christ will be truly magnified in each of us, and we will be able more and more to say: “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

Adaptation of excerpts from James Montgomery Boice, Philippians: An Expositional Commentary.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
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