Make Much of Christ: Boldly Magnifying Jesus in Every Circumstance

Isaiah 11:2: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of Wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.”

“The wisdom of God may appear to be foolishness to the people of the world, and the wisdom of the world is made foolish by God (1 Cor 1:20). Jesus was filled with Godly wisdom (Luke 2:39). The Septuagint uses sophia (and related terms) to translate Hebrew words derived from חָכַם (ḥākam).” [1]

Blow It Up

“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” (Philippians 1:20)

The word “courage” refers both to boldness and openness. Tie that to the interesting Greek word translated as “exalt,” megalunthesetai. The Greek word starts with the prefix “mega.” The literal meaning is to make large, to make mega.

How do we say that we are making something big? We supersize it. We promote it and publicize it so that it goes viral. In slang, a person or product blows up when it goes big. And you blow up a person’s phone when we call and text over and over. When we want something to go viral, we want it to blow up, but it sounded odd to say we should blow up Christ, yet Paul is saying something like that. Now and always, whether by life or death, I want Christ to be honored, blown up, promoted, magnified, made tremendous, and famous by what I say and do, regardless of my circumstances.

This same word is used in the Greek translation of Psalm 34:3. My wife Tamara and I have Psalm 34:3 engraved inside our wedding bands. It is our call to each other that we had read in our wedding ceremony: “Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.” (Psalm 34:3) In our marriage, we want to honor Christ no matter what.

[1] Nettelhorst, R. P. “Wisdom.” Ed. Douglas Mangum et al. Lexham Theological Wordbook 2014: n. pag. Print. Lexham Bible Reference Series.