Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Mine?

Or His?

When we sign our life away on the dotted line of Christianity, there is something we give up. Something big.

Our rights.

We give up the right to remain silent. The right to please only ourselves. The right to do what we want with our time. The right to spend our money however we please. The right to read whatever we want, watch whatever we want, listen to whatever we want.

But we also give up something much bigger: our eternal death. By voluntarily laying down our lives for Christ, he removes the real killer, the deadly consequences of our sin.

After the Word became flesh, the flesh would never be the same. Christ’s willingness to humbly compact his Deity into the shape of a human body was the bottom-line trade-off of his life for my life. An unbelievable bargain for me, but an absolutely unsurpassable sacrifice for him.

So when I live for me, that’s not genuine life—just an imitation of life. But when I live for Christ, I get the real deal—abundant, eternal life.

[Christ Jesus] made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death
—even death on a cross! Philippians 2:7, 8