Philippians 1:9-10 (NIV)
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more
and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to
discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
Paul often let his friends know what it was he begged of
God for them, that they might know what to beg for themselves and be directed
in their own prayers, and that they might be encouraged to hope they should
receive from God the quickening, strengthening, everlasting, comforting grace,
which so powerful an intercessor as Paul asked of God for them. It is an
encouragement to us to know that we are prayed for by our friends, who, we have
reason to think, have an interest at the throne of grace. [Matthew Henry
Commentary]
In some ways, our biggest challenge in gauging Jesus'
influence is that we take for granted the ways in which our world has been
shaped by him. For example, children would be thought of differently because of
Jesus. Historian O. M. Bakke wrote a study called When Children Became People:
The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, in which he noted that in the
ancient world, children usually didn't get named until the eighth day or so. Up
until then there was a chance that the infant would be killed or left to die of
exposure — particularly if it was deformed or of the unpreferred gender. This
custom changed because of a group of people who remembered that they were
followers of a man who said, "Let the little children come to me."
Jesus never married. But his treatment of women led to
the formation of a community that was so congenial to women that they would
join it in record numbers … Jesus never wrote a book. Yet his call to love God
with all one's mind would lead to a community with such a reverence for
learning that when the classical world was destroyed in what are sometimes
called the Dark Ages, that little community would preserve what was left of its
learning. In time, the movement he started would give rise to libraries and
then guilds of learning …
He never held an office or led an army … And yet the
movement he started would eventually mean the end of emperor worship, be cited
in documents like the Magna Carta, begin a tradition of common law and limited
government, and undermine the power of the state rather than reinforce it as
other religions in the empire had done. It is because of his movement that
language such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights" entered history.
The Roman Empire into which Jesus was born could be
splendid but also cruel, especially for the malformed and diseased and
enslaved. This one teacher had said, "Whatever you did for one of the
least of these, you did for me." An idea slowly emerged that the suffering
of every single individual human being matters and that those who are able to
help ought to do so. Hospitals and relief efforts of all kinds emerged from
this movement; even today they often carry names that remind us of him and his
teachings.
Humility, which was scorned in the ancient world, became
enshrined in a cross and was eventually championed as a virtue. Enemies, who
were thought to be worthy of vengeance ("help your friends and punish your
enemies"), came to be seen as worthy of love. Forgiveness moved from
weakness to an act of moral beauty. Even in death, Jesus' influence is hard to
escape. The practice of burial in graveyards or cemeteries was taken from his
followers … It expressed the hope of resurrection … Death did not end Jesus'
influence. In many ways, it just started it. [John Ortberg, Who Is This Man?
(Zondervan, 2012), pp. 14-16}
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