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WE DO NOT LIVE TO OURSELVES

“None of us lives for himself.”

The words – well, an English translation of – the words inscribed on the OMS ring. There are profound implications of this short phrase for any of us who choose to embrace it and wear it, and that I guess is exactly why Count Zinzendorf and his companions chose it. As a short phrase it stands alone well, but for me I hear it in its context in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. Romans 14.7,8. The Bible I live with is NRSV, and this is what it gives:

“We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

“We do not live to ourselves”. Here’s what I see in this phrase as I read it in its Romans 14 context:

The theme of the chapter is a call to be kind. A call to go out of our way to be kind. OK, the detail is all this stuff, strange to our ears, about meat that might have been presented before an idol, and whether or not to keep Jewish festivals. But never mind the detail here, the principle is clear: Don’t despise people who have scruples which are not your scruples; more than that, don’t allow your freedom to cause a brother or sister who sees things differently, to feel offended or compromised.

In the middle of the strangeness of chapter 14 are verses 7,8,9, opening with the phrase on our rings, “We do not live to ourselves”. The theme is of living and dying not to ourselves but to the Lord, who died and lives again that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Somehow, all this is more about dying than it is about living. It echoes the truth that we have already died; Paul set this out vividly in Romans chapter 6. It is also, I think, an invitation to be ready to die, because being the Lord’s is so fabulously primary, that whether we live or whether we die is really quite secondary.

That’s how it was for those who, in the first wave of OMS, took the Gospel to the nations. Many died as a consequence of their mission, while others lost everything, abandoning their lives into poverty and uncertainty far from the familiarity of home, for the sake of the kingdom of God. Where did that outrageous courage come from? Surely from the conviction that “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s”.

But let’s not hanker after martyrdom. The witness of our lives – the evidence that we live not for ourselves but for the Lord, and in Him for one another and for others – that’s the business. Most of the time, it won’t be outrageous courage we need. It will be qualities with far less glamour about them: patience, humility, attentiveness, determination, dependability, deep peace, infectious joy. These qualities grow out of a death; the death of ego. “None of us lives for himself”. Please God, let it be true, not merely as a matter of resolve on the part of those who have taken the vow. Let it be true in the plain sense of what people see in us: people full of Jesus, people who are there for other people, in ways which add value to those other people’s lives.

Tom Jamieson

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