Il Corinthians 5

"So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it."
II Corinthians 5:9

How much time do you and I spend trying to please other people?  If we love someone we will try to show our love for them, and we will try to do things for them that bring them joy.  Our main joy and priority in life must be found in pleasing the Lord, however.  It is God's purpose for our lives that we live for His glory and that we find our ultimate joy in Him alone.  Paul said in ll Corinthians 5:9, "So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it." We must seek to please the Lord in our words, thoughts, habits, attitudes, and deeds.  It must be our consuming desire to moment by moment live in the center of the Lord's will and to please Him in all things.

Earlier in the chapter in ll Corinthians 5 in the last part of verse two Paul spoke of His and every believer's "longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling."  Every believer knows that the moments of this life on earth are fleeting and temporary and that eternal joys await us in the future. Only in eternity will we be free from sin and its consequences in our lives and in our world, and only then will we be completely free to experience uninhibited joy in our love relationship with the Lord.

Until then, however,  ll Corinthians 5:7 reminds us that  "we live by faith, not by sight."  As we live our lives here on earth we also "make it our goal" to glorify and please the Lord in all areas of our lives (ll Corinthians 5:9).  We seek to avoid self-importance, pride, and the foolish pursuit of worldly things as our source of fulfillment.  Instead our goal and priority must be our love relationship with the Lord and our desire to serve Him with all our hearts.

We say with Paul in ll Corinthians 5:14-15, "For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, and therefore all died.  And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again"  The love of Christ must so consume us that it controls, compels, and urges us to live our lives with purpose and to live them only for the glory of the Lord.

The Lord Jesus died for our sins, and He made us His children.  Because of His atoning death on the cross we are new creatures in Him.  ll Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  As new creatures in Christ we have new attitudes, hew identities in Christ, and new purpose.  That purpose according to ll Corinthians 5:20 is to live for Jesus Christ's glory and be "Christ's ambassadors" to the world. By our lives we must create a desire in others to come to the Lord Jesus for His forgiveness and His grace.

II Corinthians 5:21 says, "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."  The Lord Jesus died to pay the punishment for our sins. Jesus Christ also lived a perfectly righteous life for us that we were unable to live. So Christ's righteousness is now given to us.  We now have a righteous standing before the Almighty God because of Christ's righteousness given to us.  We must grow in practical holiness also, however, and we must begin to more and more reflect the Lord Jesus in our lives.  It must be our consuming desire to live for the glory of the Lord.  We must increasingly think as God would want us to think and act the way God would want us to act.  This is God's purpose and will for our lives.