Who is your witness?

“You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed.”

(1Thess 2:10NIV)

Our Lord Jesus, once while teaching His disciples, said to them, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:14-16NIV) What does the Lord call His disciples here? Light! And what is light? Light is anything that makes things visible, anything that shows the true conditions of things.

Therefore, anyone who is a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ will a life that will continually make the truth about God and all things known to those in his world. And the Lord wants him to take living like this very seriously. So, He says, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Did you see that? The Lord wants His disciples to live their lives in this world in such a way that there will be witnesses all around them to say that they are truly light and to glorify God on their behalf.

What this means, then, is that it is not enough for us to say that we are God’s children or Christians; there must also be enough people all around us that will be ready to voluntarily testify that we are Christians indeed. This, of course, is not to say that we are to live for the sole purpose of getting people’s commendations. People’s commendations about us are only relevant to the degree that they agree with God’s commendations about us. Nevertheless, God Himself wants us to live our lives in such a way that those around us, who may not even like us or embrace righteousness, will have no problem testifying that our Christianity is authentic, to the glory and praise of His name.

Now we see this illustrated in what Paul says in our opening bible text to the Thessalonian brethren about his life and ministry among them. As he points out, God was not the only witness to the holy and blameless lives he and his ministry associates lived among them; they too were witnesses to these things. So, if anybody wanted to him to provide witnesses to testify about the reality of his being a child of God and minister of Christ, he was certain that he would have no problem calling on the brethren in Thessalonica to speak for him.

In like manner, we too should not be children of God only by words of mouth; instead, there should be sufficient witnesses where we live, work, do business or study that will stand as ready witnesses to the reality of our being children of God. What I am saying is that it is not only God that should know us as His children; those in our world or in our lives also should be able to tell through what they have seen in us that we are truly His children.

But is this the case with you and me? Who really is my witness that I am a child of God, one who deserves to be persecuted or praised for the practice of righteousness? Who really is my witness that I can be trusted with people, money or position? Is God the only witness I have? Or do I also have people here and there who have seen and heard enough about me to be able to voluntarily say to others, “If what you are looking for is a child of God, then, take him. Otherwise, look elsewhere?”

See, if God is the only witness to the genuineness of our Christianity, then, it means that we are not shining our light as we ought to. And we need to do something about it before our identity as ‘the light of this world’ is totally lost. So, let us wake from our slumber and shine the light. And as we persist in doing so, it won’t be long before people will be rising here and there to say of us, “This one belongs to God. And I am a witness to it.”

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By: J.O. Lawal | Date: October 07, 2020 | Series: Youth for Jesus | Number: Vol. 3, No. 21