We struggle with discipleship as we juggle the competing priorities that seek our attention at any point of time, the different affections that capture our heart and mind. It is the immediate and the urgent that we deal with in this rivalry, or our pleasures, our comfort zones, or just plain life in the auto-pilot mode of going with the flow around us. If we are honest we will admit that Christian discipleship doesn’t figure in these categories. God and heaven and holiness seem so distant, and don’t intrude overtly requiring our response and attention – except maybe on Sundays or when things are not going well. The New Testament Christian life as the overarching and motivating passion in our lives … it’s only a dream for most of us.
It is easy to feel guilty and ashamed when we think about this. We know that we want to, or ought to, pursue such a life but are unable to. We tend to blame our circumstances, the culture, and so on. It gives us some respite from the guilt, but soon it is back.
I believe that more than this being a matter of external conditions or our frail wills, there are two basic issues of understanding that are great barriers to our progress. These are issues that are common across the board and not specific to any one person. That is why most of us face problems with discipleship. These two issues arise because of various reasons, including the layers of cultural beliefs and traditions that have been added over the centuries, compounded by history, politics and power play obscuring the truth in the Word of God.
These two barriers are in the nature of shackles holding us back, and we will find that there is an enormous release when we break out of them. We will find freedom. This article is not meant to be about ten steps to do this, or five rules to achieve that, discover the origins of these issues, and so on; it is about recognizing these two issues. Half the solution is to recognize the problem.
Firstly, the message of the gospel, the good news. If you were to ask any Christian what the good news of Christianity is they would usually say that if you believe in Jesus Christ you will be saved and go to heaven.
What next, please?
This is indeed good and wonderful news. But the question is – what after one receives Jesus as Saviour? The problem here is that if personal salvation is all there is to it, what is the motivation for the rest of life? We have achieved our objective and secured our eternal future the instant we received Jesus; we now only have to cash in on it when we die. Sure, some will be motivated to go out and share the gospel they received, but those are the few. The vast majority pursue some good works in keeping with their salvation and the rest is business as usual.
The promise of an everlasting good-times holiday when we die is not something that provides a great guide or vision for life here and now on earth, especially when you already have the tickets. When is the last time any leader made a great and wonderful holiday as the rallying vision of any organization? Holidays are interludes of rest in between what really motivates people to action. We talk about them as being well-earned. And if they are rewards then the question of works immediately kicks in, even if you already have the ticket – what must I do to ensure that I don’t lose it?
The exclusive focus on personal salvation then ultimately and very subtly becomes a matter of works. That is the problem of any self-centred focus. Personal salvation, however good it is (and we know it is), when pursued exclusively in the Christian life is ultimately self-centredness, the very opposite of other-centred nature of God, love. Paradoxically salvation by faith alone soon becomes a treadmill of works. It leads to a marginal Christianity – enough good works at the margin to ensure salvation and be “in” with the Christian ecosystem. The costs are low and the potential pay-off sky high. Do you think it is too cynical? It’s so common we don’t think about it. So common that a version of it made it as a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon last Christmas
The complete gospel, on the other hand, is the kingdom of God. In Mark 1:15 Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” He was talking about the gospel as a real event and entity brought into being by Him in real history and to be established in fullness over the course of a definite period of time in the defined space of the heavens and earth. The New Testament reveals this to mean, progressively, establishment of God’s kingdom in the hearts of His people by His Holy Spirit, the millennial reign of Jesus on Earth, and finally the everlasting reign of Jesus and His Bride the church on the New Earth.
The Bible reveals that those who are born again are inheritors of this kingdom, co-heirs with Jesus as sons of God. That is their identity and destiny. It further reveals that this kingdom will destroy all the kingdoms of this world and then be established forever. These are all predictions made in the Bible by prophets, disciples and Jesus Himself, along with a large number of intermediate predictions. They are testable and have been found sound.
In other words, the gospel, the good news, of the kingdom of God presented by the Bible is a verifiable, historical fact based truth into which we are called to participate, unlike the uncertain self-centred path of personal salvation alone in the distant future that we have made it into. Personal salvation is only the first, albeit vital, step into the totality of the gospel. The complete gospel presented in the Bible is of a disruptive kingdom breaking through into this world and its kingdoms, sweeping all before it.
Like internship
That is the vision that must drive the life of the Christian on earth here and now. It is a snapshot of a future state of affairs that God our Father is orchestrating, and the Christian is called into this through salvation by faith in Jesus. The Bible closes with Christians reigning with Christ forever on the New Earth, completely different from an eternal heavenly holiday. Our life on this earth, then, is in the manner of interns being built up so that we may be ready to take up our positions in the fullness of the kingdom of God.
That brings us to the second barrier, the issue of grace and law. The Bible repeatedly tells us in the New Testament that we who have received grace and forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ are no longer under the law. But how many of us can confidently and boldly say that we are not under any laws or rules or regulations, even the Ten Commandments, even the first of the Ten Commandments? You may tremble at the thought of this, but if persist on working under the yoke of this law, then you are under obligation to work all the law and bear its curses for every infringement, as Paul says in Gal 3:10 “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them”.
But one fear, of the curses (and you may rightfully shiver as you read them in Deut 28:15 onwards), is no antidote to another fear, of letting go even the first law. We simply must reconcile how we are to relate to all the laws of the Old Testament today, addressing arguments such as “license to sin”, otherwise we will forever be stuck between a rock and a hard place. But how many of us have the clarity in our minds of what to make of all the laws and rules and regulations that the Bible, indeed the New Testament itself, gives us and make use of them meaningfully under the grace we have in Jesus Christ? This is a huge crack, more likely an abyss, into which we fall in fear and confusion.
The church has not addressed this issue at the “retail” level. There is very little clear teaching reconciling the grace that we have in Jesus under the new covenant and the proper use of laws and rules and regulations of the Old and New Testaments. At the local church level these are questions that are quietly put away and discouraged, with members left to somehow muddle through. Indeed, compliance to laws and rules and regulations are drilled into the Christian, not least because it is so convenient for the leaders. It is easy to read out the rules from the book; it is messier and time-consuming to practise grace. Grace and freedom are preached from the pulpit on some Sundays; laws and regulations most of the time. The teaching swings from one to the other, compromising wholeness and integrity.
These two issues we have described above – exclusive focus on personal salvation and the failure to reconcile grace and law, are individually bad enough. Most Christians have an idea that something is amiss, either explicitly in a thinking person or through vague unease and a feeling of something’s-wrong-here in others. We turn lukewarm and pursue life in silos and carry on – the Christian tradition and the world life.
But together the effect of these two issues is far more devastating because they feed into and reinforce each other. The exclusive focus on personal salvation soon leads into self-centredness and the treadmill of works, and this is encouraged by the ambivalent attitude towards laws and regulations. The Christian is soon caught in a vicious downward spiral. Ordinary Christians, without an answer to these two issues, are falling into these cracks ever so quickly as they experience the disconnects. There seems no clear progress to a deeper life that calls them to a higher, richer and better way; Christian life becomes more a matter of tradition.
We need to confront these two issues of our own making immediately and go counter to the downward spiral. New questions will arise. For example – what does it mean to do life when it is an on-the-job training for God’s kingdom, how exactly do we reconcile grace and law, how does a Christian use laws and rules wisely, how do we relate the Old and New Testaments and their promises, and so on. But these are not really new questions for they have been addressed by Christians in the past. We need to dust them out, update them, make available widely, and teach them. As I pursued these questions I found that the answers greatly enrich my life and those of my fellow-students of the Word. That is why I share this with you, that you too might think through them and pursue them.
As you break out of these constraining and obscuring traditions you will find that the path leads straight into our Heavenly Father’s heart. For ultimately that is what these two issues do – they barricade the way into God’s heart. We might know everything about sin and salvation by grace through faith, but these two issues are barriers to our Father who is behind it all. We might enter into Christian life through the conviction of sin and judgement and the righteousness of Jesus offered as a gift of grace, but further progress means getting to know our loving Heavenly Father who has provided this for us, His heart of pure love, our identity and destiny in Him, and the plans He has for us through His marvellous vision.
Let us deal with two questions that might have entered your mind briefly before closing. Firstly, let us not think that this means we must only preach the complete gospel of the kingdom of God to others. Remember this is about growing in maturity for people who are already Christians. We may choose our approach to presenting the gospel according to the context – the personal salvation or the full kingdom gospel, depending on our audience and their background. That is what Paul did; check out his sermons in Acts. But having become Christians we ourselves must not remain as new born babies drinking the milk of personal salvation exclusively the rest of our lives, but progress into the maturity of eating the meat of the comprehensive gospel, and exhort and teach younger Christians as well.
Secondly, the risk of the complete gospel is not that of diminishing the salvation message or sidelining the cross. The Christian who has understood the cross and received forgiveness will never relegate the centrality of the cross; for others it is anyway a stumbling block or foolishness. The far greater damage happens when the Christian refuses to go forward into the marvellous gift of a wonderful vision that Jesus has opened up through the cross. Let us not spurn this gift He has given us through that infinite price He paid at the cross, or hobble ourselves with partial thinking, but go forward with thanksgiving, delight, and gratefulness.
Colin Dawson currently works for Atos on ecosystems and innovation after many years in business consulting and managing manufacturing & supply chain operations. He also leads the CBMC Powai (Mumbai) group. He lives in Mumbai with his wife Alice and daughter Joanna.