Our lives will preach better than anything we can say.” If so, then this is just more bad news, not only because of the statistics we have already seen, which evidence no real difference between Christians and non-Christians, but because despite my best intentions, I am not an exemplary creature. The best examples and instructions— even the best doctrines— will not relieve me of the battle with indwelling sin until I draw my last breath. Find me on my best day— especially if you have access to my hidden motives, thoughts, and attitudes— and I will always provide fodder for the hypocrisy charge and will let down those who would become Christians because they think I and my fellow Christians are the gospel. I am a Christian not because I think that I can walk in Jesus’s footsteps but because he is the only one who can carry me. I am not the gospel; Jesus Christ alone is the gospel. His story saves me, not only by bringing me justification. Conformity to Christ’s image is the process of dying to self and living to God that results from being regularly immersed in the gospel’s story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. That my life is not the gospel is good news both for me and for my neighbors. Because Christ is the Good News, Christians as well as non-Christians can be saved after all. For those who know that they too fall short of the glory that God’s law requires— even as Christians who now have a new heart that loves God’s law— the Good News is not only enough to create faith but to get us back on our feet, assured of our standing in Christ, ready for another day of successes and failures in our discipleship. We do not preach ourselves but Christ. The good news— not only for ourselves, but for a world in desperate need of good news— is that what we say preaches better than our lives, at least if what we are saying is Christ’s person and work rather than our own . The more we talk about Christ as the Bible’s unfolding mystery and less about our own transformation, the more likely we are actually to be transformed rather than either self-righteous or despairing. As much as it goes against our grain, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for justification and sanctification. The fruit of faith is real; it’s just not the same as the fruit of works -righteousness. Yes, there is hypocrisy, and because Christians will always be simultaneously saint and sinner, there will always be hypocrisy in every Christian and in every church. The good news is that Christ saves us from hypocrisy too. But hypocrisy is especially generated when the church points to itself and to our own “changed lives” in the promotional materials. Maybe non-Christians would have less relish in pointing out our failures if we testified in word and deed to our need and God’s gift for sinners like us. If we identified the visibility of the church with the scene of sinners gathered by grace to confess their sins and their faith in Christ, receiving him with open hands, instead of with our busy efforts to be the gospel, we would at least beat non-Christian critics to the punch. We know that we are sinners. We know that we fall short of God’s glory. That’s exactly why we need Christ. I know that many of these brothers and sisters would affirm that we are still sinners and that we still need Christ , but it sure seems to be drowned out by a human -centered focus on our character and actions. Kimball writes that the “ultimate goal of discipleship … should be measured by what Jesus taught in Matthew 22: 37– 40: ‘Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul.’ Are we loving him more? Love others as yourself. Are we loving people more?” I was raised on a steady diet of sermons that ended with a question like this one. A truly radical change in our approach would be to proclaim Christ as the one who fulfilled this law in our place, bore its sentence, and now freely gives us his absolution. Only then, ironically, are we truly liberated to love again. For all of the Emergent Church movement’s incisive critiques, the emphasis still falls on measuring the level of our zeal and activity rather than on immersing people in the greatest story ever told. It may be more earnest, more authentic, and less consumeristic, but how different is this basic message from that of Joel Osteen, for example? Across the board in contemporary American Christianity, that basic message seems to be some form of law (do this) without the gospel (this is what has been done). (Christless Christianity pg. 117-119)
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 03:11:28 +0000
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