Risking Our Lives for Christ's Work

For the works of Christ, Epaphroditus was nigh to death. This work of Christ especially aims at works of mercy to Paul while he was in prison and his long and tedious journey. From these he took a sickness, and thereby was nigh to death. These are called 'the works of Christ' because in the doing of them the aim is Christ's honour. All our actions must be done with having an eye on and a respect to Christ. What if you do any good thing with an eye on credit, or to get popular applause or a good name, without respect of Christ's command, example, and obedience? All that you do in this manner cannot merit the name of a work of Christ. Let us do all things commanded in the second table of the Ten Commandments, as in obedience of the first, to glorify God. Let us do good works thoroughly, though they cost us labour, money, and danger. 'Cursed is he that does the work of the Lord negligently' (Jer. 48:10). Give freely to everyone that Christ sends to you a-begging. 'This is pure religion before God and undefiled, to visit the fatherless and widows' (James 1:27). These things done as they ought to be, will comfort us on our deathbed, and be an assurance to our consciences of our faith.
It may seem Paul was ill advised of the work of Epaphroditus, that he called it a work of Christ, when it might have cost him his life. Yet it ought not to seem strange, for by this very pattern we learn not to avoid or fly from the doing of any work of Christ, though by doing of it we incur danger of our lives. For the best good must take the chief and first place with us; and by how much the soul is more excellent than the body, by so much is the good of the soul to be preferred before the good of the body. God would have us exercise our judgments in these things beforehand. that we may go about all such things with a holy and zealous resolution.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Of the Providence of God, Works, vol. 5, pp. 51-52
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