Guest article written by Daniel C. Wilson, keynote blogger at DesireSpiritualGrowth.com
There is no one so useless as the one who is lukewarm, content, comfortable, and safe behind a buffer of outer holiness.
Trying to remedy this by focusing on living “right” can feed this unusable stratagem. When we focus on living “right,” we inevitably miss out on a passionate pursuit of Christ.
Not only that, but our pursuit of right living empties our life of the spiritual power that ought to be filling our life.
What are you zealous for?
Do you lack zeal for prayer? For missions? For church? For Bible study?
If so, the problem is not a lack of information or focus on those activities.
We tend to define our purpose in terms of what we do, but that hamstrings us because the only way to be filled with a proper passion for prayer, missions, church, and Bible study is to have the heart of Christ.
We get the heart of Christ not by focusing primarily on those activities, but by focusing on Christ Himself.
As Tim Dearborn wrote,
“The church does not exist for mission. It exists for the Lord Jesus Christ. To set mission before the church as its essential reason for existence is to risk focusing devotion on an idol…we dare not make something we do the justification of our existence. Lack of interest in mission is not fundamentally caused by an absence of compassion or commitment, nor by lack of information or exhortation. And lack of interest is not remedied by more shocking statistics, more gruesome stories or more emotionally manipulative commands to obedience. It is best remedied by intensifying people’s passion for Christ, so that the passions of his heart become the passions that propel our hearts.”
Even something as noble sounding as prayerful, missional living is useless apart from Christ.
It is a show, sham, and shame when Christians – me included – act as if there is a magical list of activities to master in order to be super spiritual.
Focusing on the result rather than the reason is as senseless as a bride prizing her ring above the groom himself.
Right living vs. Right loving
It is this passionate, whole-hearted love that sets the Pharisee and the believer apart. The Pharisee mastered right living but was not filled with love for God.
As Paul wrote in Philipians 3, the Pharisaical lifestyle is rubbished compared to gaining Christ as our righteousness.
Don’t neglect the mission or other elements of Christian living. But they are not what it means to be Christian⎯they are only an outpouring of the relationship a Christian monopolizes in his or her life.
The Effect of Sanctification in Christian Living
We can’t change who we are by changing what we do…but when the gospel changes who we are, it does change what we do.
Get focused on behavior without a heart change, and you’re stuck in moralism/legalism.
Get focused on salvation with no works…then your faith is dead, grace looks cheap, and there’s the mythical justification without sanctification.
The essence of our salvation is life-transforming union with God in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
As the bride rivets her eyes on the groom, so we, the Church, must lock our eyes on the Author and Perfecter of our faith. The rest of our life flows from that holy union.
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Thanks for the post, Daniel. Great job!
I love how you point out that we tend to define our purpose in terms of what we do, rather than focusing on Christ Himself in order to find who we truly are in Him.
If you ask ten people to build a boat, you’re going to get ten different boats unless you give them a set of specific instructions. The same can be said for asking people to “live right.”
I’ve seen people whose concept of “living right” meant they were perfectly OK with multiple partners of both genders as long as it was consensual, condoned abortion, and truly believed that they had a clear conscience because they were vegan. I’ve met others whose definition of “living right” was to remain at home with their parents while working a minimum-wage job to support their online gaming habit, never left the house during the daytime unless it was on fire, and whose primary source of nutriment was Slim Jims and Rock Star energy drinks.
Unless a person is given a blueprint (in this case, the Bible,) they’re going to have vastly different ideas of what “living right” involves. When Jesus speaks of Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, He’s revealing Himself as that perfect blueprint; the Word incarnate.
Yes. What you said.
It’s amazing that many times we profess belief in the Bible, yet have no clue what it says about our lives and how we should live.
I’ve heard that far too often. That’s why I love what Daniel said about sanctification near the end of his post here.