Exploring Christianity?

These are just some of the things that I have come to find compelling, inspiring, hopeful, exciting, and good news in my faith journey with Jesus. I start this entry with some more head level, logical points about the validity of Jesus’ claims to be God and his resurrection. I definitely do not flesh out these points or defend them in full because that is not the point of this entry and you can read many books on this. I would recommend More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell, and Reason for God, by Tim Keller to start with. Then I move into more heart level, personal issues to wrestle with in coming to faith. Again, it is not a complete document on all the good news of Jesus, just some thoughts. So take it for what it’s worth! After you read this, I hope you will dive into the Bible yourself and ask God to reveal Himself to you as you read. I would recommend starting with the Gospel of John. You can read a short "birds eye view" commentary on this gospel by a pastor named Ray Stedman here.

The first and most important question to start with in exploring Christianity is: what do I think about the person of Jesus? Who was/is he? Were his claims to be God legit? Did he really raise from the dead? Are his teachings relevant to my life today? I heard a quote once, “if you take Christ out of Christian, all you have left is Ian, and there is not a lot he can do for you:)” ha! In short, being a Christian means to trust in, hope in, and follow the person of Jesus. How can we trust in, hope in, and follow (obey) him if we don’t actually believe he is God or that he rose from the dead or that he has the most important things to say about the most important topics to human life, existence, and reality?

So to start: 

PART ONE:

A few Historical and Evidence based reasons to put my trust in the person of Jesus:

• To begin, the New Testament, (essentially the record of Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and resurrection, and letters/instructions by the apostles to the early Christians), is a reliable historical document that meets the gold standard of historical reliability because it was all written within one generation of when Jesus lived by eye witness accounts of people who lived and walked with Jesus and saw Him post resurrection. The only people who were able to write "Scripture" were the apostles--the ones who spent the most time with Jesus (minus Paul, though all of the disciples affirmed Paul's teachings and his apostleship, so this proves that he was legit), and who saw the risen Christ (which includes the apostle Paul). We can also trust the passing down of Scripture from generation to generation because there are many manuscripts from over the centuries (many very early manuscripts as well) to confirm that the text has stayed the same. What critics say about text change is predominantly grammatical and does not change any of the essential beliefs or overall thoughts.
• Jesus claimed to be God many times throughout his ministry, and this is the very reason that he was crucified. He made claims to deity and that he was the only source of salvation and forgiveness of sins, which that Jewish culture knew only God could claim. His very name Jesus means “Jehovah Savior” and “the Lord saves,” and Christ is derived from the Greek word Messiah and means “anointed one”. The name Christ also indicates two titles: priest and king. This title affirms Jesus as the promised priest and king of Old Testament prophecy. He was crucified for blasphemy, claiming to be God, so Jesus was either lying, crazy, or telling the truth. He leaves no room for anyone to think of him as a good teacher or a prophet, for a good teacher or a prophet from God would not be a liar or a delusional person. This claim to be God sets Christianity apart from all other religions. Jesus is the only central figure and founder of a religion who claimed to be God. Every other religion was founded by people either claiming to be prophets or messengers from God, or not even claiming that. It is good news to me that these claims are so weighty, that in a sense they can be validated or denied more easily than someone claiming to be a messenger from God. If Jesus was actually telling the truth, there are so many things that would need to line up with that claim to prove it (and they do), otherwise, we can quickly conclude that he was delusional. On the contrary, how do we test the claims of a "messenger from God"? This seems more fuzzy and harder to "prove" or "disprove" in order to know if it is to be trusted as true spiritual truth and reality about deep human questions and matters, like what happens after we die? I ultimately would like to have some sound answers from God himself to that question, and in Jesus we do. In addition to this, if God is real, the only way we can know Him is if he reveals himself to us. In Jesus, we have a visible, tangible expression of the invisible God. We can know things about God, reality, spiritual truth, ourselves and our value, and important questions more surely and soundly because of the revelation of Jesus. This lines up with the character of who I know God to be, a personal loving God who wants to be known by His creation.
• In the first century Jewish context, a crucified messiah was a failed messiah (and no messiah at all) because the Jews were expecting an earthly King; a victorious, reigning political leader who would free the Jews from the bondage to the Romans and restore Israel to an independent nation. He would set up his Kingdom on earth and usher in a complete renewal and "age to come" characterized by a reversal and final triumph over physical death, sin, evil, injustice, and suffering. (*From Scripture, the Jews understood all of history to be divided into two "ages," or time periods: they were (literally translated) "this present age" and "the age to come." The "present age" is characterized by physical and spiritual death, sin, evil, injustice, suffering, and the "age to come" is characterized by complete redemption and reversal of all of those things. The Jews sole expectation was that "Messiah" would usher in the "age to come" and the "present age" would be done; thus, Messiah would become the king and set up his Kingdom on earth to join the heavenly dimension with the earthly. To read more about this in another post, click here.) So when Jesus was crucified, the apostles were scared and hiding. They were crushed because they thought the plan had failed since Jesus had not become the earthly King. But then, a few days later, all of the disciples claimed to see Jesus in a real body, alive, talking to them, eating with them, etc. along with five hundred other people’s claims to see Him (1 Corinth. 15). Not only did they claim to see Him three days after he was put to death, but their lives radically changed. They all went out to boldly preach the good news that Jesus was put to death but raised on the third day, and that he was indeed the God and Savior of the world. They all eventually died martyrs deaths, which means they were put to death because they would not stop preaching or deny their faith in Jesus as the good and loving God of the world. (In that historical context, everyone declared "Caesar is Lord," but the Christians declared "Jesus is Lord," which was a direct opposition and threat to the "powers that be." Thus the early Christians were greatly persecuted). So if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, the disciples would have known it, and no one would die for a lie knowing that it was a lie. Sure people might have died for a lie before, but they did not think it was a lie. No one dies for a lie knowing it is a lie; they at least believe in whatever they are willing to die for. If the disciples really had not seen the risen Christ in a real body, they would have obviously known they were lying. The transformation of the disciples lives, and the fact that they were all heavily persecuted and ultimately killed for preaching about Jesus, gives the resurrection account a lot of credibility. Can you think of a more compelling alternative for why they would have done such a thing or why Christianity would have started spreading like wildfire in the face of intense persecution? I think it takes more faith to believe it was all just a lie. Watch the following 2 minute video by Biblical scholar and historian NT Wright about the historical resurrection of Christ here. Definitely worth the watch!
• After Jesus was crucified and put in a tomb, the Roman guard of strictly disciplined men was put on duty to guard the tomb, and their punishment was death by being burned with their clothes if they failed on their duty. The Bible says: “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.” They fled the scene. The extremely heavy stone was not just barely rolled to the side, but way to the side, and Jesus’ body, which had been wrapped in many layers of cloth, was gone while the cloth remained perfectly wrapped. Not only did the disciples see the risen Jesus, but no one ever produced his body to immediately debunk the disciples' claims.
• Jesus fulfilled 60 major Messianic prophecies and approximately 270 ramifications. These prophecies were written 500-1000 years before he walked the earth. Most of those prophecies were very specific and completely out of his control, like where he would be born (in Bethlehem and in a manger), how he would be killed, many specific prophecies of his whole crucifixion process (when this prophecy was written, crucifixion was not even a form of execution), and many others. The odds of any one man fulfilling all of these prophecies are mathematically astronomical … (much less the man claiming to be God who lived an incredible life of revolutionary love and power and rose from the dead and changed all of History and billions of people’s lives over the years:)
• The Apostle Paul was one of the main apostles of the early Christian movement and wrote almost half of the letters to churches in the New Testament. But he did not start off as a Christian apostle. In fact, he was a zealous Jew and Pharisee (which in that culture was a very high status) who largely spear headed the persecution and killing of the early Christians. He very much did not believe in Jesus. And then, something happened to Paul which sparked his sudden and radical conversion to a follower of Jesus (which was committing social suicide at the time, especially coming from his high status).  According to Paul (who was named Saul before he became a Christian), he and some other men were on their way to Damascus on a mission to arrest and kill followers of Jesus when he was knocked off his horse, was blinded by a bright light, and heard a loud voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”, to which Paul answered, “Who are you?” The voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Read more of the story in Acts 9). Then there was a string of a few more miraculous events in which Paul was utterly convinced that Jesus was in fact the revelation of God Himself that the Jews had been anticipating, and that Jesus was in fact God, Lord, King, and Savior. The zeal with which he had lived his Jewish life and persecuted Christians was now channeled for the rest of his life into preaching this good news about Jesus to the Jews and Gentiles around that whole region, even in the face of much persecution (which you can read a good list of the crazy things he went through in 2 Corinthians 11: floggings, prison many times, beaten with rods, stoned, 3 times given 39 lashes [40 lashes would kill someone], 3 times shipwrecked, faced danger from many different people, often went hungry and thirsty and was homeless sleeping in the cold, and many more things…all for the sake of preaching this gospel which he clearly was utterly convinced of it’s truth! Why else would he become a Christian and give his life to preach about Jesus if Jesus had not actually revealed himself to him?)
• The early church is another proof of Jesus being God and that he actually rose from the grave. It is clear that they wholeheartedly believed in Jesus, just like the apostles, because they went through a lot of very intense persecution for their faith. Why would they have endured such persecution unless they were sure that Jesus had actually been raised and that their eternal destiny was secure in him? It was dangerous to become a Christian and they were so convinced of the truth that Jesus was God and Savior that they were willing to die for it. Also, the fact that Christianity spread like wildfire under very intense persecution is provocative and hard to explain away as anything other than a move of God in many people’s lives who were utterly convinced that Jesus was the Lord and Savior of the world who had just died for their sins and raised from the dead. There is a great passage in Acts 5 where the disciples have recently started teaching with boldness in Jerusalem about Jesus. They are beaten and put in prison, but according to Acts 5:19, "during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 'Go, stand in the temple courts,' he said, 'and tell the people all about this new life.'" When the officials realized they were back in the city preaching, they brought them in before the Sanhedrin to be questioned. The rest of the passage goes as follows: "Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”  When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” It is interesting that Christianity has always been the fastest growing religion in the world for the last 2000 years. 
• The radical love, selflessness, sharing, and the ways the early Christians took care of one another is also an apologetic (proof) in and of itself, because their lives were so transformed and different from others around them.
• It is important to realize that, while faith in Jesus takes faith, faith in not Jesus, or not God, also takes faith. For the burden of proof lies with a non believer to explain away the many things that point to the existence of God, to Jesus being who he said he is, to the inception of Christianity in the face of much opposition, to the "moral law" within all of us, to the knowledge of our personhood as more than just physical, to the longings within us that nothing on earth can satisfy, to the experience of beauty, love, emotion, and thoughts as more than just physical happenings in our body, to the knowledge of the deep value of human life that atheism can't totally claim, etc). Faith in no God takes faith that this world, universe, and our life is all a random accident with no ultimate and eternal meaning (All of the complexity of our universe and bodies happening by accidental chance? That takes a ton of faith!). Faith in no God means that the "moral law" and conscience within us is just a matter of human opinion and there is no such thing as "evil" and "good." For if we cannot appeal to anything higher than human beings as the source of moral law/ right and wrong/ good or evil, then we can never say something is absolutely evil or good. I once heard a story of an atheist who knew he could not truly call something absolutely evil or good as an atheist, and yet when he saw pictures and videos of the Rwandan genocide, he at once renounced his atheistic faith because it was un-livable. He knew in his heart that this genocide was wrong, and it violated every ounce of his being to not have a category in his belief system to call this genocide absolutely evil.

 There is a talk by Tim Keller which summarizes his book Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. It is really amazing. This video is the one hour talk that he gave at Google last year. I would highly recommend watching it along with this entry!! For sure worth the hour!!

PART TWO:

How are we to know God?

Before getting into some more heart level aspects of pursuing God and what it means to be a Christian, it is really important to first discuss the manner in which, or HOW, we are to approach knowing God?

According to the Bible, we are body, soul, and spirit. Our body is the perishable tent of our soul and spirit. Our soul is essentially the seat of our will, emotions, and thoughts that contains our intangible person and personality. But according to the Bible, our spirit is "spiritually dead" apart from Christ, and we need to be "born of the Spirit of God" to be able to know and interact with God, understand spiritual things, etc. (see John 3). So I imagine a spirit that is dead and therefore unresponsive to God or spiritual knowledge and understanding, (for spiritual knowledge is a type of knowledge just like molecular biology is one type of knowledge, poetry and English is another type of knowledge, and how to have healthy relationships is another type of knowledge...however, spiritual knowledge is on a different dimension than just the natural mind). When we are "spiritually awakened" and turn to Christ, he gives us His Spirit, which allows us to know God and understand spiritual truths. These truths are not simply discerned by the natural mind, but primarily by the spirit and the spiritual mind. It is important to realize that spiritual truth about God is discerned, known, and understood by our spirit. I like to picture a little person within myself that is my spirit, and has real faculties and capacities to interact with and know God. We have spiritual eyes, ears, mind, and heart to be able to know God, hear and understand him, and trust and obey him. Apart from this inner "spiritual life" that is awakened by God and enlivened, nourished, and taught by His Spirit, the Bible and message about Christ is foolishness or unintelligible. As we seek God, we need to approach spiritual knowledge in a different way than just our natural mind. We need God's Spirit, his help, and his new life within us to understand his ways and his mind. There is an awesome passage that addresses this very topic in 1 Corinthians 2:10-16:

"The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit...But we have the mind of Christ."

So as we seek out spiritual knowledge and understanding (and as you read the rest of this article even), our natural mind must be subjected to our spiritual mind and heart. Luckily there are some awesome historical, logical, and evidence based reasons to put our trust in Christ that can help remove some of the intellectual barriers that might be in our natural mind. But spiritual truth is primarily received, understood, known, discerned, and trusted deep within our hearts and spirits. So try to know it with the help of God in your spirit and spiritual mind, not just in your natural mind. You might wonder what that means or feels like exactly? I cannot really put it into words, but it is a knowledge and conviction deep within...in your gut...in your "spirit." If you think Christianity is all foolishness, ask God to awaken your spirit to Him and give you spiritual understanding and see what happens:)

The Cross: Why did God have to die?

The cross of Jesus makes sense in light of demonstrating and expressing God’s justice, love, and mercy in a way that nothing else could. Because he is perfectly just and holy, he has to judge us for our sin.

*Now I have to side note for a second because sin is such a heavy, unpopular, and misunderstood word, and many people do not think of themselves as "sinners." Sin is defined in the Bible as "falling short of the glory of God" in Romans 3:23. So sin is falling short of God's perfection and his standards. Not only do we fall short of His standards, but we fail to even meet our own standards and conscience. We all fall short of being the person we desire to be and know we should be. The Bible says we are enslaved to sin, and I think this is totally in line with human experience. If we were not enslaved to sin, we could all be the people we wanted to be: loving to all people, genuinely selfless and humble, caring, upright, honest, courageous, without fear or worry or anxiety, patient, gentle, kind, slow to anger (especially with the people closest to us), persevering, full of life, peace, joy, and hope, justified and guilt free, self controlled, merciful and forgiving, a truly "good" person on the inside and the outside. Furthermore, if we were not enslaved to sin, we would have power over the things we did not want to define us: jealousy, hopelessness and despair, worry, fear, anxiety, fear of what people think, addictions, eating disorders, anger and rage, gossip, a mean, harsh, and out of control tongue, greed, destructive self-centeredness, numbness toward others, pride, sexual brokenness, using other people, lying, cheating, stealing, abuse, desperate for pleasure (even at your own and others' expense), and the list goes on. We not only violate our own standards and desires, but we violate God's standards too, which are way higher than ours. In the New Testament, just a few things that God calls us to be/do: love our enemies and bless those who curse us, forgive always, never be anxious about anything, rejoice in everything, don't complain or grumble, love God above all else with all of our being, be completely loving and humble, love others as we love ourselves, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others as more important than ourselves, always do the will of God for the glory of God, forsake temporary pleasure to pursue God and the rewards and blessings found in Him, live for his glory and not our own, live to build and usher in his will and Kingdom, not our own... and the list goes on of many more things that we fall terribly short of. We are all sinners indeed! For who could stand before a perfect, holy, and just God, whose very justice depends on punishing all sin (otherwise he would not be just), on one's own merit and "worthiness." Not one!).

So God cannot just turn a blind eye to our sin in his holiness, for this would not be just. Even from a human standpoint, if someone commits a crime, we demand that justice be served. If the crime is especially horrible, the death penalty is the most severe form of retribution and justice. Thus, even from a human standpoint, punishment by death to pay for a crime makes sense. (Even if you disagree with the death penalty, you are still able to understand that it's aim is justice being served. Virtually no one would agree that no punishment should be had for murder, there is just a disagreement on which severe punishment is best). It is important that we understand just how severe each of our individual sin is, and why each of us individually deserve the death penalty and eternal separation from God (maybe not compared to each other from a societal standpoint, but compared to God's holiness and standards, our sin is very serious indeed). In the Old Testament, the entire sacrificial system under the Mosaic Law served the purpose of providing ongoing temporary payments for sin. Blood had to be spilled because blood was equated with life, and life had to be taken to temporarily atone, or "pay," for sin (Leviticus 17:11: "for the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the LORD. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible"). So a just God requires that sin have a punishment and a payment, but we ourselves cannot pay for it unless the punishment falls on us. In short, we should be on death row for our sins. So we find a dilemma: on one hand God's justice is great news because our hearts all scream for justice to prevail over evil and injustice in the world. (Our very longing for justice is a signpost to a God that is just, otherwise the desire for justice would be an evolutionary failure. If God were not real and just, injustice would be par for the course--for survival of the fittest is kind of a harsh, no mercy kind of world-- and longing for justice would only lead to despair and disappointment). However, on the other hand, perfect justice prevailing means punishment falling upon me, for I am part of the problem. We all want to be the exception to the justice that we demand in the world. 

So God is just, but God is also wholly loving and merciful. Thus, He desires to draw us toward himself and choose to love us without condition despite our unworth-- just as a father desires to be in fellowship with his child despite the child's imperfection. So in the greatest act of love ever known to humanity, Jesus freely chose to go to the cross to take the punishment for sin that we deserved upon himself. Imagine being on death row, and someone with a perfect track record coming in to take your place for the punishment. In this way, God's justice and wrath toward us was satisfied, and his love and mercy was severely and wonderfully displayed. Jesus was literally crushed by the wrath of God on the cross because he was taking our place for the punishment we deserved! Perhaps more than the crucifixion, Jesus died of a broken heart because he literally took on our sin, which separated him from His Father--hence his last words: “My God, My God why have you forsaken me,” and “It is finished,”(which in Greek also means "it is paid"). So God himself (Jesus the 2nd person of the Trinity) was the only one worthy to be an acceptable and perfect sacrifice to pay for our sin and cancel its record against us. Having paid the price for our sin, he could now consider us to be pure and holy and in right standing (righteous) before Himself (if we will receive that gift by faith).

We see that Jesus’ death on the cross (which to the world appeared to be a failure and a typical tragedy of a rebel being put down for standing up to the "powers that be") is actually the wisdom of God, the greatest love story of all time, and an ironic victory of God over the "powers that be", not the other way around. As Colossians 2:13-15 declares: “When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive together with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, because he blotted out the record of our legal offenses; in fact, he nailed it to the cross. He stripped the powers and authorities naked; he made a public example of them; he celebrated his triumph over them!”

So God wrote himself into the story of his creation to further reveal himself to us, to leave the splendor of his throne in heaven, drape himself in humanity (fully God, fully man), come into a violent, suffering world to rescue us, restore us, and inaugurate the beginning of his plan of redeeming creation back to Himself. The Bible does not set forth Jesus as just a figurative, spiritual sort of King. But the true King of the whole cosmos who will one day triumph over all evil, injustice, pain, suffering, and even physical death. A good question to ask at this point is what did Jesus rescue us from? And what did he restore us to?

What did he save us from?

Jesus saved us from a lot, but I will only touch on two main things that Jesus rescued us from. He came to rescue us from the penalty of sin and the power of sin. The penalty of sin is separation from God both in this life and the life to come. The power of sin keeps us enslaved in it's grip apart from Christ. As a slave to sin, we have our minds and hearts constantly set on the things of this world and what the sinful nature desires: things like vanity and image, materialism, popularity, power, success, prestige, etc. We never feel complete or satisfied, and we are nagged by emptiness and a longing for more. When we receive Christ, we are no longer slaves to sin. While we will stil struggle with sin, we now have a choice to live according to God's Spirit or the sinful nature. We now have a choice to set our mind and heart on things that are temporal or things that are eternal. We now have the opportunity to live the lives that God has called us to (by the power of His Spirit) with the kind of heart and character that he designed us for, always being filled with his presence, fellowship, joy, abundant life, and power.

What did He restore us to?

So much! Jesus provided a way for us: to be restored to intimate relationship with himself, to be indwelt by his Spirit, to be called his son or daughter, to be transformed into His likeness and character, to have victory over sin and the devil, to have new life (that is received as we partake in the divine life that God himself has), to have freedom (primarily from sin and self), to have hope, to enter into eternal life (which means to know Jesus, and can start now in this life, to be more fully realized in heaven), to be apart of a new family/community (the Church), and to fulfill our original destiny of being free, fully alive co-laborers with Him in the eternally significant story that He is writing. He restored the fractured image of Himself in us so that we (along with his followers) could more truly reflect His nature of love and goodness to the broken world around us.

While transformation of our hearts and lives is a life long process, there are some things that become immediately true about us when we turn to Jesus in faith: 1. We are justified, made righteous, holy, and acceptable before God. God no longer sees our sin, but he sees Jesus covering us. 2. We are made new (2 Corinthians 5:17), and we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13). Spiritually speaking, we come to life for the first time (John 3). 3. We become God’s children and literally a part of a new social unit (a new family) that will last for eternity. 4. We are forgiven and washed white as snow. Our sinful record that stood to accuse and condemn us was nailed to the cross with Jesus (Colossians 2:15), thus we are set free from condemnation (Romans 8:1). 5. God’s Spirit comes to dwell inside of us to: empower us, teach us, convict us, remind us of truth, comfort us, lead us and speak to us, transform our hearts (with our cooperation), supply us with gifts (see 1 Corinthians 12), supply us with the fruit of his character (Galatians 6: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness, and self control), and give us the desire to repent from sin, trust and obey Him, and glorify and worship Him. 

How is this forgiveness and new life applied to us? FAITH:

Faith! Believing in His name, trusting Him, throwing ourselves on His mercy in complete trust that his mercy is real, enough to justify us (set us right with God), and the greatest gift of all time. (note that true Christian saving faith will always result in a desire to repent from sin and in fruit that is produced by the Holy Spirit in our lives!)

This salvation by grace (which means: freely given, unmerited favor and love of God) through faith is one of the major things that sets Christianity apart from every other religion. Every other religion is based on achieving right standing with God through works.  Christianity is the only religion in which salvation/merit with God is based on grace in which God came down to make the way for us, to rescue us. If you picture a great chasm between us and God, and when you think of what it would take to “reach God”, or please Him on our own merit, it would be impossible. So Jesus provided the bridge for us to have restored fellowship and right standing before Him, and the only way to access that bridge is by faith in Jesus.

What is faith? The dictionary defines faith as: confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability. Faith is more than just belief. James 2:19 says that the demons even believe in One God…and they shudder. So belief does not even necessarily set us apart from the demons. Faith is belief plus trust. Belief says, “I have confidence this chair would hold me up if I sat in it.” Faith sits down in the chair. So belief in Jesus as the Son of God who paid the price for our sin needs to be coupled with trust. Trust is defined in the dictionary as follows: 1. Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; Something committed into the care of another; One in which confidence is placed; Reliance on something in the future; hope.

So trust is committing your life to Jesus, casting your lot in with Jesus, stepping off the throne of your life, letting him into the drivers seat, giving your life to Him, (or any number of analogies), because you trust Him with everything. You trust that he is in control; that he is good; that he loves you and has your ultimate best interest in mind even when you don’t understand why things happen; that he works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8); that you will have eternal life with Him and all of his followers; that He will one day be exalted and completely conquer sin, suffering, death, and injustice; that you will one day receive a new glorified resurrection body that will never decay; that all of creation will be redeemed and restored (read Revelation 21!!); and many more things. Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you cannot see (Hebrews 11:1). However, it is not the quality of our faith that saves us, but the object of our faith. Our faith does not need to be great, it just needs to be clinging to Jesus, who is great. There is a man who came to Jesus and said to him, "Lord I believe. Help my unbelief." Here he both believes, but is struggling to have strong faith. Such is the condition of our hearts, and our faith definitely goes through fire in this life. All that matters is that our hearts keep seeking and holding onto Jesus, and He is able to keep us.

Faith in Jesus connects you with God in a very personal relationship. Jesus says, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and lets me in, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.” This picture is one of intimacy, sharing a meal with the God of the universe!

Now let’s get personal:

Now we come to some challenging aspects of our heart and will. Here are a few heart level questions people once asked me: Do you believe and realize that a Savior exists, verified by logical, historical evidence, and that this Savior has the power to bring you out of your troubles and sin and into a new life? Do you feel like your heart says, “I myself need a savior because I cannot save myself, and I cannot (and don’t want to) handle the things in my life in my own power anymore?” Does who Jesus is make sense to you, and do you long for a Savior?

Then some questions addressing the will: Do you want to yield your life to another? Do you want to step off the throne of your life and submit everything to Him (because if Jesus really is God, the only appropriate response is to fall to your knees in awe and reverence to worship and give your life to Him, since he is the Maker and authority of all things. Perhaps this is why some people do not have “ears to hear,” as Jesus said, because they are freaked out about the idea of submitting their life to anyone, even God). Do you want to become like Jesus? Do you want to change your lifestyle and give up your old life of sin? John 3:19-21 says, “so here is the verdict; light came into the world but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” Do you want to submit your life to his parenting such that he will be able to challenge you, discipline you, and not leave you alone as you are?

These are really challenging questions that continue to challenge me daily in my walk with God. The good news is that the Holy Spirit gives us a whole set of new desires when we turn to Him, and while our pride and selfishness continue to rear their ugly heads in this life, we are by no means left alone in our battle against them. God also lets us in on the great secret and irony that repentance and submission actually leads to joy, freedom, and wholeness against what our stubborn self will might think. Jesus said, “if anyone wants to save his life, he will lose it, but if anyone loses his life for me, He will find it."

God's Power:

It is God who empowers us to become pure and whole from the inside out. When we turn from self and sin (repentance) to Christ and submit our life to Him, we are no longer slaves of sin (read Romans 8!). The Holy Spirit (the third person of the Trinity) comes to dwell inside of our spirit. Our body literally becomes a dwelling place for Him when we invite Him in, and we are now "slaves" to righteousness. We have a new master. When we become His child, God is committed to transforming us into the likeness of Jesus.  So everything he calls us to and every command he gives us, He himself equips us to obey. This is GOOD NEWS and another aspect of what sets Christianity apart from all other religions. Not only are we set right with God based on grace through faith, but the life that God calls us to, He himself supplies us with what we need to live it.

So we are not working on our own. However, we must put our body and will into obedience. He does not override our will, so we actually have to make decisions, cooperate with His Spirit, and “put to death the misdeeds of the flesh." In Matthew 5, Jesus talks about getting rid of sin as cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye. Obviously, he was not literally saying to cut off your hand if it causes you to sin, but is using figurative language to suggest 1. That we should be strongly committed to weeding out sin in our lives, by the power of the Spirit within us and in dependance on Him (Romans 8:13), because we now desire to please our Father and not have anything standing in between us. And 2. That getting rid of sin will usually feel like a sort of death. It will be painful and hard because sin has been a part of who we are for so long that it feels like a part of us is dying. But the beauty about the death of sin is that new life thrives in its place. Holiness (which essentially means wholeness, purity, and goodness combined into one word), beauty, wholeness, freedom, and intimacy with God replace it. And we can test this out and experience the reality of freedom here and now.

Life is a constant process of putting off the old self and putting on the new self (Ephesians 4:22-24). Our ultimate destiny and hope as his children is that one day, we will be like Jesus (1 John 3:2). The unique thing about Christianity is that our "individuality" and self will not be lost in this process, but we actually become more fully who we were uniquely and beautifully intended to be the more we are conformed to the image of Jesus.

But Wait! It's not all about us:)

I feel the need to say the following in light of the self-centered, consumer culture we live in; it is not about us! I think Jesus is often presented to people as a self help lucky rabbits foot that exists to serve us, rather than the other way around. On God's end, he has a mother's heart and compassion for us that longs to be known and to know us. He longs to gather us to himself and lavish his love on us (for he surely proved this to us on the cross!). But on our end, when we know and love God, we will begin to long to glorify and worship Him, for this world is really all about Him. We begin to long to give worship and glory where it is due and to surrender our lives to Him, for they are rightfully His anyhow. Our joy is actually made complete as we forget about ourselves in the presence of his unfathomable greatness and glory and as we praise, honor, and glorify him with our lives, hearts, and tongues. This whole world and humanity exists to give Him glory and fame. As the Westminster Catechism states, "the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord. He is the main character of the story and the play writer. We are just a small part of the story. But the cool news is that He invites us to be a part of His story, and he has deemed our part of the story as eternally important and significant. 

Prerequisite in coming to Jesus:

Many people feel as though they need to clean up their act before they come to God. This is not so, because in actuality we cannot clean up our act at all apart from him. (Once we come to God, our act will indeed slowly be "cleaned up" through His power at work within us and by causing us to deeply desire repentance and obedience). The only prerequisite in coming to Jesus is that you desperately need Him and want Him.

First, regarding our need for Him: When the Pharisees asked Jesus why he hung out with sinners, Jesus responded, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." In Jesus' famous sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus starts out by sharing who the truly blessed people are according to His ways (contrasted with the world's ways). This list starts out with, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." What is poverty of spirit? According to scholar DA Carson, "poverty of spirit is the personal acknowledgement of spiritual bankruptcy. It is the conscious confession of unworth before God. As such, it is the deepest form of repentance. Poverty of spirit becomes a general confession of a man’s need for God, a humble admission of impotence without Him." 

Another quote by theologian Graham Tomlin on this same note: A person (all of us) has to be brought to a point where he realizes that his actions, goodness, religiosity, actually count for nothing before God, and he, in a sense, has to be made powerless before God. The sinner can only approach God with empty hands, not full hands. Not hands that are full of “virtues” and things that we can offer God and say, “look, you really ought to be pleased with me because of these things I have.” No, they have to be empty. God needs to strip us away from the things that we think are important, virtuous, worthy, etc. Like in the Psalms when God brings them to a point of crying out to God because they have nothing left. The psalmist begins to see that maybe this experience of despair that I'm feeling about myself is actually not a barrier to my acceptance before God, but it's actually the very qualification for it! The very thing I need is this profound sense that I have nothing to offer. As long as I think I have something to offer, there's not a lot that God can do for me."

Martin Luther once somewhat comically said, "God only saves sinners. He only teaches the stupid. He only enriches the poor. He only raises the dead." So what do you want to be if you want to get saved? You want to be a sinner, stupid, poor, and dead. If you think you're anything other than that, there's not a lot that God can do for you."

Second regarding our desire and hunger for him: In God is the Gospel, John Piper says,

"When I say that God is the Gospel I mean that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment. The saving love of God is God's commitment to do everything necessary to enthrall us with what is most deeply and durably satisfying, namely himself. Since we are sinners and have no right and no desire to be enthralled with God, therefore God's love enacted a plan of redemption to provide that right and that desire. The supreme demonstration of God's love was the sending of his Son to die for our sins and to rise again so that sinners might have the right to approach God and might have the pleasure of his presence forever."

He also asks the following question in this same book: "The critical question for our generation--and for every generation--is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?"

These two quotes capture the heart of when Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value (Jesus talking about Himself here), he went away and sold everything he had and bought it."

It is so important for us to realize at the outset (and all along the way) of our spiritual journey that God is the greatest good, the most beautiful prize, the most desirable person above all else. His blessings are amazing, but He himself is the greatest blessing we receive in coming to Him. It is easy to subtly desire the gifts and blessings over the giver himself (or to see God as a means to an end), because we are inherently selfish and often value ourselves above all else. When we get a glimpse of the beauty of Christ, we just want more of Him, no matter what it costs. We taste and see that He is good (Psalm 34:8) and are moved to follow Him wholeheartedly, holding nothing back. We realize that "the capstone of joy is self forgetfulness in the presence of greatness" (~John Piper) and beauty so much greater than ourselves! Our hunger and desire for HIM has the staying power to continue walking with Christ even when trials come, which they surely will. If Christ is our treasure, then NOTHING in the world can shake that or take that away from us. This seems impossible at times to desire God in this way, but with Him all things are possible, and it is a process of coming to this. Let us keep asking Him in faith for more and more desire.

In Conclusion

Jim Elliot, a missionary who left a huge spiritual legacy before going to be with the Lord, once said, “There is no cost in losing what cannot be saved to gain what can never be lost.” You will never lose by putting your faith in Jesus! On the contrary you will lose everything by not putting faith in Jesus. Jesus said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:26). 

Choose this day whom you will serve (Joshua  24:15). We were made to worship, so we are always worshiping something. Worship the one and only person and being who is worthy of our worship!

Some Questions to reflect on:

1. What part of this paper stuck out to you and why?

2. What specific good news were you reminded of and encouraged by in reading and thinking about these things?

3. Based on your actions and thoughts, are there any aspects of this good news that you are not living in or trusting? If not, why do you think?

4. Are there parts of your life or will that you are holding back from God? If so, why do you think? What are you having a hard time believing right now? Why?

5. What is the good news (gospel) to you about following Jesus?