📖 Lent 5 Epistle Reading: Phil 3:(4b-7) 8-14
Usually, we try to avoid sharing germs with others 😷, especially our family. No one enjoys when the entire house falls ill!
Yet St. Paul says something rather striking in Philippians: “I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.”
How strange that Paul would desire to share in Christ’s sufferings! ⁉️
To participate in the whippings, beatings, crucifixion, and death? Where would he get such an idea?
From Jesus Himself. ✝️
Remember when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper? Peter protested, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Peter immediately changed his tune: “Then not just my feet, but my hands and head too!”
We are connected to Christ’s sufferings through our baptism. 💧
As Paul teaches in Romans: “We have been buried with Christ through baptism into death… For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
As Good Friday approaches and we examine our lives against the Ten Commandments, we see our desperate need to be connected to His death and resurrection.
We cling to our baptism, knowing that “by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah).
Our Lord was broken so we might be made whole. He died so we might live. 💝
In our darkest moments, remember this truth: your suffering is not meaningless when united with Christ’s. ✝️
Contributor Timothy Chase is pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Truman, MN.
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