A living, loving Savior -- the heart of the gospel!
Are we, as Christians, living our lives not really grasping the gospel?
Even asking if we might be living the Christian life without fully understanding the message of the gospel sounds a bit arrogant and presumptuous.
But one has to wonder when the Bible seems to point to a surprising answer to the question of what we need after salvation.
Consider Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul was so eager to pray to God for the believers there, for their daily life. What did he ask for?
Ephesians 1:16 I do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
He prays that they might increase in their knowledge of Christ, their understanding of what they had been given, and also their understanding of God’s power exercised on their behalf throughout their lives (1:18-19).
He bows his knees again in Ephesians 3 and prays:
Ephesians 3:17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
After salvation, they have to continually more fully grasp the love of Christ (toward them), which is the means by which they will be filled up to all the fullness of God.
This leads to a seemingly basic but radically important foundation: what we need beyond all else, what we need to such a degree that Paul is pleading to God for it not once but twice before he tells the Ephesians to do anything, is an increasing knowledge of who Christ is and what He does.
For those who have faith, this increasing knowledge is what will fill them up to the fullness of God. In fact, it is Christ who “fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23).
This Christ is the central focus of my whole Christian life. He is my Lord, Savior, motivation, hope, help, interceder, covering… my all in all.
All of this is quite before my own actions as a Christian (the first imperative in Ephesians is in chapter 4). There is no question that I do act; my faith produces fruit. But the fruit of my life comes from the outflow of my faith.
And my faith is sustained and grown as I learn more and more of the overwhelming blessing and deep sustaining relationship that I have with my precious Jesus Christ.
His righteousness for my sin, forever. His intercession for me, now. My union with Him, a reality.
So while I yearn to bear fruit, I know that fruit-bearing isn’t the center of the gospel. It’s what happens when I remain in Christ. I really yearn to grow in my understanding of my relationship to Jesus Christ,
Because my Savior is the ongoing center of the gospel through every moment of my life.
Saturday morning I was out running in the rain. I’ve been challenged by a friend to try to run a half-marathon. So there I was, slowly shuffling along, getting drenched, enjoying God’s creation.
Well… ok, I wasn’t enjoying the creation too much because I was striving just to keep going: one more step, one more breath. I’m in such terrible shape that I have to stop every 10-15 minutes or so in order to rest. I jog for a bit in my out-of-shape condition, then I am forced to walk, to breathe and recover. “Rest” is when I just can’t strive anymore.
Exhausted runner as the Christian life? (no, this is not me, he is far too fit!)
In one of my rest periods, I was struck by the thought – is my Christian life this way? I strive against my flesh, the world, and the devil; when I just can’t strive anymore, I have to stop to rest. Is that what grace is – when God gives me a break from the struggle of this exhausting life?
The Bible does seem to portray the Christian life as a running race. There is no doubt that our lives on earth involve effort and striving against sin. 1 Corinthians 9:24 refers to the self-control and discipline that we willingly desire to have as we “run in such a way that we may win.” Romans 8:23 proclaims that we “groan within ourselves,” longing for the coming redemption of our body when Christ returns.
But I’m not talking about that “end of life” rest (eschatological rest) here. I’m talking about my poor fitness. My tiredness in my run, my gasping-for-air need for a break before the end. Oh, I look forward so much to the finish, when I will cease from running, have a cold drink, perhaps even collapse to the ground in relief.
But is there any real “rest” during the run?
One line of theological thinking says – No, there is no rest. Struggle defines the Christian life: keep on striving against your sin. Hebrews 12:4 is sometimes brought up: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Look, this thinking goes, you think you’re tired, but you haven’t actually made enough effort yet. Work harder, don’t think about rest. This is what God requires of you.
The main thought of this line of thinking is that God requires you to run. You don’t get rest. Go!
There seems to be some truth here. Sometimes what I need is more personal effort. I can get lazy, and mentally stop before my body really needs to. Perhaps I underestimate the power over sin that has been given to me in Christ.
But this seems to be a focus on running as a tough, barely-holding-on, joyless slog. Is that really the right emphasis?
Is there real “rest” during the run?
Another line of theological thinking – perhaps a better one – sees the question differently. Instead of seeing periods of striving and periods of non-striving, what if the striving came from an underlying experience of rest? What if running was really restful?
In God’s grace, there seems to be support for saying – the jog is restful.
Look at Matthew 11:28, the great invitation of Jesus Christ: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Hmm. That’s my Savior talking. I’ve come to Him; He promises rest right now. I’m weary and heavy laden, so tired of my sin and my struggle. Could it be that my entire metaphor is wrong… that in a real sense my Christian life is about resting in Christ? About really appropriating the rest that He says He gives?
But, you might argue, there are responsibilities and duties and effort in the Christian life! Yes there are. That’s what Christ is speaking about as He continues:
Matthew 11:29-30: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
There’s work going on in my life. But Jesus doesn’t seem to put that work at odds with the rest that He gives to us right now.
I think, at the end of the day, that my problem is me. I don’t think rightly about my Christian life. My wrong thinking is that it is up to me, and about me, and focused on my striving. As I dwell there I get tired. I think that this is hard, this is heavy. I need a break from the effort that God is requiring of me.
What rest to think – my Christian life is about Christ, focused on His work, His finished striving. Because of this fact, I gladly take His yoke, and surrender all authority and direction and my entire life to Him. I strive to keep that unseen fact a reality in my life. This is the yoke of faith. Not focusing on the one more step, but on the One who ran for me.
With that thought – that I have found rest in Christ – I also find that my life is not really filled with the super-effort on my part that I imagined. I’m fully energized and excitedly desiring to help others find this rest as they also run through life. This yoke is easy. This burden is light. Is this not the perspective of Matthew 11?
This perspective gives Hebrews 12 new light. Right after a whole chapter on faith, the author writes, “Fix your eyes on Jesus.. consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:1,3). I should think – Jesus endured such hostility from me, a sinner. And yet He still loves me. What motivation.
Then, v. 4: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” No, I have not. But I know Someone who has. In striving against my sin, Jesus shed blood. So I am absolutely secure in Him. And the circumstances that happen to me will not shake me from that knowledge. I won’t think of God as wrathfully judging my sin (which has already been paid for by Christ). I can rest in the yoke of my Savior.
And this gives me rest as I strive against the sin of the world against me, which is the point of v. 4 (it is parallel to v. 3, Jesus bearing up under other’s sin). My difficult experiences don’t drain me – I’m resting in the blood of Christ. This gives me rest because I know that God isn’t whipping me or punishing me but lovingly shaping and molding and teaching me.
A better metaphor, I hope, sees all of jogging as restful. Even through the striving. Jogging is a time to pray, a time to wonder at creation, a time to think on form and a time to have victory. A time to strive, not in a out-of-breath-I-have-nothing-left way, but in the body of one who is supremely fit and able. That’s not just me in a little bit better shape, but in my Savior.
Now if only my physical body would get the message that jogging is restful.
My parents blessed our family with a beautiful new computer for Christmas. The PC runs Vista, which I’ve never had as an operating system before. One interesting little feature is the “computer index” which it assigns your machine. It gives your computer a rating in a variety of different areas, like processor speed, graphics speed, amount of memory, etc, and then gives you an overall rating.
Why this is interesting to me is that the overall rating isn’t actually based on a median of your individual ratings. I’d expected, say, a processor rating of 7, a graphics rating of 3, and a memory rating of 5, so that my overall rating was 5.
High rating + Low rating = Low rating?
Instead, the overall rating is simply your lowest rating. In the example above, my computer would have a rating of 3, because that’s the lowest score. It doesn’t matter that your processor rating was 7; it focuses on the lowest rating.
It makes sense, in a performance sort of way. It echoes what my collegiate athletics coach used to say to our rowing team: “You’re only as fast as your slowest man.” If you have something hindering you, everything else screeches to a halt until that hindrance is improved.
So here’s the question that comes to mind: is this the Christian life?
I’m tempted to at least concede that I usually think this way. When I’m struggling with an area, that’s what I focus in on, that’s how I “rate” how I’m doing as a Christian. If I’m struggling with anger in one area, I forget about the fruit of love or kindness or patience and just focus in on my inability to have victory over my anger.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. One godly saint I know, who spends his life on good works and humble living (I know, I know, externals, but still), recently confessed his lack of assurance and struggle because he is not a good evangelist. Whether the issue is stumbling in dieting, a wayward child, an anger issue, or marital conflict, we seem to find our focus in our failures.
Discouragement is one result; even in mature Christians who have much fruit, difficulty in a particular area can seem to stop us in our tracks, rob our assurance, make every other fruit of little consequence.
I’m thinking that this performance-based Windows Vista model is not a good one for me as a believer, though I tend to drift there.
I’m not suggesting that ongoing sin is inconsequential (it’s not), nor am I suggesting that you can just jaunt along in sin uncaringly (sin should grieve the Christian, if you don’t care then you aren’t understanding your relationship with Christ).
My thinking of my walk with Christ and in Christ may be better seen by taking a step back from the tree of my failure and seeing the forest of my life. For example, in Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Should I not praise God for joy, kindness, and gentleness that the Spirit works through me (wonder!) as well as working on the patience that I don’t yet seem to have?
It leads me to think that perhaps some of my sin-focus (and certainly my discouragement because of it) is actually pride. Do I require perfection to prove something to myself? To other people? To God?
Rather than a lowest common denominator approach, perhaps I really should be training my mind and heart in highest common denominator thinking. Because my righteousness, my adoption, my inheritance, and all that I am are really as a result of that highest common denominator: Jesus Christ. My faith (also a gift) in Him is what will allow me to stand forever, united with Him.
As Paul writes in Ephesians:
Ephesians 3:17-19: So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Filled up to all the fullness of God; that sounds like a pretty high rating; that rating comes as Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, and we comprehend the incredible depth of the love of Christ.
Such amazing grace! May we marvel that He produces anything good in us at all!
One of my favorite verses at Christmas is Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isn’t it amazing that over 700 years before Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to earth, Isaiah prophesied of His coming, and looked even further ahead to the establishing of His kingdom? Isn’t it wonderful to celebrate the inauguration of that kingdom — the coming of the King — this season. Our precious Savior, come to earth? We look forward to the time when He will establish His kingdom of peace and justice forever.
This amazing promise of a coming Savior has special meaning to us because we have been grafted into such a salvation (Romans 11:17), so that the “us” here in Isaiah 9:6 really does include Christians. Christ is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace to you and to me, and we rejoice in remembering the birth of our Savior.
Isaiah 9 is part of a section from Isaiah 8-12, which is interesting because of what the section contains. Chapter 8 sets the stage for setting your hope entirely in God, even though hard times are coming. Then chapter 9 about the coming Messiah (Jesus!). Chapter 10 echoes chapter 8 in saying the Lord will establish His remnant, even in the face of the coming invasion; Chapter 11 echoes chapter 9 in extolling the coming Branch of Jesse, and the peace He will bring.
All four of these chapters are essentially “indicative,” meaning that they state what is coming, they state what is true, and don’t contain specific commands, or “imperatives.”
These four chapters are fantastic, encouraging news. But what should my response be? What is the primary task, the effective doing, of God’s people based on this incredible news — that God will (and has!) sent His Son, and that He will rule over us in peace and righteousness?
The answer is in the final chapter of the section, Isaiah 12. Like so many other portions of God’s Word, the imperative (“do this”) follows the indicative (“this is true”). In this season of remembering the coming of the King, may we also remember our primary response, here in Isaiah 12: praise.
Here’s the whole chapter, all 6 verses:
The first two verses are in the singular — an individual response:
You will say in that day:
I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though You were angry with me,
Your anger turned away, that You might comfort me.
“Behold, God is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid;
for the Lord God is my strength and my song,
and He has become my salvation.”
The last four verses are plural — our collective response:
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
And you will say in that day:
“Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name;
make known His deeds among the peoples,
proclaim that His name is exalted.”
“Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously;
let this be made known in all the earth.
Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,
for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
This is what to do, Christian, based on the coming of your king in a manger in Bethlehem:
Individually, give thanks, trust, don’t be afraid
All who come, joyously draw water from salvation’s wells
Corporately, give thanks, call upon His name, proclaim His deeds and name
Together, sing praises, shout, sing for joy
This Christmas, let us individually and together praise Him!
We have so much to be joyful about this season, as we remember the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Child born, the Son given. May we also respond as Isaiah proscribes, with thanks, singing, praise and proclamation, because of the wondrous salvation that has been given to us, in grace, by and through our Prince of Peace.
(Today’s thoughts were stimulated by reading Sinclair Ferguson’s In Christ Alone, a wonderful and highly recommended book of short essays on our union with Christ.)
One of the laments that resounds through the Christian circles during this season is the commercialization of Christmas. There is so much marketing, so much materialism, so much in our
Santa Christ?
culture that seems to focus on ourselves and our excesses, and not upon Jesus. It is a rare year that we do not face the call to “bring Christ back into Christmas.”
This returning of Christ into Christmas is a wonderful sentiment, and a true one. We as a society are too materialistic, do focus on the self-fulfillment of gifts and buying and lights and trees. In many ways, there is little difference from how someone who does not know Jesus celebrates Christmas from someone who does.
As we look out at the Christian landscape, there is even a further concerning thought: our conception of Santa often mirrors how we think of Jesus.
Think of common Christmas songs, such as:
“He knows when you’ve been sleeping, He knows when you’re awake;
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake”
The “he” there is Santa, but for many of us, it might as well be Jesus. Try this on for size:
“Jesus knows when you’ve been sleeping, Jesus knows when you’re awake;
Jesus knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake”
Does that seem to be your experience? Our Lord knows everything you do, so you better be good, or you won’t get any presents. If you’ve done the best you can, then perhaps Jesus will condescend to bless you with the blessing you most desire. Or perhaps He’ll overlook a few of the stumbles and sins if you make every effort for some period of time to do good, to act rightly, to be righteous.
And that last phrase is the real problem. There we go again, slipping into the “I can be good on my own” thinking that is the antithesis of the gospel. What makes me think that I have the capacity to “be good,” and that really, really trying is going to mean something? If Jesus has the characteristics of Santa, watching me to see if I deserve blessing, evaluating me to decide if I’m worth giving good things to, then I’m lost.
Sinclair Ferguson identifies Santa Christology as what it is, semi-pelagianism: “The only difference from medieval theology here is that we do not use its Latin phraseology: facere quot in se est (to do what one is capable of doing on one’s own, or, in common parlance, ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’).”
Christ and Santa are not friends. They have wildly different worldviews, and not in the way that we commonly think. It is not only that Santa is all about presents, gifts, and flying reindeer. Even more concerning is that Santa is about evaluating the wrong goodness — ours.
Christ does no such thing. He came to earth, humbled himself as a child, conceived before wedlock, born in utter poverty, his family fleeing from an evil king. He lived a life of perfect obedience, of utmost righteousness in every attitude and thought. He out of utmost love gave up his intimate fellowship with God the Father, bearing the sin of every believer on the cross, so that we might have His righteousness by faith.
Blessing upon blessing upon blessing has been poured out on us, believer. Not because we’ve been careful to have external goodness, but because we are associated with the Son, we are “in Christ.” O may the skies proclaim it, may the earth rejoice, may our mouths open in awe and wonder and worship of the Messiah come to earth!
As God’s people, then, we should be full of wonder and adoration of what Christ has done in this season, and not simply (as heartwarming as it is) focused on family times and warm feelings in feet, toes, and heart as we fellowship around the Christmas tree. We don’t Christianize a secular holiday, but we have a whole different reason to be wondrously adoring; O look and see what has been done!
In Mary’s words (Luke 1:46-47,49):
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
There is no Santa Christ in this; only Christ, the babe come to earth… may our spirits rejoice, may we magnify the Lord this season in what the One who is mighty has done for us!
