What Am I to Do with the Life I’ve Been Given?
Paul says we are God’s building. Just as construction workers use forms to shape concrete into foundations, sidewalks, etc., so God has precepts to give our lives purpose.
This is the text of a message I preached at Roswell Alliance Church in Roswell, GA. Click on the link for the online service if you prefer to watch or listen. The sermon begins at about the 21st minute.
Video: 31 minutes
Reading time: 7 minutes
Scripture: Matthew 16:24-27
Online Service – Roswell Alliance Church
Text: Matthew 16:26 “What profit is it to gain the whole world, and lose your own soul?”
The story is told about a young Jewish man who was the student of a renowned rabbi and had a question he wanted to ask but kept to himself for months because he was intimidated. At last, he could go no longer without asking.
“Master, I know what the commandments are. I know what the Tradition teaches, but there is one thing I do not know: Why am I here? What am I to do with the life that I have been given?”(1)
This is a question for the ages.
Young children. We ask our children when they are little, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Their answers can be amusing.
Youth: With the school year starting, high schoolers and college students are choosing courses, asking themselves, “What do I want to do with my life?” These are not cute questions. The answers have life-long implications.
Mid-life. This question is the reason men have been known to buy a sporty car, why couples divorce, why workers change careers. Mid-life can be a time of crisis. “What am I to do while I still have time and energy?”
Later years. We do not escape it as we grow older. In his book, God of My Father, Dr. Larry Crabb reflects on his life as he watches his father, who is 30 years older, advance into his eighties. “What do I have to look forward to? What does maturity look like?”(2)
What am I to do with my life?
This isn’t just the question a young Jewish man got up the nerve to ask his rabbi. We all ask this, one way or another.
In the story, the rabbi did not answer, but invited the young man home to have dinner together. The lesson, apparently, was this: you don’t need an answer, but someone with you as you struggle with the question.
I will dare to be bold. I want to answer the question.
The question has two parts.
- I have been given life. This is a general statement.
- What am I to do it? This is particular. Personal.
First, the general.
Life is a gift.
We have been given life. We didn’t come by it on our own, someone gave it to us. Our parents, certainly, and this is where we get our names, our looks, our personalities, our family histories. We understand why God made this one of Ten Commandments: Honor your father and mother. Parents bring us to life.
But, where did our parents get their lives? The question drives us back through the generations, to the beginning, where we learn that life not only is a gift, but it is also sacred.
Life is sacred.
“God breathed into man, and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).
Jesus tells us, “The Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will” (John 5:21).
Life comes through our parents, but from God. As God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you” (Jeremiah 1:5).
These are universal truths. Everyone alive has been given a sacred gift. Which means there are universal answers to the question, What am I to do with the life I have been given?
Use this life to gain the life I do not have.
This life.
Jesus observed how people spend their lives worried about clothing, food, and shelter. They desire to be comfortable, to be liked, to lead and not be subject to others.
They devote themselves to a comfortable life. And Jesus asks, What is the profit to gain the world? He calls us to lose this life in order to gain the one we don’t have.
The life I don’t have.
Jesus: “I have come that you might have life.” If we had this life that Jesus came to give us, He would not have had to come.
God to Israel: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
These verses speak of life that we do not have, and instruct us to use the life we have to gain it. How do we do this?
Jesus says to all:
- Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
- Honor Jesus. The word honor means to put a value on something. Jesus said, “The Father has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23).
How much do you value Jesus? Is He nothing to you? Is He everything? Whether you honor Jesus will show in how you live.
Paul told the Corinthians, “You are God’s building.” This brings construction to mind, and laying the foundation. Before we pour the concrete, we build forms to hold it and give it shape.
These two general guidelines of life are like these forms. Pour yourself into them and God will shape your life. Do these, and you will do well. Jesus said the one who practices His teaching will be wise.
Now, we turn to the he particular part of the question: What do I do with this life?
Jesus calls: Come, follow, go.
Come
Jesus calls all of us, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden…” (Matthew 11:28).
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37).
Follow
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)
Go
Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, so send I you.”
Where He sends us and what He sends us to do is personal. We can learn these particulars only through an intimate relation with the Lord.
Two examples come to mind.
- God made Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, yet Peter was apostle to the Jews.
- After Jesus cast the demons from Legion, the man begged to travel with Jesus. Jesus refused. “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you” (Mark 5: 18-19).
Yet, when the man we know as the rich young ruler came to Jesus, asking how to obtain eternal life, Jesus said, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21).
Both these men, like all of us, were to follow Jesus, but it looked very different for each of them.
Paul had some general counsel that he said was a rule for all the churches he planted.
“Everyone should stay in the same condition in which he was called by God” (1 Corinthians 7:24).
In the context of his generation, he was speaking to slaves and masters, Jews and Gentiles. This would have been unthinkable in Paul’s time, but today we would add male, female, and human. Men want to be women and women, men. Not only is there transgender, but some think they are trans-species. There are children who call themselves “furries” because they identify as cats or dogs. I read of a man who identifies as a dragon.
Paul says to these things
- Don’t look to become what you are not. Some think, “If only I had a different wife or husband, I could serve the Lord better.” Paul said not to become unmarried. He encouraged slaves to gain their freedom, if they could, but not to despair if they didn’t. Their slavery could be the lampstand where God wants them to shine.
This rule of thumb is so important that Paul repeated it three times (1 Corinthians 7:17, 20, 24). Each one should serve the Lord where they are. - Change your works, and honor God in your circumstances. We may serve God where we are, but we don’t remain what we were. The New Testament writers urged believers repeatedly to put off their old ways and to put on the new way of living in Christ. We don’t continue doing what we did before Jesus called. “Such were some of you…” Paul reminded the Corinthians, speaking about their greed, malice, immorality, and so forth. These works of the flesh do not inherit the kingdom and we jettison them.
We have, then, these broad guidelines to answer the question, What am I to do with the life I have been given?
Use this life to gain the life you do not have. We do this by making God’s kingdom first priority, and by honoring Christ. To those who do this, the Father and Son promise to give eternal life.
Following Jesus, in turn, will flesh out how we each are to follow. To one, He says go here, to another He says, “Stay, and tell the good news where you are.”
A word of caution here. There is a lot of teaching today about spiritual gifts, with classes and courses about discovering our gifts. I am concerned that these can be used as an excuse for disobeying Jesus. Jesus may call us to do something but we respond, “That’s not my gift. I can’t do that.”
Imagine if Paul had scoffed at his calling to be a missionary to the Gentiles. “I am a Jew of Jews,” he could have answered. “I am an educated Pharisee. I devoted my life to the law. The Jews are my people. Working with Gentiles is not my gift.”
Obey the Lord, and His gifts will enrich His work in and through you. Don’t let spiritual gifts become an excuse for disobedience.
I conclude with these overall words from Paul about what we are to do with the life we have been given.
“We no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).
“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:2).
The rabbi did not answer the young man’s question, but God definitely tells what we are to do with the life He gave us. May the Lord find us faithful with this precious, sacred gift.
(1) Witness, Lessons From Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, Ariel Burger, page 232.
(2) God of My Father, Dr. Larry Crabb, Jr. and Lawrence Crabb, Sr., page 146
Photo credit: Rodolfo Quirós | Pexels