Achievement

A Kingdom Perspective on Significance

Jesus wants His followers to evaluate turbulent times of change (Mark 13:33) not just from the perspective of history, but even more from the perspective of His kingdom. As believers, we are citizens of eternity. Therefore, our confidence needs to be rooted in something far more important than our positions and achievements here and now. It's not that the here and now has no importance. But as we live our lives, God wants us to be loyal workers for His kingdom, serving the people He sends our way.

Is your significance tied too closely to achievements—building buildings, reaching business goals, acquiring material possessions, climbing career ladders? There's nothing inherently wrong with these. But if you lost them, would your confidence completely crumble? If your sense of worth depends on them, what happens when you reach the top of the ladder, only to discover that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall?

The problem is that our world has a system of values that is upside down from the way God determines value. It lacks any sense of what Scripture describes as “calling”.or what Christians later termed “vocation”—a perspective that God has called and equipped people to serve Him through their work in the world. Instead, our culture encourages us to climb a work/identity ladder that is ultimately self-serving, and often self-destructive.

Climbing that ladder can be very misleading. The higher one goes, the more one's identity, value, and security tend to depend on the nature of one's work. But what happens if we lose our position, titles, or high-level compensation? Perhaps this explains why severe emotional problems—drug and alcohol abuse, abuse of spouse and children, divorce, even suicide—often accompany job loss. If our significance relies on our job, then it dies with our job.

God calls us to a far more stable basis for significance. He wants us to establish our identity in the fact that we are His children, created by Him to carry out good works as responsible people in His kingdom (Eph. 2:10). This is our calling or vocation from God. According to Scripture, our calling:

• is irrevocable (Rom. 11:29).
• is from God; He wants to let us share in Christ's glory (2 Thess. 2:14).
• is a function of how God has designed us (Eph. 2:10).
• is an assurance that God will give us everything we need to serve Him, including the strength to remain faithful to Him (1 Cor. 1:7–9).
• is what we should be proclaiming as our true identity (1 Pet. 2:5, 9).
• carries us through suffering (1 Pet. 2:19–21).
• is rooted in peace, no matter what the circumstances in which we find ourselves (1 Cor. 7:15–24).
• is focused on eternal achievements, not merely temporal ones (Phil. 3:13–4:1).

Above all else, believers are called to character development, service to others, and loyalty to God. These can be accomplished wherever we live or work, whatever our occupational status or position in society. If we pursue these, we can enjoy great satisfaction and significance. No matter what happens on the job, we can join Paul in saying, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

Success

To what extent should Christ's followers today pursue success? The declaration of John the Baptist that “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30) seems to repudiate the idea of personal achievement, recognition, or material gain—common measures of success in our society. Indeed, John himself showed none of the outward trappings of a successful ministry.

So should believers avoid success as the world defines it? Can people be successful in their careers as well as in their spiritual lives, or are the two mutually exclusive? Some Christians say that success on the job creates credibility for them to talk about Christ with coworkers. Others, however, claim that they have no interest in being successful. But is that a genuine conviction, or are they merely avoiding the rough-and-tumble of a competitive marketplace?

Questions like these barely scratch the surface of the complex, emotional issue of success. The people of Jesus' day were no less interested in prospering than we are, even if they defined success in slightly different terms. So it's not surprising that Scripture speaks to human ambition and achievement. It seems to affirm at least three important principles, as illustrated by John the Baptist:

Success is always measured by a set of standards established by some person or group. Many people of John's day felt that they were assured of the blessing of God simply because they were descendants of Abraham. Their religious leaders aggressively promoted and reinforced that idea (Matt. 3:7–9; Luke 3:8; John 8:39). John challenged them to reconsider that way of thinking. What mattered, he said, was faith in Jesus. That was the ultimate criterion by which God would measure people's lives. Thus, unbelief would result in the ultimate failure—eternal death (3:36).

Why and how we pursue success is just as important as whether or not we achieve it. John's listeners were ordinary people caught up in the everyday scramble to get ahead. But in their pursuit of gain they tended to ignore the needs of others and to take ethical shortcuts. John challenged them to make internal changes (that is, to repent) and to demonstrate those changes in their day-to-day responsibilities through charity, honesty, and justice (Luke 3:8, 10–14).

Obtaining success always carries a cost. John warned the people of God's judgment using a simple, well-known image: “Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9). Just as a lumberjack would lay his ax at the foot of a tree while he decided which trees in a forest to cut, so God had sent John and Jesus as His final messengers before letting His judgment fall.

The people could choose what they wanted to do. But either way, there would be a cost involved. For John, the cost of faithfully proclaiming his message was imprisonment and, eventually, execution (Matt. 14:1–12). Yet he gained a treasure all out of proportion to the price of martyrdom—the praise of Christ (11:7–11).

So should believers pursue success? Judging from the experience of John the Baptist and the people who followed him, the issue seems to be not so much whether we should pursue it, but how. In light of John's message, it's worth considering three crucial questions:

• Who sets the standards by which I measure success?
• What are my motives and behavior in pursuing success?
• What price am I willing to pay to achieve success?