Day 10

The Death of Reputation

Today's Scripture: Philippians 2:5–7 (NLT)

There is a phrase tucked into the middle of Paul's letter to the Philippians that, if you let it land in your soul, will reorder your whole understanding of what it means to follow Christ. He says of Jesus that He "made himself of no reputation." The Greek behind that phrase is the word kenoo — He emptied Himself. The eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, the One by whom all things were made, looked at His reputation — His status, His glory, His rank, His honor — and emptied it. He laid it down. He walked away from it. Not because it was not His. It was His by every right of eternity. He laid it down because the salvation of the world required a Savior whose hands were free of His own glory.

If the Son of God laid down His reputation to save you, what makes you think yours is so essential that you cannot lay it down to follow Him?

The reputation self is one of the most subtle and powerful selves that must die in the believer's life. It is the self that lives by the question, what will they think of me? It is the self that performs religion for the approval of the watching crowd. It is the self that measures every decision not by, "is this faithful?" but by, "how will this look?" It is the self that recoils from any obedience that might cost it standing among its peers — even when the obedience is the very thing God has clearly asked.

This self is so deeply embedded in us that we often cannot see it operating. We tell ourselves we are being prudent, wise, careful with how we represent the faith. And sometimes, we are. There is a legitimate stewardship of witness. But mixed in with our prudence is almost always something else — a fear of looking foolish, a hunger to be respected, a longing to be admired by the same world we claim to have crucified. And that mixed-in thing is the reputation self. It needs to die.

Think of what believers in the New Testament had to do to follow Christ. They walked away from synagogues where they had been respected leaders. They lost standing in families where their names had been honored. They were called atheists by the Romans for refusing to worship Caesar. They were called blasphemers by the Jews for confessing Jesus as Lord. They were treated, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:13, as "the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things." This was the cost of following the One who made Himself of no reputation. The reputation of the followers was crucified along with their Lord's.

And we, in our day, often want a discipleship that costs us nothing in reputation. We want to follow Christ without offending anyone's sensibilities. We want to be faithful and respected. We want to confess Christ in our churches and in our private prayers but not in the spaces where the confession might actually cost us something. We want a cross that does not embarrass us in front of our friends, our colleagues, our family, our social circles. And we wonder why our discipleship has so little fire.

The early church burned bright in part because the believers had already given up trying to look good in front of the world that hated their Lord. They had nothing left to protect. They were free. They could speak the truth, do the right thing, suffer for righteousness, and rejoice in it, because there was no reputation left to lose. The cross had taken it. The Spirit had filled the empty space. And the world saw something it had never seen before — people who could not be controlled because they could not be shamed.

This is what is at stake when we put the reputation self to death. We are not aiming for a deliberate offensiveness, a contrarian posture that picks fights for the sake of picking them. We are aiming for a freedom — the freedom to obey God without first checking whether the obedience will be popular. The freedom to speak the truth without first calculating whether the truth will be applauded. The freedom to live for the audience of One, knowing that His verdict is the only one that will outlast this short, loud, opinion-saturated age.

Make yourself of no reputation today. Empty the self that has been quietly filling itself with the praise of people. Walk in the freedom of the One who walked the dirty roads of Galilee in a borrowed cloak, with nowhere to lay His head, and yet shook the world.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, You who emptied Yourself of glory to save me — give me the grace to empty myself of reputation to follow You. Crucify in me the self that lives for the opinion of others. Free me from the chains of needing to be admired, respected, approved. Let me walk in the freedom of those who fear no verdict but Yours. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Identify one place in your life where the fear of what people will think has been quietly steering your decisions. Today, in that one place, deliberately choose obedience to God over the protection of your reputation. Let the small choice be the start of a larger freedom.

"The believer who has emptied his reputation 

has nothing left for the world to use against him."