I was having lunch with some friends when one of them turned to me and asked: “Why is it that there are so many non-Christians who behave more Christianly than many who identify as Christians?” This is a question that raises many more questions, and to answer it would involve content from a few books. I volunteered one answer.
I said that for the longest time, the gospel has been presented as a way to escape hell and go to heaven.
The need: we are all lost in sin and headed for an eternity without God.
The solution: Jesus’ death for us on the Cross.
The needed response to avail ourselves of this solution: Accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.
Now, while I believe the gospel includes all these I think it is much more than this.
In this usual approach to the gospel, the focus is on when we die — we escape hell and go to heaven. We are clear what we are saved from — hell, Satan, sin, etc. There is little about what we are saved to become — a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) that bears the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29, 30). In this approach, when one accepts the gospel, one is a convert. Then the church will come back to you and invite you to be a disciple. This is when the discussion about growing into Christlike maturity begins. The Christian life has two steps. The first step is to accept Christ as your Lord and Saviour. When you have done this you are already a Christian. The second step when you choose to live out what it means to live under the Lordship of Christ. This is when you choose to be a disciple.
This two-step approach to salvation implies that one can be a Christian without going all out to follow Christ. Now, while we are clear that we are saved by faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8,9), we need to ask what we are saved to become. With our primary focus on life after death we do not provide clarity about our life before our death. It is a life where we follow Christ (Matthew 16:24). It is a life where we walk in the Spirit and show the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:16–18). It is a life marked by love of God and love for neighbour (Luke 10:25–37).
When we become followers of Jesus we become children of God who bear His image. It is a journey that is completed only when we see Christ face to face (1 John 3:2). Along the way we will still grapple with temptation and sin (Romans 8:13,14). Even the power to live a victorious life in Christ is dependent on God’s provision (Galatians 5:16). Nevertheless, we are still expected to show the “fruit” of our salvation (Matthew 7:17,18).
There is fresh interest in evangelism and rightly so. Every day brings more evidence that we live in a fallen world and all human efforts to fix this broken world don’t work. We need God. We need the gospel. As followers of Jesus we have the responsibility to tell the world the good news. But it isn’t enough to pitch the gospel as some kind of escape pod that will enable us to escape hell and go to heaven. Through the gospel, God wants to make all things new (Revelation 21:5) and we know it holds the promise to do so because of the evidence of the lives transformed by the gospel.
