Reflections on the Christian Life

Greetings my friend.

Much time has passed since the last letter we shared. Days continue to come one after another. Often I describe them as “a grind,” since at their end my exhaustion level is quite high. Yet, also at their end, and, perhaps more importantly ‘at their beginning,’ my thoughts turn to Christ. In the morning he is my life. In the evening he is my rest. He has told me that because he lives, I will live. Because I come to him, I will never hunger. Because I believe in him, I will never thirst. Temporary and created things cannot give me that necessary and particular ingredient which makes possible the satisfaction declared in John 6:35. Jesus told the tempter that physical bread has its place but God’s word also—and perhaps more importantly—serves as a source for life. We see this when our Lord answered the tempter but also when he himself obtained nourishment from doing his Father’s will. (see John 4) The spiritual feeds the physical The eternal sustains the temporal. That with life in itself—God—gives life to all that is contingent. The Father (eternally) begat His Son. When the Word became flesh, He brought into the world his life with His Father. This, my friend, I believe is the key to understanding John 1:4: “In him [Jesus Christ] was life, and this life is the light of men.”

Jesus is our bread of life. Yes, you hear it practiced that many only call on him for temporal needs. But Jesus desires to be much more to all of us than just this. Our Lord and Savior desires that we pursue him from hearts of worship and love. These motives evidence honor and affection. Jesus reassures me, that if I value and pursue his words, he and the Father will be with me now, through the dawn to the dusk or darkness of each day. (Jn 14:21-23) My friend, these truths you too know and experience, and this gives me great comfort and joy. Encourage those near you who claim Christ but do not know him as their satisfaction. May we press on in following our Lord, and may the grace of God, the love and kindness of our God, be known to us and through us daily. We can encourage each other in these things. We must.

The Christian life characteristics just described the world cannot verify. The world has no framework intrinsic to its operations by which to authenticate or validate the godly life of a Christian. It has no defining grid or basis to bring experiences back to and judge “this one’s life is truly godly because we see, understand, thus know as fact, that what this person does is of God!” The world is the world! It knows not God. But it thinks it knows all and from this it assumes authority and renders itself suitable to judge. It maintains that its judgments are legitimate. The world believes itself right in judging and condemning behavior that it thinks a godly person should display but doesn’t. Perhaps the world knows what is not godly because it references itself and at times sees itself in a Christian’s life, and then by definition assumes that godliness would be the opposite of that. Perhaps the world has learned enough from the Christian community throughout time to apprehend what we say about ourselves, and thus armed with this understanding serves as a witness against us: lives of hypocrisy and contradiction stand out. We should consider this phenomenon personally and as congregations. An open discussion between us on this topic would be helpful.

Christian lives manifest fruits of faith which come as the result of that life beyond the world resident in their hearts. These fruits flow from the inside outward as a result of divine transformation linked to God. Christians live as conduits of Gods existence, and of His grace, His love and His kindness; from the truth of Him experienced in their lives outward. Unleashed in and through human lives, God uses people as His means of disclosure and display. So much of what God does is revelatory or declarative. People are transformed as God’s revelation opens up in their lives by the Spirit giving them understanding of God’s word and of God Himself. Because of this heavenly reality manifesting to and then through a Christian’s life, the world can and should encounter and experience the divine reality as Christian lives declare their godly origin. Christ in our lives can be tasted. We who have tasted and know Christ are transformed as the Bread of Life unleashes divine realities in and through us. Ought not that life seed planted by God open up and display to the Gardner? Of all who pass by, some may not understand the flower’s life, yet they still observe the life and beauty.

There are many places in Scripture where this contrast is recorded for us to learn by, and there seems sufficient testimony by our Lord in John 17 that those who live in the faith line can live so that the world acknowledges, in some way, God’s love toward the Son and his followers, and that the world could affirm that God sent His Son to it. This strikes me as a simple yet profound truth.

There are various ways to understand what is meant here concerning what God has done through Jesus Christ. Some conclude this is a singular world event of eventual unified confession by the world of what God has done in Christ. Some see it as the outworking of Christ’s Lordship, salvation and rule spreading beyond the nationality and locality of Christ’s initial redemptive work and ministry. I go with the second interpretation. So where do I see myself in the John 17 passage? While I comfort myself with the tangibility of God’s work in my life, I cannot always find such comfort that those who meet me during my days experience me in such a way that realities of Christ and the Father, and God’s love for His Son and followers, comes forward first and foremost. How that particular experience and testimony recorded in John 17 actually manifests I leave to God. Jesus prayed to the Father that these testimonies would be, and they seem to come as the consequent of people believing the testimony and words of the apostles, the unity of these faith follower’s lives with God in Christ. Unity. Unity with God in Christ, God’s word, God’s people, and God’s love received and manifest: for, if God’s love is received, it will be manifest. If God’s love is not manifest, then one should question why it’s not there.

Let us not forget our Lord’s comments earlier in that chapter about our need to sanctify ourselves, as he sanctified himself. I wonder where this notion has fallen away to? If I live not as a committed and cleaned conduit of God, His graces, His truths, the realities He has united me with—all through union with His Son—I shutter to think what those who experience me actually receive. Perhaps James gets at this when he frequently refers to those with divided hearts. Have you considered yourself, my friend, as a divided one? We would benefit from examining ourselves daily to see. The world sees. God sees. Let us not be blind to this. Perhaps we should talk more about this and on sanctifying ourselves another time.

Sufficient, then, for me is the task of living Christianly by following our Lord Jesus Christ, loving God and loving people. (If I truly follow Christ, would not the other items happen?) Pray for me my friend, for I am not always inclined to the things of God or the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, nor to love the unlovely (or so I render them at times). Recently, I have found it helpful to meditate on the apostle Paul’s use of the word “appeared” in Titus 2:11 and 3:4. Grace appeared (in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ), then love and kindness appeared. God manifest brightly to humanity in the person and work of His Son, grace, kindness and love. And if these have shown in my heart, then they should shine through my heart into all I am and do; thus would the world have a better witness of the reality that God sent His Son into the world, and that He loves His Son and those who follow him. A living witness of God loving: what more could the world need? What more would we offer? But self-love worms in and plays its hand to confuse and occupy the believer’s mind and heart. If it holds the mind, the heart is enslaved. There would be fewer godly choices made promoting God and Christ, because the Christian in this state lacks devotion, passion and gratitude.

Recall Jesus said he is the way, he is the truth, and he is the life. These statements I have understood of him in relation to the Father. Yet, it seems deficient to only say “I mentally agree with what our Lord says.” I think we must step into or live the reality of what he is revealing through what he says. Perhaps Jesus’ encounter with the woman in John 4 serves as an example of Christ Jesus being the way and the truth in regards to the Father. He must be these to us also, and likely as we grow in Christ over our years we will be shown more fully just how Jesus is the way to the Father and just how he is the truth about the Father for us and those sharing Christ with us. It seems a necessary biblical imperative that Jesus not be these only at a Christian’s death, some blessed and assured distant hope, but that Jesus be these for each individual Christian throughout the course of each day lived and then also more completely at the time of one’s death.

This leads me to discus the third element from John 14.6: Jesus as life with the Father. Here I find a Christ-o-centric epistemology. I find a living means of knowing: an experiential epistemology; a relational means. This view differs in kind and structure from those static rationalistic grids that some argue each of us should examine and conclude meet our personal criteria for determining what we think we individually are capable of knowing, or someone else could ever know, then evaluating and judging truth claims and lives from this window as we look out on to things. Many in Jesus’ day experienced him, but few knew him as the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father through him. Our Lord clearly says that “No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those he wills to reveal Him to.” (Mt 11:27) See also Luke 10:22 and John 5:21. These three passages would make a great sermon. Thy unite with respect to the role Christ is given but they differ with respect to what Jesus praises the Father for. We should come back to this important topic, so we can discuss it without being rushed. But for now, I want to return to Christ as life with the Father and explore what this means for us. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and he is all these, I say, in relation to his and our Father. Notice how he reveals he is “the way” before he is “the truth?” Once Jesus is believed in as the way and the truth, and he is experienced as the way and the truth, only then can he be known and experienced by Christians as “the life” with the Father.

Unfortunately, my friend, I need to send this letter to you. My time for writing you this day has passed. I will continue writing on this last topic of Christ as life with the Father and write again soon.

God’s best.

Carl