| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 5 |
Page 4 |
St. Paul exhorts servants to be obedient to them that are their masters, “as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” “Whatsoever ye do,” he says, “work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ.” It makes the most trying service easy when it is done in this way – looking beyond the human master and seeing Christ as the real Master, for whom we are working. We are living unto him. We are serving him. From him we shall receive the reward for our faithfulness.
St. Paul speaks in this same connection of dying. It does not seem strange to hear him say, “Whether we live, we live unto the Lord.” But when he goes on and says, “Whether we die, we die unto the Lord,” the words strike us as unusual and startle us. Dying does not interrupt nor in any way interfere with our relations to Christ. It is just like any other passage in life. Dying is only a phase or experience of living. We are as really Christ’s when we die and after we die as we are when we are living. The words are wonderfully illuminating; they throw a bright light on the mystery of dying. We are not separated from Christ in death; the bond between us and him is not broken. When we die we do not pass out of Christ’s service; we only pass to another form of service. We have the impression that death cuts our life off, interrupts it, and makes an entire change in everything that concerns us. But the truth is, life goes on through death and after death very much the same as it did before. There will be nothing greatly new in our experience, nothing strange or unusual, when we are dead. Life and death are all one – parts of the same continued existence. “Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.”
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