"Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the lord…"
Chapter 3 begins a series of exhorations to live the Christian life. The first exhortation challenges believers to place no confidence in the flesh (3:1-14). "Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the lord"
Before imploring the Philippians to not deposit confidence in the flesh, he charges them to "Rejoice in the Lord." Rejoice is a theme of the epistle. Evidently the Philippians needed to develop a joy orientation. Paul comes back to this over and over.Christians today require this challenge often. Discouragement makes headway easily. Yet joy in the Lord is quickly defeats discouragement. Steering attention toward him rather than toward our circumstances releases focus upon problems.
Principle:
To change the focus of our orienation is the principle of displacement. If the nucleus of our thinking is upon failure, failure becomes our orientation. If we change the core of our thinking to contemplate the Lord, he becomes our ambition. Whether success comes our way grows more irrelevant to us. If we place the Lord at the center point of our thinking lesser things seem trivial.
Application:
The prevailing philosophy among Christians is "If you are healthy, I’m happy," "When everything is going right and coming up roses, I’m happy." However, when reverses prevail, that happiness evaporates. When we are misunderstood and not appreciated, can we rejoice then? If we rest our orientation toward life on perpetual positive circumstances, we put ourselves in a desperate situation. We cannot rejoice in our circumstances all the time but we can rejoice in our Lord ceaselessly (
4:4 ). If we displace joy in the Lord for the hope of ongoing stable circumstance, vulnerability to changing conditions no longer disrupt our balance.
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