Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 205 · July 24
It Is Given
“For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;”
Perhaps somebody at work has found out what you believe, and the room has turned a little colder. Nothing was said out loud. You are no longer on the group messages, and there was a lunch you only heard about afterwards.
Now think about the people this letter went to. Philippi was a Roman colony, and Paul writes to it as a prisoner, saying, "my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace." The believers there had watched trouble begin in their own streets. Acts records what the magistrates did when Paul first preached there: they "rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them." After "many stripes," Paul and Silas were thrust into the inner prison with their feet fast in the stocks. In the verse right after today's verse, Paul names that shared history: "Having the same conflict which ye saw in me."
Into that setting he writes this sentence: "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." The Greek word for given is built on the word for grace, and it means granted as a favour. Both halves of the sentence are the gift. Believing was a kindness God did for you, and so is the other part.
Keep the two situations apart, though. A cold lunch table is a long way from a beating in the town square of a Roman colony, and it would be wrong to call them the same. What they share is the shape of the thing, even though the size is very different. Something has cost you a little because of who Christ is, and Paul counts that as grace.
Father, we would rather be liked than be counted with Christ, and most of the time we manage to be liked. Give us the smaller courage first: the honest sentence at the table, the straight answer to a direct question, and the bit of coldness we can survive. If the cost ever grows past that, give us what Paul and Silas had in the cell at Philippi, when "at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God." You were with them in that prison, and You are with us at the table. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 205 is Entering His Rest (Hebrews 4:9-10).