Don't you hate how everything you buy requires for you to submit an email address? And inevitably your email inbox is full of every product and company throwing their junk at you. Well Monday I had one of those emails and to my dismay the subtitle caught my eye and I started reading. Monday March 30th was national "I am in Control Day". This company's advice to me via their ad, was for me to take control over my life by following this essential rule "Put Yourself First". Wow! This is the world's solution to life's problems, take control of your life by putting yourself first. If we all followed this logic, where would we end up? If Christ had followed this logic and passed it on to his disciples, what would the church be like? What of Christianity?

But this isn't what Christ said or did, quite the opposite. Philippians 2:1-11, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

God's answer to a fallen, self-absorbed humanity was to send His son who would in turn lay his life down for sinners. The righteous gave his life for the unrighteous. A master humbled himself as a servant. A Son obedient to his Father-even to the point of death.

This Easter let's give up the notion of control and putting ourselves first and instead entrust ourselves fully to the God who "shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" Romans 5:8.