Philippians 1:23-25 “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith.”

One of the great gifts of God we don’t think about very much is a purpose. In serving others, whether our employers, or our families, or our church, or our neighbors, or our community, or our country, our lives find meaning. Some of us may feel like our lives have too much purpose, too much meaning. It is hard to keep up with all the demands that all the people around us put on our time and energy.

But that is why the Lord has chosen to leave us here for now. It is why he hasn’t taken us to heaven yet. He still has a purpose for us. He may well have many purposes. Paul understood this. The Lord hadn’t left him here for himself. “It is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” As he carried out his gospel work, he had come to see that his life was lived for Christ’s people.

For Paul life lived for God’s people resulted in “your progress and joy in faith.” As he wrote to these people, when he got out of prison and could see them again, his teaching and instruction moved them along the road to Christian maturity and strengthened the faith that would save them. That’s a high calling and purpose. It’s not hard to see why Christ’s choice for Paul would be to leave him here and let him live his life for the people he served.

Maybe we don’t feel so important, but that’s not true. Maybe you don’t see how your life is making such a difference. Maybe you aren’t a leader and teacher like Paul. The main way you serve others is by pressing keys on a computer keyboard, or changing diapers and keeping house, or making sure debits and credits all stay in balance, or selling stuff people could get by without. It pays the bills and puts food on the table, but it doesn’t seem to make a big difference, especially not in the kingdom of God.

Wrong. First of all, you have no idea how you fit in the Lord’s grand scheme of things. Your faithful work, no matter how ordinary and mundane it seems, might play a role in someone’s life that puts them in just the right time and place to hear the gospel. Without you and what you do, the chain of events would be different, and the opportunity missed. Second, even if what you do isn’t preaching the gospel directly, your hands are the hands God is using to love the people with whom you work, the people in your family, and everyone else with whom you come into contact. When I see that God is using what I do that way, then I come to see Christ’s choice for me in leaving me here to live my life for his people.

Author and motivational speaker Stephen Covey says that one of the secrets to success it to think “win-win.” It appears from Paul’s words here that he thought of it long before. “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” It’s not really my choice. It’s Christ’s. May we glorify him either way.

Philippians 1:21-22 “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am going to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.”

To die is gain. More and more people seem to agree with that statement. So long as they aren’t suffering intensely, life is going well, or there is the potential for it to get better, no one wants to die. But for those coping with pain that can’t be relieved, or facing a future they fear to face, death may seem like escape or relief.

Escape and relief are not what Paul means by “to die is gain.” For the believer in Jesus, he means that there is something positive to be had. It doesn’t lead to nothing. It leads to something. It doesn’t merely end something terrible. It begins something wonderful.

That may seem strange in light of the fact that God originally imposed death as part of the ultimate punishment for our sin. Its original purpose was not to give us something. It was to put us out of God’s presence forever.

Jesus changed all of that by dying instead of us. As our Savior, he was dying for us, in our place, when he gave up his life on the cross. His death served out the death penalty for our sins. It satisfied God’s justice and wiped our record completely clean–not only the felonies, but the misdemeanors and petty sins as well. As a result, God has nothing for which to be angry at us anymore, not even mildly irritated, and we have been reconciled.

Since death has been emptied of its original purpose for the believer, Jesus has invested it with a new one: It is the doorway to eternal life. His own resurrection from the dead assures us that death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of a new life. To die is gain. Death is not a bad choice when Jesus chooses it for me.

Only those who know the whole story of how Jesus has dealt with death for us can be so confident of their future after death that, like Paul, life and death hold equal appeal for them. “Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two…” In fact, death is actually the better alternative. “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.” Death leads to life lived in his presence.

If that is the gain Paul has in mind, to be with Christ, to live in his presence, maybe that leads some of us to say, “Hmm. Must be an acquired taste.” We were thinking more along the lines of a heaven that is a garden of eternal delights and pleasures, an endless romp in the lap of luxury. And the Bible does promise us “eternal pleasures at (God’s) right hand,” Psalm 16.

But you know from experience that having things and doing things doesn’t satisfy. Things don’t fill what our hearts are truly seeking. From the time we are children and get that toy we yearned to have, to the time we become adults and we get that coveted tool for Father’s Day, or we can finally afford our dream car, we learn that things make you feel happy and fulfilled for a few days, a few weeks, at most a few months. Then, long before they wear out or become unserviceable, they just don’t have the same effect. Our hearts feel a yearning these things can’t fill.

It is the people we love that fills that spot. We long to be with those who love us, and those we have come to love. A young man in love would sacrifice everything he has to be with the one he loves. Grandparents don’t want things. They want the family they love to come and spend time with them. The more we come to know the incomparable love Christ has for us, the more we come to see that heaven is to be with him. It is life lived in his presence, and it is better by far than any other choice he could make for us.

That is a future worth having. That can make even death the outcome we prefer.

1 Corinthians 1:4-5 “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way–in all your speaking and in all your knowledge–because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.”

We might be amazed at Paul’s words of thanksgiving here. Usually we think of giving thanks for the good things in life. But these Corinthian Christians had become a pain in the neck. They were making all kinds of problems for Paul in the church. Still, he says, “I always thank God for you.” Can we thank God for the people who sometimes make our lives harder, people we can hardly get along with?

We can if we learn to see past their shortcomings and failures to the great riches of God. Paul gave thanks “because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” The apostle introduces us to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. For all their faults, these people were people to whom Christ had shown his grace and love. Even more, it was just because of their faults that they needed his grace. Isn’t that what grace is all about? In showing them his grace, our Savior had also made them very rich, something for which Paul gave thanks.

First he says that they had been enriched, “in all your speaking.” Before they became believers, what did they have to talk about? “How’s the weather? It’s been a cool and wet summer, don’t you think?” They could talk about political issues. “Who makes a better emperor, Claudius or Caligula?” “I don’t think the empire should be sending soldiers into the middle east. Do you?” They could talk about the economy or business or philosophy or sports, but what did these things really matter?

Now God had given them the message of Jesus Christ. That was something infinitely valuable to talk about. Even if all they could manage was a stuttering, stammering, monotone whisper, how could anyone not be interested in listening to every word they had to say? They had found the ultimate cure, not just for cancer or heart disease or lower back pain or wrinkles or nearsightedness. They had found the cure for death. They had found the cure for guilt. And because of Jesus Christ, God was giving it away for free! They had been made rich beyond their wildest imaginations in all their speaking.

Don’t we share that same wealth? When I started studying for the ministry, one of my biggest fears was having enough to say. I wondered how I could enter the pulpit 52 or more times a year and have something to talk about for twenty minutes. How many ways could you say that we are all sinners, but Jesus died on the cross to forgive all our sins?

But the more that we are introduced to our Lord Jesus Christ and look into his love…the more treasures we discover, the more strength and comfort God provides, the more ways we discover that he has provided all we need for life and eternity, and the more certain he makes us that the riches he promises are really ours. I don’t have to come up with something to say. God has supplied that, and he does the same for all of us. In Jesus Christ he has made us rich in our speech.

Closely related to this treasure are the riches God gives “in all your knowledge.” For all their problems, the people in Corinth apparently had a great store of Bible knowledge. They had had some impressive teachers: Paul and Peter and Apollos. But more importantly, they had the word of God, and they knew about the work and the love of their Lord Jesus Christ.

Do we appreciate the riches we have been given in knowledge about God’s word and our Savior’s work? Even those who aren’t theological scholars can draw on a wealth of comfort in knowing Jesus forgives every sin, a wealth of strength in knowing that God will lovingly supply everything we need. Do we realize how different our lives might be every day without such faith? It is a marvel of God’s grace that, as rich as he has already made us, he allows us to add to that wealth daily at home and weekly at church.

We have plenty for which to be thankful in the riches the Lord has given to his church. Treasure them, and the people with whom we share them.

Matthew 9: 11-13 “When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The Pharisees proposed a question aimed at deflating our joy and defeating our faith. The problem is not so much in the reminder that we who follow Jesus are lowly sinners. We know we are. There’s no use denying it.

No, the problem with the question is that it plays on a bigger fear we have to fight. “Why should Jesus, the Holy Son of God, want to be so close to me?” Does he really want to? Do I need to be better first? Those questions can only send us down the road of doubt.

Our options seem sorely limited at first. We can pretend to be something we are not, just like the Pharisees. Then we add hypocrisy to all our other sins. We can despair that Jesus really loves us. Maybe his friendship is all a sham. We can conclude that Jesus has misrepresented himself. He’s not the Son of God he claims to be. In any case, we can expect the world to keep attacking our faith by pounding the slogan, “God loves good little boys and girls.” In response, we must follow Jesus closely, and hear him often, to hold on to the truth that God loves all little boys and girls.

That’s where Jesus led with his reply. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus had not come to Matthew’s house to approve of Matthew’s sins, or the sins of his friends. That should be clear enough. That’s not the life we find when we follow him, either. Those who want an excuse to continue to indulge their favorite sins aren’t going to find it by following Jesus.

The secret to understanding how Jesus could fraternize with Matthew and his friends was found in the words of the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Far more than God is interested in seeing people go through the motions of religious ritual, he wants to see his people treat each other with love and mercy. That’s not to say that worship is unimportant. He himself commanded the sacrifices mentioned by the prophet. But worship and sacrifice are not ends in themselves. They are intended to work a change in us. He wants them to fill us with faith and move us to the same mercy on others that he has had on each of us.

That is what Jesus was doing here. He was here for mercy. He was the Good Doctor bringing the spiritual cure for sins. And when you know the pain of your sins, there is nothing you want from him more. I once dislocated my left elbow playing softball. Ordinarily, I don’t relish going to the doctor. They poke and they prod. They sometimes find problems where things seemed to be working. They don’t leave well enough alone.

But when the upper end of my forearm was removed from the elbow joint by about an inch, I couldn’t get to the emergency room fast enough. No matter how I moved my arm, no matter how I positioned my body, there was simply no relief from the pain and discomfort until the doctor saw me and put it all back into place.

Every one of us is thoroughly sick with sin. The pain is unrelenting. But follow Jesus, and this is what you will find: Life with a merciful Doctor who relieves you of your painful guilt by taking your sins away. He hasn’t come to call the righteous. But he does come to declare you righteous through the forgiveness of your sins.

Matthew 9:9 “As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.”

Matthew had paid a horrible price to have a life of ease. As far as his fellow Jews were concerned, he might just as well have sold his soul to the devil. He had sold it to the Romans to get rich off of tax money. Now Jesus’ call “Follow me!” meant leaving the tax collector life, with its easy money and shabby reputation, behind.”

You may be faced with the same kinds of choices Matthew had. The question then will be, “Will I follow the path of faithfulness, or will I compromise myself to follow the path of pleasure or success?” Maybe it’s money that would lead you to sell out like Matthew. Maybe it’s something else. It could be power. You don’t have to become a dictator in some third world country to abuse power. You can throw such a fit when you don’t get your way that you control the members of your own family instead of serving them in love. You get your way, but look at what it does to others.

It can be love. “How can there be anything wrong with love?” we wonder. It’s true that it’s hard to have too much of the kind of love that selflessly serves others. But the kind of love celebrated in popular songs, love for a man or a woman, can be a very selfish thing. It has led more than one person to compromise their morals for a few moments of pleasure. And that path leads to a whole host of problems– disease, premature parenthood, broken hearts, poverty, and lost respect– besides the spiritual wreckage it has caused.

In the end, it’s a question of who will lead, and who will follow. You can put yourself first, and hope that Jesus will trail behind. But I can tell you that path never leads to heaven-ever. Jesus still calls you, like he called Matthew, “Follow me.” That means leaving your self-directed and sin-directed life behind. Nothing else can be number one. Nothing else can be your first love. That’s the life we leave behind.

Do you think that Matthew regretted the change? That’s not the impression he gives “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ came and ate with him and his disciples.”

Look at the dinner Matthew held at his home that evening. Luke’s gospel tells us it was more than just another supper. “Then Levi (Matthew) held a great banquet for Jesus at his house.” Matthew’s new found life of following Jesus was a gift worth celebrating! They feasted. They celebrated. He and his friends and Jesus and his disciples enjoyed good food, good company and had a good time.

Albert Nolan comments on the meal at Matthew’s, “It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as equals, Jesus had taken away their shame, their humiliation, and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their old captivity. The physical contact he must have had with them at the table…must have made them feel clean and acceptable. Moreover, because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God’s approval on them. They were now acceptable to God.” This joyful meal in Jesus’ presence was a happy application of the forgiveness he would soon purchase for them by his death on the cross. This was the life they found in response to his invitation, “Follow me.”

This is still the life we find in response to his invitation to follow him. If you are following Jesus, you are doing more than learning, though you are certainly learning. You are living in the joy and blessing of Jesus’ presence. Where two are three are gathered in his name, around his word, he still promises, “There I am with them.” He still meets with those who follow him in a joyful meal where he comes to us in bread and wine to apply the forgiveness he purchased for us by his death on the cross. We still feast and celebrate that he came to live with us at Christmas, that he gave his life and rose for us at Easter. This is the joyful life we find because Jesus still calls to us today, “Follow me.”

Romans 8:16-17 “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

As God’s sons, we are heirs. As good as it is to be God’s children now, there are better gifts waiting in our future. But like most heirs, we don’t know all the details about what is to come.

Are you an heir in someone’s last will on and testament? As far as I know, I am included in the will of my earthly father. I assume that about one fourth of what’s left when my parents die will be mine. I have some vague ideas about what that will include, but time can change things, and I don’t know the specifics of much of what they have or plan.

There is no doubt that you and I are included in the will of our heavenly Father. He has been very specific in promising us a piece of heaven, a resurrected and perfected body, and life that never ends. This inheritance isn’t an exclusive gift for a few special saints who have lived distinguished lives. As believers in our Lord Jesus we are all God’s children, and we all share that sacred status that makes us heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.

Paul also reminds us of a sobering truth now that we are God’s children. While God loves us deeply, in this life we also share our Savior’s suffering. Paul slipped that in when he said, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

If we are God’s children and heirs of heaven, why should we have to suffer? If my dad owned the grocery store, I wouldn’t expect to go hungry. If my dad owned the factory, I wouldn’t think it would be hard to find a job. If my dad ran the universe, wouldn’t you think my life would be easier?

But it’s not easy. We suffer. Whether we like to think about that or not, at least Paul is being real. He spoke from personal experience. He himself had been imprisoned, flogged, pelted with stones, and beaten by the enemies of the gospel. He knew what it was like to suffer, and he knew that he wasn’t alone.

Our own suffering as God’s children may take different forms, but it hasn’t ceased. I can name a half dozen men who worked for major corporations, who weren’t allowed to rise as high as their skills could have taken them because they refused to compromise their personal morals. They lived as God’s children and they suffered for it. I could walk you through the membership list of my congregation, and for each active family I could mention at least one serious tragedy they have endured. They are God’s children, but they suffer, and that’s hard for us to understand.

Individually, why any of us suffer this particular way, or this much compared to everyone else, is information our Father hasn’t shared. But this much he has revealed: Our suffering helps us to realize how helpless our sin has made us. Over and over again it rehearses us in our utter dependence on our heavenly Father for all things. It leads us to repent of the pride that thinks, “I can do this all by myself.”

In the twelfth chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians Paul says that God uses suffering to make us weak so that we won’t become conceited. But then something wonderful happens. We discover God’s sufficient grace. We find the love that justifies us and forgives our sins sustaining our faith. We experience his steady, quiet power resting on us and supplying our needs. We are God’s children, who share our Savior’s suffering. Since the Spirit convinces us we are God’s children, we can be certain our suffering will bless us in the end.

Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

As children of God, we don’t live as slaves to fear. That is not our status, though it once was. From time to time we may find ourselves returning to that view of life. It is the product of our sinful nature. We live as slaves to fear when we view God mainly as the enforcer, an other-worldly task master who will let us feel the lash of his whip, and ultimately demand our lives, if we do not keep in line and behave ourselves.

You know what that is like. When we think that the heartache of today is God’s repayment for the sins of our past, we are living as slaves to fear. When we resist the urge to indulge ourselves because we might get caught, or we might catch some disease, or we might be shamed, we are living as slaves to fear. Siegbert Becker tells the story of such a man he knew when he was in graduate school. “Do you mean to tell me,” the man asked one day, “that if you knew that you could get by with it, there’s nobody in the world you’d want to kill?” When Becker replied he didn’t think he could do something like that, the man continued, “If I knew that the police wouldn’t catch me, there are six people on this campus that I’d kill right now.”

That’s living as a slave to fear, and it can be effective at controlling behavior. But we should not think obedience like that pleases God. Even if it gets us to obey, it reflects a bad relationship with him, not a good one. God is no more pleased with obedience like that than parents are pleased when the threat of a spanking or a grounding is the only thing that gets their whining children to do their chores.

What the Lord seeks more than obedience are sons. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.” The sacred status we share as children of God is sonship. Being sons is more than being children. All of us, men or women, male or female, are sons. That means that we have a recognized, legal status in God’s family. All the rights and privileges of membership belong to each one of us.

That involves a striking change for people who once were slaves to fear. That change was possible because the one and only Son, Jesus Christ, was willing to trade places with us. By his death on the cross he removed the sins that disqualified us for a place in the family. By sending us his Spirit, and calling us to faith, he adopted us into the family. Now we all share this sacred status with him.

That means we enjoy a Father’s tender affection. “And by him (that is, the Spirit of sonship) we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ God doesn’t want some distant and formal relationship with the children he has adopted. He doesn’t hold us at arm’s length. He wants us to know deep affection and closeness. The sin that once kept us apart has completely been removed. We don’t have to be afraid.

In order to impress this on us, he uses some of the most intimate family relationships to illustrate. In other places he compares it to the love between husband and wife–sometimes in terms that might make us blush. Here he speaks of the love between a Father and his child. That is more than a written fact. His very Spirit impresses it on our hearts.

Think of what it means to call him Father. I call most of the people to whom I am closest by their first names: my brothers and sisters, my children, my wife. But I don’t call my father, “John,” or my mother, “Mary Elin.” In the case of parents, there are titles that express our shared affection more intimately, terms of endearment that reflect the care they have always had for me, and the trust (at times even dependence) that I have had in them. Whether you say “father or mother,” “mom or dad,” “mommy or daddy,” “mamma or pappa,” these terms describe people who love you unconditionally. They would give their lives to help you. They have sacrificed and denied themselves so that you could succeed. They have always been on your side, even when that meant laying down the law to keep you out of trouble.

At least, that’s the ideal. But even if human parents fail, we are God’s children who enjoy a divine Father’s love and affection. It’s one of the privileges of former slaves the Spirit turns into sons.

1 Corinthians 2:11-13  “Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”

So many people want to find God by looking inside themselves. Looking inside yourself is a fine thing to do…if you want to find yourself. No one knows you better than your own spirit inside of you, Paul says. But don’t be surprised if you don’t like what you see. C.S. Lewis wrote at the end of his book Mere Christianity, “Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay.” He might just as well have said, “Look inside yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.” That’s what the natural self looks like. Lusts I can’t get rid of, anger I am not proud of, stinginess, impatience, pride all run around deep down inside. It’s not a pretty picture.

But I’m not God, and neither are you. If we really want to know God, it’s his Spirit we need. And by calling us to faith, that is what God has given us: “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” When Paul says “understand” he does not mean it in the sense that we have God figured out according to the rules of logic. The Spirit does not give us a new mathematical formula to make sense of the Trinity. He doesn’t take us through a dissection of communion wafers, like high school students dissecting a frog in biology class, so that we can see how “This is my body” works. He doesn’t give us some new kind of telepathy, so that we can sense exactly what good God has in mind for every cross and every burden he lays on us. He doesn’t give us balance sheets or spread sheets that illustrate how the sacrifice of one person, Jesus Christ, accounts for the uncountable sins of billions of people. But he makes it possible for us to know all these things, and to believe that they are true, even though we cannot begin to explain them. This wisdom of God, his grace freely given, has been revealed to us by his Spirit.

That Spirit reveals such things to us, not when we are trying to find the Spirit hidden in the deep recesses of our hearts, but in his word, his message, which is the wisdom of God: “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” The word and the Spirit always go together. Jesus taught us, “The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life.” Paul urged the Ephesians to take up “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Paul didn’t expect the Corinthians, and he doesn’t expect us, to channel all these truths by channeling the Spirit. He doesn’t expect us to wait until the Spirit directly drops the knowledge into our heads out of heaven. He spoke and wrote words, words taught by the Spirit, words expressing spiritual truths because they are spiritual words. Paul’s message is now our message. But it is really neither his nor ours. It is God’s own wisdom revealed by his Spirit.

This is why we preach and teach. The wisdom we need to get along as citizens and employees, the wisdom of math and science and history and literature, is taught in the schools, and they do an admirable job by and large. But there is only one wisdom that saves, one wisdom that can lead us to God. That is the Spirit’s wisdom, the wisdom of God’s word.

Colossians 1:17-18 “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”

Why do the heavenly bodies continue in their orbits instead of crashing into each other like a box of ping-pong balls poured out on the floor? Why does the chair on which you are sitting continue to support you instead of collapsing in a pile of splinters? Why do the laws of physics keep order, and everything doesn’t fall apart in utter chaos? It is because God’s Son is King. Creation’s Maker continues to hold it all together as part of his ruling work.

Doesn’t this part of his ruling work touch our lives as well? Each morning I eat a bowl of cereal and drink a glass of orange juice that my body is processing at this very moment. It is drawing the energy with which I am able to live and function. When I get up, I inhale a medication which helps keep my lungs open so that I can draw my next breath. None of that happens by chance. Jesus is our Maker whose ruling power is still making all of it work. None of this depends upon my faith in him. It would all still be happening if I rejected him, even if I had never heard of him at all. Whether we acknowledge him or not, God’s Son is the King whose power makes us and sustains us today.

We, however, do acknowledge him. And by faith we enjoy a special relationship with him as our Head. “And he is the head of the body, the church.” As with the Creator-Creation relationship, it is natural for us to think of the head of a body as ruling and directing the body, isn’t it? I don’t mean to be too graphic, but have you ever literally seen a chicken with its head cut off? I used to help my aunt and uncle butcher chickens. I can tell you that without the heads, those bodies literally ran and flapped all over the place. Missing the head, the bodies had no rule, they had no direction. The head rules the body.

But the connection of a head with a body is ever so much more intimate than telling the body what to do. Life flows from the head to the body to which it is directly attached. The head observes the body and directs the proper care to each of the parts. The head is deeply concerned about the health and survival of the body to which it is attached.

So our spiritual Head, who rules and guides us as King, also died and rose again from the dead to promise his body life. “…he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” Do you spot the promise to us in this description of Jesus? If he is the beginning of those who died and rose again, if he is the firstborn of those who have risen from the dead, then others will follow. As our Head, our King does so much more than rule. He gives us life, life that will never end.

This is not a King who taxes his people into poverty so that he can live in obscene luxury. He holds their entire world together. He gives them direction. He gives them life. Then he gives them life after death. There is a long list of religious hucksters trying to offer us a better deal than the one we have in Jesus–previously undisclosed secrets for a fuller life, religion that lets you feel good about yourself, easier rules to follow. The Apostle Paul wants us to understand that nothing is better than what we already have in Jesus. He is the King supreme.