Outstanding: Made for God’s Approval Not the World’s

We were all made by God and for God and there is a purpose and a plan for every life. Every life. God tells us in Jeremiah 29:11-14 (NIV): “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.” It also does us well to remember that all that is outside of God’s good, pleasing and perfect will is captivity. Captivity to sin, self or Satan.

The believer’s body is the temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit and God desires for us to offer our bodies to Him as living sacrifices through His power and for His glory. This is holy and pleasing to God. It is also our sacred service as well as an appropriate response for believers knowing what Christ has done for us. I am reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 (NIV): We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

All believers are to serve Christ as His ambassadors. Christians are not to conform to the world’s standards rather to the standards of the Lord Jesus. And in that, we are to “shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life,” Paul writes in Philippians 2:15B-16A (NIV). Believers are to radiate Jesus, not self. This mandates a change of lifestyle from the world’s ways. Indeed, how can we accomplish much - if anything - for Christ when we choose to blend with the world and its standards? If we are Christians we are to walk as Christians. And our choices and lifestyles are to reflect it. It is not merely a tip of a hat or verbal assent that God is looking for – it is a changed life. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 (NIV): “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 

Living according for the world and its standards must now be put aside according to Scripture. Christians are to live for Christ. Again, Paul writes in Galatians 2:20-21 (NIV): “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Our transformation is a certainly a process but living according to the pattern of our world and its standards and the lifestyles of this present age, God has called all believers to put aside. This certainly does not mean we are perfect rather in process – dying to what is not of Him and living for what is. How in the world can we make an impact for Christ if we choose to blend with the world and the lifestyles of our present age? What kind of impact is that? We are transformed by the renewing of our minds through God’s Word and we must not depend upon teachers to show us this but study the Scriptures for ourselves as well, just as the Bereans were commended for doing so in Scripture in Acts 17:11 (NIV): “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”