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So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. ¹⁰ For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Why do we ”aim to please” Jesus? The little word ”For” indicates an important New Testament answer to this question: we are accountable to Him. As R.V.G. Tasker says: ‘…because much is required of those to whom much is given, the thought of the judgment seat of Christ has for the Christian a peculiar solemnity. It is not meant to cloud his prospect of future blessedness, but to act as a stimulus as the most important of human ambitions…It should spur him on to scale the heights of Christian living, and to be always, whether present or absent (i.e. come life, come death) well-pleasing unto his Lord.’

PRAYER: Lord, cause me to want to ‘scale the heights of Christian living’, and help me to fully possess my possessions, entering into all that is possible for a Christian to enjoy here and now. May I never settle for compromised mediocrity.

Thought: ”We have nothing to fear at the judgment seat of Christ except unconfessed sin and lack of true repentance. These things said, I want to live my life as if all that is knowable about me will come out”. R.T. Kendall

So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. ESVUK

This is the essence of the Christian life: aiming to ”please” the Lord. In this world our best efforts will inevitably fall short and be tainted by sin, but one day we will be enabled to fulfil this goal perfectly.

It is clear that, in Paul’s theology, we don’t aim to please the Lord to be accepted by Him. But once we are made right with God through faith in Jesus, wanting to please Him becomes the overflow of the experience. How can we not want to please the One who loves us so much and has treated us so generously?

This is also the heartbeat of someone who knows that he/she is accountable to God (10).

It is a most important question to face honestly: ‘What behaviour on my part is most likely to please the Lord?’ Sometimes we may not be 100% clear about the answer. But I think more often than not we will be – if we are honest with ourselves and God.