“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

This is familiar territory. We’re good to go, so to speak. Death isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of eternity. We better get the word out so other people can get the benefit of this amazing offer. That’s what evangelicals do, to one degree or another. As the song goes, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness.” We’re Christians, followers of the Christ who’s made a way for us to be reconciled with God. Let’s do what we can to make sure nobody’s left behind.

How do we do that? It depends on who we are and what we’re capable of doing. Some people are natural evangelists, capable of starting a conversation anywhere and with anyone. Those of us who are not so inclined only occasionally share their faith. However, in order to be part of the effort, we may support those who have a “call,” so to speak, to engage the effort to evangelize. The Church as a whole has many ways that it supports the spread of this magnificent message. It establishes and supports mission organizations that go to faraway places that haven’t been told the “good news.” It may support a political agenda that works to spread Christian values within the culture in which they live. The Church supports relief efforts for those who’ve been impacted by war or natural disasters. Organizations are formed or consolidated in order to address needs that are too extensive to be addressed by a single church.

In all of this—and I’m speaking of the Church in America—there’s a tendency to focus on our own capacities to evaluate and address the circumstances that are confronting us. I’m talking about the tendency to think like an American in addressing whatever endeavor is being attempted by the Church. It reminds me of a James Bond film that I recently viewed. It was an exciting adventure filled with all kinds of plot twists in the effort for good to gain victory over evil. The means for securing victory consisted of the use of all manner of technology, and the capacity of Bond and his cohorts to be vigilant, aggressive and ingenious in counteracting the efforts of the current nemesis. As an evangelical Christian I’m not necessarily recommending these films, but I watched this one and it prompted me to consider certain ideas at work in the story. All the emphasis was on the contest of ideas that were informing the opponents and their effort to secure their competing agendas by whatever means they had at their disposal.  Wealth and power for its own sake was pitted against the desire to assure the wellbeing of all people everywhere.

Compared to Bond, most people’s lives can seem dull perhaps, or at least ordinary. Most Americans are just trying to do life as best as they can. Unless there’s some unusual event that takes place in our neck of the woods, we’re mostly focused on making a living, maybe raising a family, trying to better our circumstances. Some of these efforts can be quite dramatic depending on the neighborhood in which we live. High-crime areas, unexpected weather events, catastrophes of various kinds all present obstacles to the usual goals of most of us to secure the wellbeing of ourselves and those closest to us. However, in some ways we share the approach taken by Bond in his struggle. We rely on our own ingenuity to deal with life and to support the Lord’s call to spread the word of salvation. As Christians we’re part of an organization that shares a common belief that needs to be heard by all people everywhere and the nemesis that works against that agenda is a combination of human resistance to the truth and a supernatural power that informs the world.

We engage this confrontation because we’re followers of Jesus. Our hope is derived from our leader. We do what He tells us and labor to counteract the culture that is informed by a different agenda. However, I don’t think that’s the agenda that the Lord has given to His followers. In fact I don’t think that follower is the right term to be applied to believers. To be a follower suggests someone who follows a leader. They look to the leader to tell them what to do, what to think, how to act. What comes to my mind are the huge assemblies of people who stand before someone who they believe has all the answers about how to do life, how to secure their safety, how to make sense of their existence. The followers listen intently to their leader and are swept up into an experience that gives them their purpose for being. It reminds me of the huge assemblies gathered in Germany prior to World War II, or the periodic gatherings before some of today’s leaders in various parts of the world. Those images make me wonder what the gathering of believers before the Lord will be like at the end of days. Will you and I just be swept up into a huge throng of believers before a throne that we can only imagine because it’s so far away from where we’re standing?

I don’t think so. God has called us to be more than a follower; He’s called us to be His sons and daughters. And it’s not just a simple adoption in which a place is provided for us to be a part of an established family, as if we’re an outsider being incorporated into an existing household. Even the best of circumstances along these lines renders the relationship of the adopted to the rest of the family as artificial; unless the adoption took place when the adopted was an infant and all the other children were adopted as well. In those circumstances all the siblings would be on equal footing.

Fortunately, our adoption is based on just such a circumstance. I’m thinking of the eighth chapter of Romans as I say this; perhaps one of the most important sections of scripture for understanding the dynamic nature of the Gospel. In it the apostle explains what our salvation really entails, but in order to do this he first had to point out in chapter 7 the inadequacy of the law as a means of dealing with sin. We can’t keep the law on our own. To whatever extent we try to follow the rules, the effort will always be inadequate because it doesn’t change us; the tendency to sin is still there.

It always will be unless something amazing happens. Something that simply can’t happen has to happen. We have to be “born again”; how odd is that! When Jesus said this to Nicodemus, the man could not understand it, and who would? But Jesus was insistent and went on to explain it in a manner that anticipated the coming of the Holy Spirit; the helper who would abide in all who put their faith in the crucified and risen Son of God. (John 3:1-21) Fast forward to Romans 8—probably written about 25 years after Jesus rose from the dead. The letter is a thoroughgoing presentation of the Gospel in all its aspects; and chapter 8 gets to the heart of the matter. It points out what makes Jesus different from every other prophet, savior, leader, religious purveyor, or any other type of figure you want to include. In this chapter the real impact of the cross is brought to light. Instead of just focusing on Jesus because He rose from the dead—something that’s pretty amazing in itself—Paul gives attention to the impact of the cross on the believer’s life. That’s because a miraculous event that happened two thousand years ago isn’t really sufficient in itself to change people’s lives.  If we believe it’s true it can give us hope for an afterlife, but does it really impact us? Unfortunately that’s the predicament for much of the Church. We gather together to remind ourselves of this amazing event and encourage each other to remember where our hope lies, but are we really impacted by this message? We try to mimic Jesus and follow the example of His original disciples. But is that all there is to it?

In Romans 8 Paul, after indicating the inadequacy of the law, declares in no uncertain terms that something new, something unprecedented, something unexpected has been made available through the cross. Not only has the debt for our sin been forgiven because of the Christ’s sacrifice, but we have been given an opportunity to “walk by the Spirit” of God. Elsewhere in scripture it’s been emphasized that when we repent of our sin and are forgiven, we receive the Holy Spirit who takes up residence within us. (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Tim 1:14) In Romans 8 Paul explains what that circumstance entails, namely that we have the capacity to be free from the power of sin. The tendency to sin can be overcome through the Spirit who dwells within us. He’s the Helper that was sent by the Father after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. (John 14:16f) What we do and think can be inspired by the Helper that has come to dwell within us. We’re expected to walk out our lives in a manner consistent with the holiness of God; the Lord still expects behavior that reflects His holiness, but we’re not on our own to fulfill that mandate. It’s not just a matter of following His instructions, it’s a matter rooted in a relationship with the Lord.

The Apostle Paul made this clear when he stated:

So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. (Romans 8:12-17)

We’re not called to mimic the Lord, or to follow His example; rather we’re called into a relationship with the Lord, a relationship made possible through the cross. Instead of trying to fulfill the requirements of the law and relying on the cross to make up for our limitations, we’ve been given an opportunity to enter into a new form of existence in which our fellowship with the Lord redefines who we are as individuals and as members of His body: the ecclesia, the gathering of the children of God who collectively are the Lord’s expression of His reality now and in the ages to come.

Our adoption is not simply our incorporation into a different family in which everyone attempts to live together regardless of their various backgrounds. The basis for our incorporation into God’s family is the miraculous event in which we become new creatures in Christ. We’re reborn by the indwelling of God’s Spirit in our souls. And because of the indwelling Spirit we’re not considered outcasts for whom allowances have been made to provide a new home to live in; rather we’re recognized as children of God, legitimate sons and daughters with a common Father who has embraced us without reservation.

To be clear we need to recognize that our acceptance into the Lord’s household is not derived from the application of some sort of supernatural power. What has happened is that the Lord has redefined our existence through an intimate relationship with Him. We are Christians because God dwells within us and we in Him; a circumstance that redefines our humanity and counteracts the impact of sin and the resulting estrangement from the Lord. And it’s not temporary. This is who we are now and forever. This is what it means to be fully human. Our salvation and wellbeing are not the result of our efforts to orchestrate our lives under the influence of Christian teaching. To do that is to mimic the world in a Christianized manner. Rather the Gospel points to an existence redefined through a never-ending fellowship with our creator and redeemer. And it’s from this vantage point that we engage the agenda of the Church, Whatever role we’ve been called to play in representing the Lord to a lost and dying world, we do so not as representatives of our leader, but as sons and daughters whose very existence has been redefined. We are “new creatures” in Christ and labor to extend to others the possibility for this change to take place in their lives as well.