I will very gladly spend and be spent for you;

— 2 Corinthians 12:15

When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts,
we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ’s
interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every
kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided
by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our
relationship to Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay
down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay
my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a
cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only – that he might win
men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to
himself. “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means
save some.” When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with
God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a
pedestal, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental
personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his
life. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help
Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends
of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a “door-mat” without
resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to
Jesus. We are apt to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the
things which emancipate us spiritually. That was not Paul’s motive.
“I could wish my self were accursed from Christ for my brethren” –
wild, extravagant – is it? When a man is in love it is not an
exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus
Christ.

On this day...

• Isaiah 15 - 2024
• Isaiah 14 - 2024
• March 29, 2018 - 2014
• SUBLIME INTIMACY - 2008
• Romans 12:4-5 - 2007
• Proverb 16:21 - 2007