What Is Your Life Built On?

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." – 1 Corinthians 15:58

The Christian life is a life with roots. It's built on something; it has a foundation. That may seem self-evident (I hope it does!), but it's way too important to assume. I see this point screaming at us in the text by this little word, "Therefore," at the beginning of the sentence: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast..." That word is massive! There's a whole worldview -- a framework for thinking about your whole life -- here.

Think about how we use this word. Here's a simple, practical example from everyday life: "I understand you had a rough day and didn't have a chance to get to the grocery store; therefore (so), I'll pick up a pizza on my way home from work." What is "therefore" doing in those two sentences? It's indicating that the action is built on something. This decision to get pizza doesn't come out of nowhere; it has roots. There's a processing of information that culminates in that specific action.

So when Paul takes 57 long verses laying out rock solid truth about Jesus Christ -- He has come. He has died for you. He bore the judgment for your life of rebellion. He fulfilled the demands of the law for you, and proved it by rising from the dead. The sting of death has been removed. Though your body may be laid in the grave, the trumpet will sound, Christ will come, this mortal body will put on immortality and this decomposing, decaying body will become imperishable. Death is swallowed up in a great, blood-bought, Christ-wrought victory, a victory that will flood the whole cosmos as Christ defeats every rule and authority and power.

And after all that, Paul draws to a close by saying, "Therefore...", followed by a very practical exhortation on how to live; he's saying that the life God calls you to live has roots. It's built on something, and that something is 57 verses of biblical truth about God, about Christ, and about the future that God has prepared for you.

Verse 58 is the will of God for your life, and Paul says it happens "therefore"; that is, because you know and remember and are ruled by what he's written in verses 1-57. You won't be the person of verse 58 -- and what a beautiful person this is! -- unless you know and believe and meditate on and memorize and remember it, so that your mind and heart get so immersed in it that verse 58 happens. Christian living, speaking, thinking, feeling, is not rootless. It doesn't come out of nowhere. God means for you to live each moment of each day governed and ruled and shaped by these massive realities.

Is it? What is your life built on? How often do you interact with the ordinary irritants and frustrations of life without any conscious filtering of those circumstances through the lens of 1 Corinthians 15:1-57? If the answer is, “Rarely,” then it’s likely that you’re going to be very easily moved. It is astonishing that we can live so much of life without giving hardly a thought to God, what God has done and what He has said. "Therefore" means that all of your behavior, emotions, desires, choices, circumstances and experiences should be built on God's truth revealed in the Bible.

Taken from the sermon, “The Great ‘Therefore’ of the Resurrection,” preached on May 1st, 2011.