This week, the blog is sponsored by The Good Book Company and written by Alistair Begg, who is the Bible Teacher at Truth For Life and previously served as Senior Pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Alistair has three children and eight grandchildren.
God saves us just as we are, but he is not content for us to remain just as we are. No—God’s great purpose for us, having saved us, is to conform us into the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). In fact, that is the good for which he is always working in all aspects of our lives. There are not two versions of Christianity—the “basic” option, in which our souls are saved but our characters remain unchanged, and the “deluxe” option for those who are super-committed, which involves the hard work of becoming more like Jesus. Christianity is about both justification—the work of God in our lives to bring us to faith in Christ, that he might take our judgment and give us his perfection—and sanctification—the ongoing process in which God is at work to make us more and more like our Savior. The Bible calls us to become what we are so that what God has done will be transparently clear.
In other words, God cares about what you are like. He cares about your character. The New Testament, therefore, is full of exhortations to turn away from who we were and fully embrace who we now are. “If then you have been raised with Christ”—since we have a new identity—there is an “old self” that we are to put off and a “new self, which is being renewed … after the image of its creator,” that we are to put on (Colossians 3:1, 9-10). The Christian life involves change.
Wherever you open it up, you do not have to read many pages of the New Testament to find this kind of encouragement to become who you are. God is concerned with our character, for, as Jesus put it, “by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8).
Not only that, but your character is preaching a message, one way or another, as you go about your life each day. In his letter to Titus, Paul tells him to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (2:1) “so that in everything [believers] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (v 10). There is a way to live that will both display the truth about God and make the truth about God attractive. As J.B. Phillips paraphrases that verse, we are called to be “a living testimonial to the teaching of God our Savior.”
God saves us just as we are, but he is not content for us to remain just as we are. No—God’s great purpose for us, having saved us, is to conform us into the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29).
And so the question we need to wrestle with is not simply “Does my ability to articulate the gospel make people want to believe it?” or “Does my ability to answer questions—to act as an apologist—make people want to believe?” but “Does my character make the gospel attractive so as to make people wish they believed it?”
Ours is a divided and disappointed age. But there is a way to live that makes people see that you have what they don’t—that makes them see that Christian faith makes a genuine difference to what a person is like and how they navigate life with peace and joy. The reverse, of course, is also true: it is possible to live in such a way that onlookers gain the distinct impression that a profession of belief makes no discernible difference.
So, what do people see in you? As the little poem I was taught as a boy puts it:
You’re writing a gospel,
A chapter each day,
By the deeds that you do
And the words that you say;
And people read what you write,
Distorted or true,
So what is the gospel
According to you?
When Christians look like Christ, we glorify God and impact the world. It matters. What the church needs today is not primarily better programs or apologetic resources or buildings, or more financial resources or greater political sway. What the church needs is Christians of increasingly Christlike character, so that what is found inside the church is radically different than the world outside the church. God cares about our character far more than he does our gifts or achievements or qualifications. If it were a crime for our churches to be places of radical love and distinctive kindness, for instance, would they be found guilty? If it were a crime for me to be full of joy and patience, would I be convicted?
In other words, am I, every day, in every way, making the gospel of the Lord Jesus attractive—not in what I say so much as in what I am like? How am I reflecting the glory of my Savior to the world he loved so much that he was born into it in order to die for it?
