Jesus died for more than just to get us into heaven. He died so that we could live for him entirely. I’ve been reading Dallas Willard’s, the Divine Conspiracy. I’ve been taking my time because it’s really, really deep and challenging. But I read a section today that I just had to share. Willard is writing that the gospel has to be lived out now. He is looking at the number of professing Christians and how jacked up our world still is and he says this:
The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives it the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just things it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe our our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of atonement to be true — even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us.
It is left unexplained how it is possible that one can rely on Christ for the next life without doing so for this one, trust him one’s eternal destiny without trusting him for “the things that relate to Christian life.” Is this really possible? Surely it is not! Not within one life.
. . .
In the Gospels, by contrast “the gospel” is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through reliance on Jesus, the Anointed.
Dallas Willard “The Divine Conspiracy.” pg 49
There is a lot in that chunk of text. I think the biggest challenge for the Churc is to break free of the simplification of the Gospel to tracts and bumper stickers, and to bring it back to a holistic way of life. That Jesus really does want us to trust him with our attitudes, marriage, addictions, money, future, present, sin, everything.
Christians need to live in the resurrection. We need to live in the Power of the Gospel. We can’t be content to just say a prayer and be done. We can’t be satisfied with how many people show up to our gatherings. We have to see transformation in the lives that make our church.
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