We wager our lives through our choices. This is, in part, what I think Paul was getting at when he said that if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, we are “most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Paul sacrificed his life, his desires, his social status, and his community for the sake of the gospel. He wagered his life. He risked all he had of worldly worth.
If it turned out Christ wasn’t the Son of God who rose from the dead so we might have life, then Paul had denied himself for nothing. At the same time, I suspect many of Paul’s Jewish hearers respected his words because they came at a great cost. Any form of evangelism that has nothing at wager has nothing to say.
Any action we take gambles the limited time we have on earth. We wager all other possible actions by choosing one. Whenever we choose a medical treatment or a school for our kids or a career path, we risk something—being wrong, failure, regret, time, poverty, and so on. Whenever we sin, we wager offense against God and the possibility of uncontainable harm to others (sin is never containable). Whenever, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we turn from sin and choose to honor God and love our neighbor, we wager our fleshly desires.
Like Paul, it costs us to obey. To deny sin is to die to self. And that, too, testifies to those watching. It’s precisely because our actions are wagers that they communicate something about us and our understanding of the world. They may communicate our trust in the medical community or our trust in public schools or the moral imperative of pursuing our dream jobs. But our actions always speak.
Get Out of Bed
The most fundamental decision is the decision to get out of bed. It communicates something. The decision to get out of bed is the decision to live. It’s a claim that life is worth living despite the risk and uncertainty and the inevitability of suffering—one of the few things we can know for certain in this life.
Rising out of bed each day is a decisive act. Living is a wager. It’s a severe gamble. You don’t know the suffering and sorrow that await. You don’t know the heartache. But you know it is coming for you: to that, history and literature have testified without counterclaim. To choose to go on is to proclaim with your life, and at the risk of tremendous suffering, that it’s good. Even when it’s hard, it’s good. Even when you don’t feel that it’s good, even when goodness is unimaginable, it’s good.
To choose to go on is to proclaim with your life, and at the risk of tremendous suffering, that it’s good.
When we act on that goodness by rising out of bed, when we take a step to the block in radical defiance of suffering and our own anxiety and depression and hopelessness, with our heads held high, we honor God and his creation. We testify to our family, to our neighbors, and to our friends of his goodness. This act is worship.
Perseverance as Worship
I think Paul had this form of worship (among others) in mind when he exhorts us to “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). We offer our bodies as a living sacrifice by daily embracing life and dying to our flesh: our sinful desires, our selfishness, our pride, even our fear and despair.
Unlike the sacrifices offered under the old covenant, which came through death, our sacrifices come through life, from the decision to honor God with our lives. Christ’s death is the once-and-for-all sacrifice, and now we participate in that sacrifice by participating in his life. Like properly offered sacrifices in the Old Testament, when we live before Christ, our bodily living sacrifice is a sweet aroma to him.
The choice to get out of bed isn’t made once per day but continually as we do the next thing. At any moment we may slip back into lethargy, into despair and hopelessness. If we allow ourselves to consider all our obligations, all our responsibilities, all the ways we must perform and improve ourselves, we’ll become frozen in place.
The world asks too much of us. A good number of these demands really are our responsibility: to care for those around us, to use the gifts God has given us, and so on. In my experience, the only way to move forward is to dedicate yourself to doing the next thing.
Do the Next Thing
To do the next thing isn’t to deny our other responsibilities but to recognize that faithfulness is always an obligation for the present. Right now, we have a duty to serve God by doing whatever good work he has put before us. And if we trouble ourselves with all the other things we’re burdened with, the things of tomorrow or the next hour or minute, we’ll be overwhelmed.
Like properly offered sacrifices in the Old Testament, when we live before Christ, our bodily living sacrifice is a sweet aroma to him.
God asks only that we serve him now. Choose this second whom you will serve, and then serve him by doing the next thing. Place it in the forefront of your mind so you don’t lose sight of it: I will get out of bed. Put on my shoes. Walk downstairs. Make coffee. And so on.
We have to do all these things without getting lost in perfection, in frantically trying to master our lives by choosing the perfect next thing. Often it’s only by focusing on the concrete details of life, the singular actions demanded of us, that we can keep moving.
But when we do the next thing, we communicate with our bodies that the next thing is worth doing. This moment is worth living. This life and all the responsibilities it entails are worth whatever hardships we experience. We need to be reminded of this. So do our neighbors.
The Gospel Coalition