What Keeps You Going?

What draws you out of bed and gets you going each day? Is it the smell of your morning coffee? Is it the demands of work or family life? Asking it another way: What drives or impels you, deep down, to live another day with a sense of purpose or hope or delight? That more probing question might make you want to crawl back into bed and return to sleep. But again, with utter seriousness: What, if anything, gets and keeps you going?

Let us consider the Apostle Paul. Paul was imprisoned, whipped, stoned, beaten, destitute, frigid, and left alone (see 2 Cor. 11:24–29). But he and his companions still managed to live with a spirit of hope, confidence, honesty, joy, and love (1:10; 3:4; 4:2; 7:4; 11:11). How? He tells us:

The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (5:14–15)

Paul mentions three things here that should encourage us today.

First and foremost, Paul says that Christ’s love for him “controls” him. The verb (Greek synechō) can mean “to hold together” or “to constrain,” as rocky riverbanks channel a mighty and winding river downstream. But the word might also indicate an impelling power, like the force of a river itself. Paul’s point is that what keeps him pressing on in the Christian life is his knowledge of Christ’s infinite love for him. That is what holds his life together and propels him to action every day. More than anything, Christ’s love for him empowered Paul’s every tender word, his every courageous stand, and his every loving deed. It’s what kept him going.

Second, Christ’s love buoyed Paul in every new day because it fixed his mind on the cross. A self-pleasing life was impossible for Paul because he was convinced (“we have concluded this”) that the Son of God had loved him in the most necessary and life-giving way—by dying for him. Christ “died for all”—men and women, slave and free, Jew and gentile. Jesus died for a people who were not only unmotivated to live for God but were also spiritually dead in heart and life (see Rom. 5:8; Eph. 2:1).

Third, Paul knew that by dying and rising for sinners, Christ imparts His own loving life into all who believe in Him. The very divine love that coursed through Jesus’ crucifixion now poured into Paul (see Rom. 5:5), such that he could do no other than live each day “for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15).

What will keep you going today? May it be the vast, unmeasured, boundless, and free love of Jesus. Let it roll over you and carry you into today and tomorrow, all the way into your glorious home above with your Savior.