I believe that for many Christians, a big question that has been troubling them is: Why have I been believing for so long, but I cannot live the beautiful life of Jesus Christ? They even feel as if their faith is going downhill, losing the purity and enthusiasm they had when they believed in the beginning, and as their faith grows, they don't seem to gain anything except learning more knowledge about their faith.
Recently, the Christian Times, an online Chinese Christian newspaper, interviewed Pastor L, a senior pastor somewhere in Eastern China, who shared his latest thoughts and observations about it.
Some time ago, Pastor L. found a problem that shocked him. "We are right to believe in the cross, but just believing in the cross is not enough."
He explained that although the cross forgives us of our sins and anyone who believes in Jesus Christ is clothed with the power of the cross, this is not enough, we need to have a life. Nor does this life come to us by ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit and the help of Christ. The Holy Spirit enters and dwells in the church and will enter into everyone who believes in Jesus Christ.
"So, the main content of the gospel is not only the cross but Jesus Christ Himself and what He has done," he added.
Pastor L said that he found that many pastors, elders, and believers have been saved and born again. They do have the experience of being saved, the transition from unbelief to belief, and himself is a typical example. But many people would question, "Why can't we live the righteous and good life that the Bible says?"
We can't practice God's righteousness and goodness, but the Bible commands us to live like Jesus Christ. Living like Jesus Christ is called sanctification. Many people say, "Can you be sanctified? You can't be sanctified." But whether it is from doctrine or from Bible, it teaches that sanctification is a process, not a result. But some people make it absolute, they say that sanctification is a state of completely holy, which of course is impossible, and it is impossible for us until we die.
"God's command tells us to love our enemies, but we do not even love our brothers and sisters enough, let alone our enemies; I do not even love my wife enough, let alone my brothers and sisters. We say in the church that I love you, brothers and sisters, and that I love you in the name of the Lord Jesus, but are all of these really true? We have heard God's words, and we know that God's will is in them, but I am striving to love my brothers and sisters in my own way, and this is what we are doing as Pharisees. Because when I use my flesh body and flesh heart, my human disposition to struggle to obey the word of God, I become a Pharisee."
The pastor continued that we cannot live like Jesus Christ, but because God commands that we should live this way, many people follow it and live it in a superficial way. "Therefore, in fact, many Christians only live like religious people, not like Christians. This is terrible."
Compared with other religions, the external religious rituals and religious appearances of our Protestant Christianity are far inferior to them. But the difference between us and them is that we have life, and they have no life. But the problem is that we have life, but we cannot live like that. Not grasping the gospel's essence is the reason. "The saved people should have a new lifestyle of being saved, unfortunately, we cannot live like that."
The Holy Spirit enters us, not only to give us life but to give abundant life. We cannot provide an answer to where our abundant life is, so people describe external things as signs of abundant life. For example, a person who has made money after believing in the Lord, or who has been healed of a disease or something else, or who used to be indifferent to the church, but is now very enthusiastic about it. In order to measure whether his faith is good or bad or whether it is growing, we can only look at superficial phenomena."
"It is not wrong that this external thing is a manifestation of faith, but the question is whether this external manifestation of a person is revealed from life? This is not necessarily the case. We cannot say that a person's faith is good because he has made a lot of money after his conversion. Otherwise, it would end up that a person's piety of faith is determined by how much money he makes - the more money he makes, the more pious his faith is. We can't say that," he urged.
"We have life, but we often put it aside and continue to rely on ourselves. Life is Jesus Christ Himself, and we put Jesus Christ aside, still striving to build our faith deeper with our own efforts, trying to enter into the fullness of life by ourselves, and just separate from the essence again. We want to justify our faith through this external life of a religious person. Man cannot go ahead of God, but must let God go first, and then we follow."
Pastor L said that we always want to do many great things as if that's how our faith grows well. "God doesn't care how big or small what we do is. The Lord said, 'I only value you, and I only care about you, let me live in you and give you an abundant life.' This is the gospel. The resurrected Lord lives in me, lives in you, and lives in every Christian. This is the essence of the gospel."
"Let us live like Jesus, not live only according to my preaching, my learning, my knowledge. 'Knowing only Jesus Christ and Him crucified'. Only then can we truly live the beautiful life of Jesus Christ," he concluded.
- Translated by Richard Zhou
