Making Sense of Living as a Christian

Chris had absolutely zero Christianity in his background. His parents never went to church and nor did he.
He could not remember coming across a Christian until he joined a new company when he was 24. Two of the eight others in his division were Christians. He noticed that they did not merely go to church, but lived out their Christianity too.
He was suspicious of them at first, but ended up thinking that they were great people to be with. Gradually he conceded to himself that there must be a connection between their beliefs and the poise and conviction of their lives. He began to look into their convictions . . .
After his conversion, his Christian friends did him proud. One met him every week in a lunch hour, to read the Bible, pray and talk. They introduced him to a fine church, which stretched his heart and mind. They did all they could to encourage him.
Then, with little warning, the company had to 'rationalise' by declaring some redundancies, Chris included. That in itself did not throw him too much. But he did have to uproot and go to another part of the country when he found his next job. That broke the regular network of Christian friends and church. The church he took up with was lively, but 'not the same'. Some emphases were new to him and he didn't quite know how to weigh them up. For the first time he came across disagreements between Christians, some of whom seemed to him to major on minors. He was the only Christian in his new firm and often found that hard. His move led indirectly to the break-up of a long-running relationship.

Condemned

When he tried to discuss some of his problems with his new Christian friends, he got the impression that they felt him a little deficient. They left him feeling more condemned than encouraged. He found himself thinking that to struggle was the same as to be defeated. He began to think the unthinkable: did his Christian life add up after all? What had first drawn him into the faith (that here was truth that made sense of life) now seemed in doubt.

The main message

There are many reasons why people can run into this kind of trouble. One is an unbalanced view of the gospel.
Perhaps the most widely accepted variation on the gospel theme is 'the gospel of love': 'We're here to tell others that God loves them'; 'Smile, Jesus loves you'; 'The bottom line : God loves you'; 'God has a wonderful plan for your life'; or the church notice-board which said: 'Lonely? God's promise: 'I will never leave you'.'
No doubt about it. God is love (1 John 4.16). The Bible's evidence of the love of God is pervasive and overwhelming, but what happens when 'God is love' becomes the whole message? Unbelievers hear that the Almighty God, Maker of the universe, loves them as they are and for ever, with no qualification or call for their response.
One recent advocate of this view expressed it like this: 'Love is the first and the last thing about God.' That feels like a good message to present: after all, who could take offence at being loved? So 'God is love' becomes the starting point, as though the Christian message begins with 'The love of God is being revealed from heaven.'

What's the problem?

The view of the human condition that follows from this idea of God is not primarily that we have offended God, but that we are strangers to love, needing to be loved. We do not first need to repent or change our stance to God, but what we most need is to receive. It is not so much that we are under judgment, but, like the prodigal son, we are lonely in the universe, outside the reach and embrace of love. Therefore, we feel alone, unsatisfied, unwanted and fearful.
So, in this view, what's the answer? The remedy is that we need to realise that we are loved, to experience that love and thus find our acceptance. We have to receive his love and release our love to him, to feel his touch and be affirmed.
The outcome of this view is people who feel loved and valued. People who rejoice that 'God loves me', who look to see God's love made evident in their current circumstances. Their focus is that God loves them - in the present - and that he will always go on doing so.
This is an attractive approach.

What are its implications?

If God loves us, then fundamentally life is on a good basis. When a child does something stupid or disobedient, words are spoken by a parent, but it normally ends up: 'Daddy/Mummy loves you and it is all right'. 'God loves you', as the prime element in the gospel, tends to the conclusion that deep down, at the end of the day, all will be fine. Ideas of judgment do not sit easily with this approach, so it is not surprising that some drop them or never mention them. God is good and we will be all right.
The cross, of course, is the great demonstration and proof of his love. 'Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends' (John 15.13). He loved us enough to die for us. From this standpoint, however, the cross is not primarily the act of a moral God who finds us guilty, but of a loving God who welcomes us home. This is why, on this view, it is not easy to see the connection between the cross and the love.
Let me illustrate. If a person's house is catching fire, the first message they need to hear in their danger is: 'Get out - alive'. To talk of love at that point is indisputably well-intended; but if (as the Bible says) they are in eternal danger, that may inadvertently confirm them in the delusion that all is well. Such a message of love, though popular, will prove very unloving if it has the opposite result to the one intended.
The Christian message will make little sense if everyone will be OK in the end, whether they repent or not. If evil goes unpunished to the last, we live in a senseless, amoral world under a morally indifferent God. Life will not make much sense if it depends on the love of God giving us 'a good life', since the Bible and history are full of believers who had very tough lives. A friend told me recently that, in the wake of several happy events, he had told another Christian: 'God has been really good to me recently.' The other Christian surprised him by saying: 'That's heresy! Is God only good when things are going well?' If our gospel leads us to believe we will have 'the good life', we will be hard put to it to make sense of life when we do not see or feel God's love.

Feeling good

It will also be hard to see sense if we view the gospel as the ultimate 'therapy'. Such a view is not surprising in an age taken over by the many forms of therapy. This view of God is that he loves us, wants us to have a wonderful life and to feel good about it. Our human problem is that we are blind to him, not realising all that he wants to give us. The solution is to wake up, realise his great love and by faith claim what he offers. Then the outcome will be the 'feel good' factor in our lives, as we enjoy all his promises (even to health and wealth) in our experience.
Some forms of church life unknowingly adopt such an approach. The small group is not convened to look seriously at the Bible and apply it, but to help members constantly to feel good - about themselves, about life. The larger meeting is not so much to teach people and prepare them for service as to give them a corporate ecstasy so that they go away at ease in themselves.
Sometimes the focus of conversion or other testimonies is more on 'What God is doing (i.e. what I feel he is doing) in my life' than on what he did once for all on the cross.

Astonishing absence

However, 90% of what 'the gospel of love' affirms is true. Hundreds are strangers to love and God is love. But here, to me at least, is an astonishing statement: the good news, as recorded in the Gospels and the Acts, never contains the word 'love'. The term most familiar to us to epitomise the gospel never once appears. (The possible exception is John 3.16, where it is a question of whether the verse was actually spoken to Nicodemus or forms part of John's background commentary.) Jesus speaks much to his disciples of his love for them (e.g. John 13-17), but not to non-Christians. He looked at the rich young ruler with sadness 'and loved him', but he did not say that to him (Mark 10.21).
This absence of the proclamation of love is stunning. The gospel in the Gospels is what Jesus began with: Mark 1.14-15. There is no good news without repentance before the king; no good news without coming to terms with a holy God. 'Repent' is a totally confrontational command; it is not an invitation to reflect or adjust, but to admit we need a total change, or face the consequences. 'Repent' carries a warning of judgement. There is no suggestion that all is fine. It implies that God has a terrible conclusion for our lives if we do not repent. And chiefly, there is no good news for anyone without believing in Jesus. We need to know all this if we are to appreciate the good news of what Jesus came to bring.
If we say less about the love of God and more about his holiness and hatred of sin, we will say more when we do speak of his love. If we start with this 'love' approach, our ongoing Christian lives will never add up. At times we will feel guilty, lack assurance and be uncertain of our hope; this teaching will not be able to help us then, since it neglects the basis of our acceptance.

Setting the tune

Much of the 'not making sense' feeling in our Christian lives can be traced back to well-meaning but defective views of the gospel. The gospel itself ties together all the realities about God and us, about time and eternity. It shows us that we are guilty before God and totally undeserving of anything but rejection and condemnation. It is a gospel of unmerited favour. This sets the tune for the whole of our subsequent Christian lives; we deserve nothing from God, we have no claim on him in ourselves. If life is tough, we have no ground of complaint. If we receive anything good, it is purely out of his grace. That is the Christian's mindset from the start: no place for self-pity, only for gratitude that Jesus took our place in death.

This article is an extract from a new book, Making sense of living as a Christian, by Bob Horn, IVP, 208 pages, £5.99.