Following the Follower IX: A Proper Ambition

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is Chuck Baggett and we're looking today at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and particularly a statement that Paul makes in verse 9. And after he makes this statement, then in verse 10 and 11 and again in verse 14, we have some motivations that follow that help us to understand how he's come to this statement and how we can come to the same stand.

In this autobiographical section, Paul describes not only how he behaves as a representative of Christ who wants to take the truth to people and benefit them, but he also describes how he thinks. And that I think is really the rare jewel in these passages, is that we get to know what were the things that sustained Paul's obedience in the most difficult times of when perhaps it seemed as if everything that he had been laboring for was unraveling.

And you know, there was that question mark. Or as we talked about last week, when he felt boxed into a corner and he was perplexed, he felt, you know, hunted, yet not forsaken, knocked to the ground, but not killed.

And when his weakness was so apparent as he suffered and daily died to himself to bring the gospel and the truth and the life of Christ to these people, as he did that, what were the things that sustained him?

One of the things that we notice, and it's in a section that we're not taking the time to discuss, but you guys at home can look at it and carefully study it for yourself, that in verse 13 through chapter 5 verse 8, so chapter 4 verse 13 through chapter 5 verse 8, Paul talks a lot about what he is convinced of, what he knows to be coming.

There will be a resurrection, and in this resurrection he and these believers will be raised together, presented together, and understanding, you know, the eternal perspective of the souls of the people we're serving, whether it's the people in our home, the people we work with at school, or at church.

Understanding the eternal perspective of this as we labor to bring Christ to people, or as we labor to help the believer grow and mature, we keep that eternal perspective in mind, and that for us, like Paul, and again in chapter 5, those early verses, what he sees coming for him.

So these great realities grip him, and in verse 9, basically he says, we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him, to be pleasing to Christ. Whether I, whether Christ takes me to heaven, or whether he leaves me here to serve believers longer, I have the same ambition.

I am an ambitious man. My ambition is to please him. When we think of ambition and Christianity, and I think especially for ministers, when we think of being an ambitious minister, if I introduced you today, Chuck, and said with me again is Chuck Baggett, a very ambitious pastor, it might be taken by you as a negative.

I want you to qualify. Yeah, so wait, wait, what do you mean by that? So I think, you know, especially since, you know, I was in some form of ministry before I was converted, you know, a youth minister, and while you're studying and you're reading these biographies, but you're a lost person who's religious, I was ambitious.

Like, I want to be great. I don't want my life to be normal, and then when God rescues you and you see the beauty of the one person who is impressive, Christ, then you don't, you know, that kind of ambition becomes offensive, you know, kind of sickening if you see that in you, that selfish ambition.

So how in the world can Paul speak so highly and so unashamedly about being an ambitious Christian? Well, Paul, I think Paul.

Obviously is not talking about the wrong kind of ambition, a selfishness that we see in so much of life, and maybe have it seen at times in ourselves, but it is a different ambition. You said it, it's an ambition to please Him.

So it is so very different from kind of what I always thought about when I thought about ambition for a long time, and I always thought of the word in a negative way because of that. In our New Testaments, most translations, when it's speaking of ambition in a positive way, it says just as we see here, ambition, but there are other places where it speaks of selfish ambition.

It adds the word selfish to distinguish between this negative kind of ambition and what the Bible is talking about here. And there are actually two different Greek words that are being translated. I think both of them in secular use probably were negative, but Paul takes one of them and makes it to be this good thing.

And it's a word that could be translated, if I remember correctly, love of honor. And in this case, really the love of Christ's honor. So Paul's not pursuing his own honor, but Christ's honor, and that is a goal worth pursuing.

And so with great ambition, he desires to please Him, to honor Him in all that he does. Yeah, you.

Could also think of, like with that word honor, as you mentioned, you could think of something honorable, you know, so a man devotes his life not to the lesser things like, I just want to be comfortable, you know, look, I just want a job, pay the bills, watch TV at night, you know, have supper, and enjoy my weekends with my buddies.

Well, but you know, that's not really the most honorable life. And then, you know, then you have another guy that works next to the first guy, and he wants, you know, maybe he wants to really pay the price to achieve something higher.

And so when people aren't like that, they look at him and they think, man, he's pretty ambitious. And when we say someone's ambitious, and it doesn't necessarily mean a sinful ambition, but let's just think of in the normal world setting, if we have an acquaintance that we think they are ambitious.

So you can think of people that were ambitious in academics, and so there would be certain behavioral patterns that they had that maybe we didn't have, and that we would say, well, like, they would kill themselves to get an A, you know.

So they're pretty ambitious. And when they graduate, they're wanting to go to such-and-such school, and they won't be able to get there if they graduate with B's and C's. So, you know, we knew there was something they were pursuing.

They were ambitious, and there was a goal in mind. Or you could think of athletes. There are, you know, weekend athletes who play on, you know, like a softball team, a group of guys playing softball, and then there's the guy that's in college who's hoping to get drafted, you know, to baseball, some pro team, and two totally different approaches.

You know, there are joggers, and then there are racers, and I'm a jogger, not a racer, and so I remember reading articles about how racers on a competitive level, like world-class, how they eat, sleep, even how they take showers or whatever, the temperature of the water, different things they did to get a little edge over the competition.

They had a very clear goal in mind, and they were pursuing it. I wasn't pursuing that. So I looked at them and thought, wow, they're ambitious. So academic, sports, business, a man, one man goes to work and he behaves a certain way.

Another man starts his own business, and you watch his life, it looks very different with regard to work. You know, he may never stop work, you know, but there'll be a lot of things about his behavior that are different than the guy that just clocks in at 9 and clocks out at 5, and he doesn't, he's not ambitious.

He's not trying to make a company and build a business. So when we think of the different behavioral patterns of an ambitious person, let's stop and think, what are some of those just general.

Traits of ambitious people? What comes to your mind? One is discipline. The person who is driven toward this goal tends to be highly disciplined, and so like with the athlete you were talking about, what they eat, how they sleep, etc., it's not that they eat well sometimes.

You know, I eat well sometimes, but then there are other times when I kind of fill in the gaps. But the person who is competitive, they eat, you could almost say they eat to run, and so they are very disciplined about what they eat, how they eat, you know, when they eat, all those kinds of things.

Very disciplined. Yeah, I was thinking of like just a shortlist in my.

Mind, you know, an ambitious person, they have one overriding kind of desire or goal, and that then, one thing I notice about an ambitious person is they are single-minded. So while they may have to think of other things, it's almost as if every other thing has to be united to the great thing.

And so, you know, like the athlete, like you said, he eats for this. He thinks about food differently. You know, we have some people in our little church that think about food in a completely utilitarian way.

Food brings certain vitamins, so I eat this kind of food for this kind of energy level or whatever, or this kind of body type, you know, keto, whatever they're doing, and they have a very different view of food because they have a different ambition.

And then some people say, God gave us food that tastes good, and my view of food is it's pleasurable, and so if you have to eat, you might as well eat something that tastes good, you know. And some people, again, like utilitarian, food just keeps me living, and I just, I grab a bag of chips or a hot dog, I don't care what it is, you know, I'm too busy to think about food.

So it unites an ambitious man, doesn't have a mind that, you know, is spread out over all these things, kind of thinking about so many, a distracted man. He's a single-minded man. And along with that, then, like you said, then the behaviors, his values are affected.

He begins to value things based on their connection, their proximity to, or their distraction from his great goal. So things that have real value may have very little value to this ambitious man if they have no connection with his goal.

They don't advance. Right, they don't advance the goal. They may actually be, even though they are in themselves valuable, they may be, in his mind, detrimental because they will distract him from his goal.

So if a man is an academic, and he's trying to, you know, a young person, young guy or girl, they're trying to get into just this top school to get this top kind of job. And it's, you know, it is extremely limited.

It's elite. Friendships, which they would admit, friends are great. A boyfriend, that would be great. A girlfriend, I'd love to have a girlfriend. You know, I'd love to have that kind of relationship, you know, one day a marriage and kids.

But while it has value in itself, it is of no value to me because it would detract me from my goal. But think of a businessman who has friendships that are shallow friendships, not deep friendships, more like acquaintances.

And because he wants to grow his business, his value system is altered by that goal. His friends become a network. Yeah, you are valuable to me. You work in this field. You have money to invest. You have this skill over here.

And so you're all valuable to me. You know, what about a deep friendship? Well, I don't have time for that. But these shallow kind of acquaintances are of great value because I, you know, because I can use them for my goal.

So your value system changes. Some things that are very little value, suddenly are enormous value to you because this promotes your goal. And things, again, that have great value in themselves may be of no value to you because they do not promote your goal.

I was thinking also of like, so discipline sacrifices. An ambitious man has that different value system, is single-minded, is willing to discipline himself. But he also, with that different value system, he is willing to sacrificially pour everything into this one great ambition.

And he is willing to give up things that other people think, how can you live without that? You know, sometimes for an ambitious man, things that pursuits, it's confusing because they pursue things that on the surface, we think, why do you waste your time with this?

And I was thinking of a guitar player. So there are guitar players who will do, of course, like finger strengthening exercises. So you may sit beside somebody at work and he's doing some finger strengthening exercises as he's looking at his computer and thinking through, you know, whatever he's doing.

And you think, what are you doing over there? And he's like, well, I'm, oh, I do these hand strengthening exercises. Why? Well, because I play guitar. Like, oh, you know, dexterity exercises. I play the guitar too, I don't do it.

Yeah, I play the guitar, but he's ambitious. Or you and I both have a friend who likes to play guitar, but he's a manual labor guy. And so he uses his hands, he's in construction, but he will have the glue on fingernails.

And so he comes to church, you know, and he's in his 60s and he's a rugged guy and he's still strong. And he has fingernails. You think, what are you doing with these fingernails? But it's so he can pick.

Now, me getting fingernails glued onto my fingernails would be of no value to me. They would be quite the opposite. But to a man who wants to use it for guitar playing, and he can't grow his own fingernails because of the kind of work he does with his hand.

It's strange to me, but it makes sense for him. So in the Christian, in the pursuit of pleasing the Lord, could we be described as ambitious people? I mean, you know, we just take these simple things and apply it to ourselves.

Are we somewhat single-minded? There are a lot of things that we could think about today, and they're not wrong. But I don't want to, because there's a couple of things that really grip me. Are we willing to value things based on the pursuit of a life that is pleasing to Christ?

Some things help me, and they may not be very valuable to other people. They're very valuable to me. And some things that are valuable to other people have very little value to me, because it doesn't promote that pursuit.

It might distract. You know, and it's not legalism. It's not saying, well, a Christian would never think about that, or a Christian would never have that hobby. A Christian wouldn't buy a boat. A Christian wouldn't go do this and, you know, and enjoy this.

But it's not legalism. It's love. For love of something so much greater, I'm willing to lay aside, to sacrifice, to recalibrate my entire value system, and for it to be recalibrated by the ambition, the honorable pursuit of pleasing the Lord.

Yeah. We mentioned a moment ago that the Bible uses the word selfish ambition for the other kind. And like you said, we're not saying that all ambition is selfish. But if you selfishly see people as utilitarian, like you were mentioning with the business example, we can understand how that could happen.

But for the Christian being ambitious, there would be no selfishness in it, because you could really more freely give yourself to others, because you have given yourself completely to God. And so it is not only a goal worthy of pursuit, but it's a goal that really everybody else ought to want to cheer you in the pursuit, because it makes you a better believer.

It makes you a better brother in Christ, sister in Christ. Yeah. And there are religious.

Pursuits that are not—you know, there are ambitious religious people who feel that they're on the same page as Paul, but it's not. So for example, you could use a church. You could come to a church and say, well, this is a church that teaches a little—maybe the standard of teaching is a little higher than the church down the street, or maybe the standard of expectation for morality is a little higher than down the street, and so my family is going to go here because we are going to use this church for the ambition of us becoming better people, a better person, a better preacher.

You know, I go to a church where a preacher is there, and he's very successful or very admirable, and so I go there because I want to use him to make me the great preacher, make my family a great family.

And when you have that ambition, when you want to use religion, Christianity, churches, the Bible, Christ himself to make you a better you, it looks similar to Paul's statement, my ambition is to be pleasing to Christ, but it's not.

It's very self-centered, and you can notice that, I think, often by the behaviors that flow from that, the value system, like you mentioned. When you want to be pleasing to the Lord, then loving him, like you said, is part of loving others as well, and so I will be willing to spend time with people that don't help me become a better Christian, make me a better me.

Maybe I spend time with them just to be a genuine Christian friend to them, and you know, I have known people who have been very religious and divorced because the wife got very religious and said, basically, my husband is not getting very religious at the same rate I am, and so he is ruining my new pursuit of becoming a better me, so he's kind of, it's like he's dead weight, so she divorced him, and then not long after that, she turned her back on Christianity completely.

And I remember when she was complaining about her marriage, I remember thinking, this has nothing to do with love to Christ, and your husband doesn't love Christ. It's that you intend to use Jesus to make you a better you, and he is not fit in the program.

He's not helping you reach this great you, you know, this new you, so he has very little value. Yeah, people, church gatherings, you can stay home and listen to great preachers on the internet, and read great writers from history, and your brain can become greatly informed, but you don't pay the cost of loving and being with very imperfect people, because you're not really wanting to please him, you're wanting to please yourself, and use him to make you a better you.

So religious ambition isn't necessarily, even Christian-ish, you know, Christianized ambition isn't necessarily what Paul's talking about. He's talking about pleasing the Lord. So one thing that is obvious is, I would want to be single-minded, sacrificial, devoting time, and energy, and health, and, you know, being willing to sacrifice maybe sleep, or some fun things that I used to do, good hobbies.

That ambition will show in a pursuit of the knowledge of what does or doesn't please him. Paul says in Colossians chapter 1, as he's praying for that church, that they would please him in every respect, you know, doing all of his wishes.

But in the Greek, it's a bit more picturesque. It's like, coming out of your house, and meeting his every wish, and doing it. And so, you know, I love that picture, because it's a simple question I ask myself in the morning, where are you headed today?

Like, well, okay, well, I might have a lot of specific things I'm doing today, but really, I do today, I'm on the same path that was on every other day since I became a Christian. I am out to meet his wishes on the road of life, and to do them.

But if I don't study my Bible, what the moral commandments of God are, what the specific applications of that, you know, especially in the New Testament letters, then I'm just kind of drifting along saying,.

I want to please Jesus. It comes back to, I think, to the discipline of the ambitious person. You could think, I mean, Christianity is a relationship, but it's not a relationship without discipline. It's not just, you know, kind of floating along, feeling good.

So, there is the disciplined pursuit of the Lord through his word, and through study, and the means of grace. And without that, how can you be pleasing to the Lord?

One way we could express that is to ask, what's the difference between a dreamer and an ambitious man? Well, a dreamer is kind of ambitious. Right. He's one of those... He's frustrated. He's in... Yeah.

He's kind of in that category of ambitious person. Oh, he's got big dreams. But his behavior has not been altered by his dreams. The ambitious man, his whole life has been recalibrated by this ambition, good or bad.

So, biblical dreamers, you know, religious dreamers, Christianized dreamers, that's not worth anything. But people in the grip of the eternal perspectives who want to be pleasing to this King, and that alters our lives.

It makes us ambitious. And some of those patterns of ambitious people will show up in the way that we pursue pleasing Him. But in the last couple verses there, in verse 10 and 11, and then again in verse 14, he talks about the coming judgment, to be face-to-face with Christ as our judge, to be given rewards or rebukes, we could say, for how we have lived this life.

But in verse 11 and in verse 14 in particular, two great motives are mentioned. And that's kind of like the other bookend of the ambitious life. The eternal realities, the end of chapter 4, beginning of chapter 5, and then these two motivations.

The fear of the Lord, that moves me, Paul says, and the love of God, God's love for us, that moves me. Chuck, how would you explain the fear of the Lord in that biblical sense to a person who had never heard of it before?

I think a good way of thinking of it here is a reverence for the Lord that is the exact, it goes hand in hand with the desire to please Him. I want to please Him, therefore I'm not going to do anything to not please Him.

I fear not pleasing Him. Not because I fear retribution, that's been taken care of by Christ, punishment. But I love Him, and I don't want to grieve Him. I want to please Him. And knowing that we're going to stand before God and answer, He will, you know, the books will be opened, I want to please Him.

And so, with that in mind, we persuade men. Yeah, so love is connected. Gratitude's.

Connected. Psalm 130, one of those wonderful penitential psalms by David, where he's pouring out a broken heart because of his sin. And he mentions there that there is great forgiveness with God. And then he gives a purpose so that he might be feared, which in our mind is counterintuitive.

If you're sure God will forgive you, why are you fearing Him? And he said, well, you've misunderstood fear. Not the slavish fear, like you said, fear for a Christian. In Christ, I'm not fearing condemnation coming back and finding me.

It is that if there is a God that is as big and as perfect and as indescribably pure as He is, and He stooped as low as He did to pull me from the filth that I thought was treasure, and to forgive my crimes which deserve hell, and bring me into His home, and give me in uniting me to His Son to wash me and clothe me with the Son's righteousness, and to give me everlasting privileges in His family, so that all the world would know how great He is through His kindness toward me, His enemy.

If that God is what He says He is, and He is, I never want to treat Him as a light matter again. I don't want to treat His will as a light matter. Like you said, I'm going to see Him. I want to live in a way that pleases Him.

Sin is something we hate now, not because we think, now God is going to throw me out of His family, but because this is a sin, not merely against my Creator, but against the God who has loved me. And that really is unbearable for us, you know, to sin against someone.

You know, if you hurt someone that you know is loving you, I think of like as a young person hurting a parent, and you see the hurt in their face, and you're old enough to understand, and you know, suddenly your selfishness makes you sick.

You think, why am I such a jerk? That person is loving me. And so infinitely more, of course, we fear to grieve Him. We fear to treat Him as a light matter. Fear the Lord. The final one, the love of God.

And Paul says in verse 14, for the love of Christ controls us or constrains us. Concluding, having concluded, he says that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

So here he's not talking about his love for Christ, although that certainly does affect our behavior. John chapter 14, where Christ says to the disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commitments.

So faith working by love, that's the Christian life. But here he's focusing not on his love for God, but on God's love for him and the impact it has upon him. Knowing the love of Christ who has died and has been raised for me, that constrains me.

So awareness of his continual flow of love to me is something that puts blinders on my eyes. And the Greek word was used that way, you know, blinders on a horse's face as he's plowing so he won't constantly be distracted and wanting to go left and right, he just only sees straight ahead.

So what puts blinders on the eyes of a believer? Why don't we chase every pleasure? Because the love of Christ entices, draws, expels the expulsive power of the new affection. His love for us creates a love for him, and it expels the old lovers.

It constrains us to obey.

Another sense of that word, I believe, is to be seized, or so in the grip of, you know, I'm in the grip of the love of Christ. It constrains me. So I don't, you know, I don't want to go in that direction.

I'm in the grip of this great love.

Yeah, and it's really inseparable, as we said, from the fear of the Lord. You think of Joseph in the Old Testament and Potiphar's wife trying to entice him, and he runs from her crying out, you know, how can I do this kind of a sin?

How can I sin in this way against my God, you know? Well, there's reverence there. God is not a light matter. He's not a genie in our bottle. But there's also wonderful love. This is my God, the God who has sustained me through my brother's hatred, through the ill treatment, and this, I don't want to sin against this God.

So a very, again, a very different engine in the Christian life than legalism, and an engine that will set our feet on the path of meeting his every wish. I am ambitious to do his pleasure. Well, we'll pick up next week looking at how the Christian is a co-worker with God, chapter 6, and what are the ways that we have to demonstrate that?

Again, like chapter 4, some very clear ways that Paul says, I am a co-worker with God, and then he gives some evidences in his life. You can see that what I'm saying is true, and some of these are pretty costly evidences, but they are a wonderfully clear path for our feet, whether we're pastors or parents or Christian witnesses.