“ACCORDINGLY, THOUGH I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you” (Philem. 8–9). This adds a very beautiful phase of being in Christ. To be in Christ is to be bold, for you feel secure and unafraid with the sum total of reality behind you. In society you are not bold, for you look around to see what effect your actions will have on others. That makes you an echo. If you are in you, you are not bold, for there is nothing behind you but you. If you are in Christ, however, everything is behind you. You can be bold, for when you speak He speaks through and in you. You are bold with His boldness.
In Christ timidity is gone. “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7). Feeling the sense of boldness—a boldness which was able to command—Paul turned and said, “yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you.” The consciousness of strength is the secret of humility. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands . . . rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel . . . and began to wash the disciples’ feet” (John 13:3–5). Jesus, knowing that He had all things in His hands, used those hands, not to wield a scepter, but to wash His disciples’ feet. The little, the empty cannot afford to be humble. They must keep up their precarious position; so they sit stiff. To bend would crack their brittle show-off. For self’s sake they refuse to bend. But Paul “for love’s sake” bent and stood tall in the bending. Jesus in washing the disciples’ feet washed from our hearts silly prides. Our Lord bent, and we too can bend for His love’s sake and can be great in the bending. Bold, but appealing instead—that is what it means to be in Christ.
O Christ Jesus, make me bold enough to face any man in any situation and yet make me humble enough to win them rather than browbeat them. The end is to win. Help me to be winsome, like Thee. In Thy name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My boldness in Christ shall not be cocky self-assertion, but a manifestation of “for love’s sake.”
