Author:James (Steve) Clay, MABC, LPC
One of the greatest dangers facing the Christian church today is our tendency to evaluate the essence of our faith by paradigms borrowed from the surrounding culture. It is not uncommon that these paradigms are based on how to know your needs and then find how God is useful in meeting them. Many are the books written to help us with this, labeled with a “how to” subtitle. We live in a pragmatic culture, where things are valued and pursued based on their usefulness. And usefulness is related to immediacy and good feelings, identity and position. The way we understand Christianity and try to live it out is oftentimes affected by the misguided and foolish notion that it (being a Christian) is a means to a greater end—that end being getting more of the stuff we want now and less of the stuff of life that we don’t want. The gospel is reduced from an authoritative revelation from God that is true and necessary to a means that is useful in meeting needs as defined by man. It is a sad commentary on the Christian church of today that it is more affected by this pernicious disease of pragmatism, learned from a materialistic culture, than it is affecting the culture by pointing to the greatest value, namely God Himself.
The essence of Christianity is that God is the supreme value of the universe, that we do not honor as supremely valuable, that we are guilty of sin and under His omnipotent wrath, and he alone can rescue us from His own condemnation, which He has done through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, for everyone who is in Christ. (John Piper)
With this truth known, a gospel reduced to the promotion of meeting the common needs of people (housing, job, health care, family life, etc.) is cruel, for it is like air conditioning the train that leads to hell.
Romans 1-7 lays all the background for a proper theology, which should be the essence of our identity and activity as the church.
- A holy God
- Sinful man
- Coming judgment and wrath
- Perfect Savior—Jesus Christ crucified and risen
- Justification by faith
- Sanctification by faith
One of the central tenets in the essence of Christianity is Romans 8:1: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Glory awaits the child of God. This is the foundational message we embrace and announce to the world. Why? Because if God is the supreme treasure of the universe and the object of greatest hope and joy, and if sin separates us from Him, then to have our guilt and condemnation removed gains us access to Him.
Rather than condemnation, says the apostle Paul, we have been given the perfect righteousness of Christ. We’ve been declared righteous in Christ. This is called “justification. Justification is the positive aspect of salvation (declared righteous); whereas no condemnation is the negative side (not guilty). Condemnation brings death; righteousness brings life. The now of Romans 8:1 emphasizes that this salvation (justification and no condemnation) is already ours in Christ, along with its inherent blessings, principle of which is that we get God, from whose love we cannot be separated (Romans 8:38-39).
Though there are many inherent blessings in our salvation, the greatest is God Himself. This truth is the essence of our faith, one which the church dare not forget. To preach an exclusive message of secondary blessings apart from central message of Christ as our greatest treasure will certainly lead to a gospel presentation that is in step with the culture’s pragmatic, self-oriented view of life. It is time-bound and strips God of glory, making Him useful, but not gloriously better than any one of His blessings. The modern church is in a precarious position, teetering in this tendency to reduce God to a glorified Santa Claus. Beware of a theology spoken or implied that in any way reduces God to one whose primary interest is to make us happy by giving us more of the things that tend to steal our heart affections away from Him. As the rest of Romans 8 makes clear, suffering, not blissful blessings of health, welfare, and prosperity, await the church of God, till finally glorified and with God who is the greatest pleasure (Psalm 16:11). Suffering and hardship are not removed from Christian experience, but rather are God's means, in accordance with His grace, intended to cause us to look to Him as our sufficiency in all matters of life (Romans 8:35-36).
So what is the need that God meets that is greatest of all? He grants us His Son, whose death pays the penalty for sin and whose sinless life provides righteousness to those who believe. He gives us faith (Ephesians 2:8-9) in order to believe and be made righteous. He declares us righteous and removes our condemnation. He gives us the Spirit, who imparts salvation, prays for us (Romans 8:26-27), and guarantees our salvation. He pours out His loves for us through His Spirit (Romans 5:5). Ultimately, He glorifies us, making us fit to receive glorious and eternal relationship with Him. In a word, He gives us Himself, and provides all the means to a rich and inexhaustable relationship with Him. Realizing that God is my greatest need and that He has provided all the means to get us to Himself, helps us see our way through suffering; helps us pursue Christ for strength to know Him more fully in times of hardship; helps us seek the Spirit's help in dying to sin that robs of us of joy; gains us perspective of the illusory pleasures that entice us away from God; and enables us to see the physical delights of this life in their proper place as signposts to the greater joy in God. Let's be diligent to fight against the strong urge to make this life be what God never intended it--a replacement for life in Him. Let's fight well, informed by the word of God, enabled by His grace through the Spirit, and diligent in our quest to know and love the God who first loved us--toward our eternal joy in Him!
The good news, then, and the central message of the church, is that Christ has died for sins in order to bring us to God, who is the greatest treasure. No condemnation is good news, because it means we get God rather than His wrath. Let’s be careful to understand that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28) in order to maximize our joy in Him, as we are conformed to likeness of His Son (Romans 8:29).