In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people. Let your lives shine brightly before them.
(Phil 2:14-15)
Even when you don’t realize it or even if you don’t want it, people watch you. They can tell who you are by how you act. If you have chosen to publicly follow Christ, people will judge who He is by how you act. You and I are a reflection of our Father. This is what Paul is addressing He wants us to be pure reflections of God’s character. This is why we are called to live clean, innocent lives so that when others look at us, they have a clear, unclouded picture of who God is.
However, isn’t it interesting, the behavior that Paul focuses on here is not what we would think of as serious sin but simply complaining and arguing. He could have chosen any number of other bad, wild, sinful behaviors, but he chose complaining and arguing. Complaining and arguing aren’t even that bad. But maybe that’s his point. We don’t see them as such destructive behaviors and we even indulge ourselves in them all the time. We whine about work. We grumble our restaurant food. We find fault with our cable company, the phone plan, our church or pastor. But we fail to comprehend that when we complain, when we argue, we mess up the reflection of God’s character in us. We give Christ a bad name by misrepresenting His character.
Paul wants us to be blameless so that no one can reject Christ because they saw a poor picture of Him in our lives. Our lives are meant to shine like lights in a dark and perverse world. That is not just by staying away from what the world sees as perverse sin, but in our daily attitudes, our demeanor, and our daily interactions with others. We need to remember to give Him full access to our hearts, hands, emotions, lips, and attitudes. We must allow Him to live His life through us since He is the one we are representing in this life.
In His Service,
Eric Barnes
