Significant Others

 You are probably familiar with the phrase "significant others." It has come to stand for someone of great significance in your life, with a higher emphasis on someone with whom you share your life. It has been used in place of words like spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, or fiance, and carries with it a connotation of some kind of commitment. The other person is "significant" in your life. They matter. What they think matters. What they do matters. You relish having them around.

This phrase is reserved for that special person close to you. Most people that would use the phrase likely wouldn't ever speak of "significant others", with an emphasis on making it plural. Why is that? Well, the more you add that are supposed to be significant, the less significant each one becomes, or at least that is the idea. There is a whole realm of difference in significance to telling one person, "You are the one for me," and telling two different people, "You each are one of the ones for me."

I believe that is why we have such a tough time really relating to what Paul writes in Philippians 2:3-4. "Do nothing from selfish ambition 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." For most people, if we can find one person in life for whom we can put our interests aside and look to theirs, that is challenge enough. Introducing others into that equation really seems to open the door for us to be taken advantage of time and time again. If we are always looking to the good of others, when will good happen for us? 

Believe me, I get this. It's not easy to set aside our own wants and desires to seek to do good for others, especially when that comes at a price for ourselves. Counting others as more significant than ourselves seems foolish. It seems like we have little dignity for ourselves, and there is no room to protect ourselves from others. And in this world where there are broken people who have fallen into sin by their nature, that is most certainly the case.

Yet, I challenge you to consider something for a moment. Let's look first to the "significant other" that you have in your life, if God has given you one. If that person lived putting your interests above their own, and then you did the same toward them, when would either of you actually be lacking anything? If you went out of your way to please the other, to do things for the benefit of the other, and knew that the other was doing the exact same thing for you, what would be the danger? Wouldn't you instead be reveling in how much each of you cared for the other, and marveling at the expressions of care you were privileged to share?

Yes, what Paul writes about here is on the idealistic side. It's the perfection that will only be found in the new creation, when Jesus makes all things new. And yet, as God's re-created people, we aren't redeemed to simply wait for that new creation before we start doing this. We are called to do it now, and to do it even when it doesn't make sense. Yes, in a world of broken sinful people, we will need to be on our guard and to act wisely, but we aren't exempt from doing this. The Spirit did inspire this for a reason. And yes, we still uphold the order of creation that God has given to us as we do that. We realize that we must speak of what God does not call for as well as that for which He does call. Yet, even as we do that, we do so as if the other was of greater significance than ourselves. 

This makes all other people "significant others" in the eyes of a Christian. We truly will never run out of opportunities to show this type of care and concern for others, and will miss far more opportunities than we could ever imagine. Yet, my hope is that reading this helps you notice a few more in your life, so that you can grow in seeing those "significant others" that God is placing in your life right now.