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(John 10:10) to draw sinners to the Savior? True, the Christian life is full. Consider the life of Paul. Read 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 and see if you think he was bored while being stoned (once), shipwrecked (three times), beaten (three times), and whipped (five times). His life was full. There were also times he wasn’t happy. In fact, at one point he was in such despair that he wanted to die (2 Corinthians 1:8).
    The apostle gives the carnal-minded Corinthians a glimpse of the abundant life. He told them that he had been condemned to death. He was hungry and thirsty. He lacked clothing. He was beaten and had nowhere to live. Even with his established ministry, he was forced to work with his hands. He was reviled, persecuted, slandered, and treated as the filth of the world. What a terrible, uninviting path Paul walked down. One would think that he would put up a sign saying, “Don’t enter here.” However, he did the opposite. He told the Corinthians to imitate him (1 Corinthians 4:9-16).
    Where is God's Love?
    How was it, then, that the apostle Paul knew God loved him? As we have seen, he was whipped, beaten, stoned, and so depressed that at one point he wanted to die. He was mocked, hated, shipwrecked, imprisoned for years, and then finally martyred. What did he look to for assurance of God’s love for him?
    He didn’t look at his lifestyle because, to the un-learned eye, it didn’t exactly speak of God’s caring hand for him. His “abundant” life was certainly full, but it wasn’t full of what we think it should have been, if God loved him. Picture Paul, lying half-naked on a cold dungeon floor, chained to hardened Roman guards. Look at his bloody back and his bruised, swollen face. “Paul, you’ve been beaten again. Where are your friends? De-mas and the others have forsaken you. Where is your expensive char- iot and your successful building program? Where is the evidence of God’s blessing, Paul?” you taunt. “What’s that? What did you say? Did I hear you mumble through swollen lips that God loves you?” Paul slowly lifts his head. His blackened, bruised eyes look deeply into yours. They sparkle as he says two words: “... the cross!” He pain-fully reaches into his blood-Soaked tunic and carefully pulls out a large letter he had been writing in his own hand. His trembling and blood - stained finger points to one sentence in particular. You strain your eyes in the dim light and read, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, emphasis added).
    Those who look to the cross as a token of God’s love will never doubt His steadfast devotion to them.
    That was the source of Paul’s joy and thus his strength: “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross” (Galatians 6:14). Those who come through the door of seeking happiness in Christ will think that their happiness is evidence of God’s love. They may even think that God has forsaken them when trials come and their happiness leaves. But those who look to the cross as a token of God’s love will never doubt His steadfast devotion to them.
    If the “abundant” life means something different from a “happy” life, who is going to listen if we are blatantly honest about the trials of living “godly in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:12)? Certainly not as many as are attracted by the talk of a wonderful plan. What, then, is the answer to this dilemma?

 
    CHAPTER 4
    THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW
    W ho on earth is going to embrace our message if we don’t use the promise of an abundant, wonderful new life in Christ? The answer to our dilemma is simply to do what Jesus did. It seems that the whole of the contemporary Church is running around with placards, T-shirts, stickers, books, wristbands, etc., asking the question “What Would Jesus Do?” They ask this for