“FOR NOW WE live, if you stand fast in the Lord” (1 Thess. 3:8). This is a beautiful illustration of the identification that Paul had with his converts and fellow Christians. He lived when they lived spiritually; he died when they died spiritually. This was beyond sympathy (“suffering with”)—it was empathy (“suffering in”). As a missionary and an evangelist I have felt that I was alive in the life of a convert, and I’ve inwardly died as he died. The African has a reply when you ask him if he is well: “I am if you are.”
This statement of Paul’s is a rose to be smelled; it is not to be picked to pieces as a botanist would do. If you pick it to pieces, its beauty is gone. Paul did not live with the life of his converts, nor did he die when they died. He was primarily in Christ, and not in them. The real Paul came out in this passage: “At my first defense no one took my part; all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth” (2 Tim. 4:16–17).
Paul didn’t die in their desertion of him, for he didn’t live in them—he lived in Him. Whether they went up or down he did not go up and down. He was in Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8).
Again and again when we ask, “Lord, and what shall this man do?” Jesus has to say to us, “What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.” We must gaze at Jesus and glance at people, for if we gaze at people and glance at Jesus we will be in trouble.
I have had to say to many a troubled soul, their gaze out of focus, “If you look within you’ll be discouraged; if you look around you’ll be distracted; if you look back you’ll be paralyzed; but if you look at Jesus you’ll have peace.” We live if people stand fast in the Lord, but if they don’t we live anyway! We live in Him.
O my Lord, give me an empathy with those around me, but a limited empathy. My final and unlimited empathy is with Thee. In Thee “I live and move and have my being”—in others I live and move. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am unconditionally committed to Christ; I am conditionally committed to His followers.
