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;”
Somebody at work has worked out what you believe and the temperature has dropped about two degrees. Nothing was said. You are not on the thread any more, and there was a lunch you heard about afterwards.
Now the letter. Philippi was a Roman colony, and Paul writes to it from custody: my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace. The people reading had watched the trouble start in their own street. Acts records what the magistrates did the first time he preached there: they rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them, and after many stripes the two of them finished the night in the inner prison with their feet in the stocks. Paul names that shared history in the verse straight after yours: having the same conflict which ye saw in me.
Into that he writes the 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. Given translates a word built on the word for grace: granted as a favour. Both halves of the sentence are the gift. The believing was a kindness done to you, and so is the other thing.
Keep the two apart. A cold lunch table is not a beating in a colonial forum, and anybody calling it one has flattered themselves and insulted Philippi. What travels between them is the shape rather than the scale. Something has cost you a little because of who Christ is, and Paul files it under grace.
We would rather be liked than counted with him, Father, and we usually manage to be liked. Give us the smaller courage first: the sentence at the table, the honest answer to the direct question, the two degrees we can survive. If the cost grows past that, give us what those two men had in the Philippian cell, who at midnight prayed, and sang praises unto God. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 205 is Entering His Rest (Hebrews 4:9-10).