A New Beginning (15 page)

Christopher paused, while some shifting sounds went around the church.

“Now let me ask one of the most important questions of all,” he went on. “How does this growth I am speaking of come about? How
does
the Father cause the character of his firstborn son, who is Jesus, to be infused into the characters of all those others who choose to become his sons and daughters?

“It is very simple really. Simple, that is, considering what a high thing it is we are considering.

“I believe that as we do what the Father and Jesus have instructed, the Holy Spirit causes a change toward Christlikeness to take place within us. As we gradually slice off bits and pieces of our selfish self—what is called the flesh or the old man—the Father replaces them with tiny infusions of Jesus' character.

“But that raises a question: Does Christlikeness come about by
God's
doing or
our
doing?”

Christopher watched as everyone thought about his or her answer.

“Both,” he said after a moment. “God has given instructions about how his people are to live. As
we
practice and obey those instructions, by the choices we make and by our own determination to put others first, then
he
causes the change to happen—over the course of many weeks, months, and years. Increasingly, we respond to people, situations, and events more as Jesus himself would respond. It is not easy to do so. But with practice we gradually learn. And then the transformation comes as we do what Jesus has told us to do.”

Christopher paused, thought a moment, then smiled.

“Let me give you an example,” he said. “You come in after a long, hard day's work with dirt all over your hands—just like Mr. Henry and I looked by the time we were finished with his trench! Now, you go to the basin and pick up the bar of soap with one hand. But your other hand is tied behind your back, so you have to try to wash your one free hand all by itself.”

A few chuckles went around.

“Try it when you get home!” laughed Christopher. “It's not so easy. It works a lot better when you get
both
hands into the water with that bar of soap!

“That's exactly how the Christian life works. We can't do it alone without the Lord's help. But neither can he do much in the way of growing the kind of fruit he's trying to grow in us by
himself
, without
our
help. God's part and ours go hand in hand. You can't separate them.

“The more times you are kind or forgiving to someone who is mean to you, the more capable you become of responding like Jesus. You become a kinder and more forgiving person. The Holy Spirit working inside you may be causing the change to happen, but
you
are the one who makes it possible by repeated kind and forgiving actions that
you
do yourself.

“God cannot do this without our help.
‘Father, make me to become like Jesus,'
is a worthy prayer. It is, in fact, one of the highest prayers possible for a man or woman to pray. But God cannot answer it unless we are doing what he tells us to do—being kind and forgiving and doing to others as we would have them do to us.

“It is from obedience that this transformation I speak of comes. That's both hands working together.

“Therefore, we must know what we have been told to do and what kind of people the children of God are to be. In order to make this possible, it is urgent and imperative that we know what the New Testament teaches. Not so that we will merely
know
it, but so that we will know what it is we are supposed to
do
.

“In the New Testament are our instructions, our orders, to be found. The Gospels are most important of all. If we hope to become like him,
we have to do what Jesus said
!

“If Drum or Almeda were going to hire someone to manage the freight company who knew nothing about the business, they would first give him detailed instructions. They might even write down a list of all his duties. Then they would expect him to do everything they had instructed.

“As Christians we too have been left with instructions.

“The four Gospels are our guidebook. They tell us how we are supposed to live, what our attitudes should be, how we are to behave, how we are to think, what we should do in various situations. Familiarity with the Gospels is foundational if you and I hope to make progress on our walks of faith toward becoming like Jesus.

“When we do read our Bibles, there are many topics that can be raised for discussion. We can talk about salvation, we can talk about God's mercy and grace, we can talk about what Paul calls justification, we can examine the prophetic portions of Scripture, we can try to describe exactly what faith is, we can discuss the afterlife.

“There are a multitude of doctrines and qualities of God's being upon which theologians hang their opinions like coats on a row of pegs. Every coat looks a little different, and after a while the wall is so cluttered with coats that you no longer see the pegs. When I was in seminary I studied most of the theological pegs, so to speak, but I found myself none the wiser for it.

“I thus determined within myself that I would search the Scriptures to find what for me seemed the essential points which I myself believed to comprise the Christian faith. These I am sharing with you now. Open any page of the New Testament, point out any verse on any topic, and the truths therein will reduce, in the final analysis, to these cornerstone principles of belief I have been sharing with you.

“Who is God and what is his character?

“What comprises the walk of faith?

“What is God's ultimate purpose in our lives?

“Those three questions may be found, as I say, on every page of the Scriptures—if only we learn to discover and discern them.

“There is not a single attribute of God, nor a single doctrine about his work, his plan, or his creation in which God's good, loving, and trustworthy Fatherhood cannot be found. We could list fifty things that God ‘is,' but they would all merely describe the fact that he is our Father. We could list a hundred things that God ‘does,' but they would all be mere corollaries to his love, goodness, and trustworthiness.

“In the same way, there is not a single verse in the New Testament that does not contain a practical element, a call to God's children to grow into Christlikeness by the obedient living out of self-denial and servanthood.

“Open the Bible to any page, read any sentence, and there, if you have eyes to see, you will find practicality, Christlikeness, and relinquishment of self—with the Fatherhood of God overarching the whole.

“It took some time, and I had to retrain myself to read my Bible through eyes that could perceive these three cornerstones and the principles involved in living them. You can imagine the difficulty of a former seminarian such as myself, who had studied under theologians with more letters
after
their names than my name contains, of putting aside doctrines, opinions, and ideas and seeking instead nothing from the holy Scriptures other than what I was to
do
in the next five minutes.

“But I did learn to retrain myself, to adjust my brain to see the New Testament not as a religious treatise full of ideas, but as the most practical guidebook about living the world has ever been given. As we study the Scriptures together while I am your pastor, it will be with just such a practical focus.”

Christopher paused momentarily, glanced down at his watch, then thought for a moment.

“It is about ten minutes till noon,” he said. “I had planned to stop there. Yet it somehow seems to me appropriate to continue just a few minutes longer in order to ask, and then answer, one more extremely vital question. What exactly do I mean, some of you may find yourselves wondering, when I speak of this thing called
Christlikeness
? I would not have you leave this morning with that question unanswered in your mind.”

Christopher drew in a breath.

“Whenever someone comes to me,” he went on, “though the occasions have not been many since I left my last church, with the question, ‘What must I do to become a Christian?' my answer is always, ‘Give yourself fully—intellect, hands, feet, heart, brain, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, behavior—to your heavenly Father who loves you. Ask him to forgive you for trying to live independent from him and to forgive your sins—which he happily does. You may become his son or daughter simply by asking him to take you into his family, by
giving
yourself to him.'

“The question that usually comes next is: ‘What do I do then?' My reply always is, ‘Read the Gospels. Find out what Jesus taught. He is the example of how a child of the Father is to live. Do what he says, therefore, and model your life after his. That is how life is lived within the Father's family.' In other words, once we allow God to forgive us, and once Jesus' death and blood wash us clean, then we
are
part of God's family. Then we must
live
as his children live.

“That
is
the Christian life—doing as Jesus did, living the life of God's family.

“But one might inquire further: ‘What, at its essential core, does it mean to do as Jesus did? What defines the Christlike character?'

“I will answer by saying that in sacrifice, self-denial, servanthood, and death of self-motive is to be found the abundant life which the Father longs to lavish forth upon his children without measure. For such attributes made up the moment-by-moment life of God's Son.

“Everything in God's kingdom is inverted from the ways of man.

“Man says, ‘Get all you can and you will be happy.' God says, ‘
Give
what you have, and you will have riches indeed.'

“Man says, ‘Raise yourself up.' God says, ‘Put your self to
death
.'

“Man says, ‘The greatest goal is to possess.' God says, ‘The highest ambition in life is to
relinquish
.'

“Man says, ‘To be served by others is to be great.' God says, ‘Greatness is measured by
servanthood
.'

“Man says, ‘The first are first and the last are last.' God says,
‘The last shall be first, and the first
last.'

“Jesus rose to the height of his sonship by willingly laying down his life. Why did he do so? To teach us how to lay down our own selfishness, and in order that his Father's purposes might be fulfilled. He never sought his own will, only his Father's.

“As he is our example, only in so doing will we—you and I, my friends—reach the height of our sonship and daughterhood within the Father's family . . . by laying down everything that we might otherwise call our own.

“Now please don't get me wrong. This may not necessarily involve the actual giving of one's earthly life. That is something that comes to very few. But the opportunity to do what I am speaking of comes to
everyone
. More than that, it comes to us every day.

“I am speaking rather of laying down, of denying, of putting to death, our natural motives of self, responding to every situation that crosses our path with the automatic silent inward question,
How may I be a servant to this other individual? What sacrifice can I make that
will help him in some way? What can I say or do—what good can I do, what kindness can
I show, what gracious word can escape my lips—that
will convey my Father's love to this dear one whom the Father has put before me?

“Laying down our lives means nothing more nor nothing less than simply putting others ahead of ourselves—giving their needs and desires preeminence over our own. It means stepping to the back of the line and letting others go first. It means washing other people's feet rather than expecting them to wash ours.

“Such was, it is my firm conviction, how Jesus lived every moment of his life. He possessed no motive of self. His only desire was to do his
Father's
will.

“If he is our example, then surely we are to do the same.”

Christopher stopped and took in a deep breath, then wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Every eye was fixed on him and there wasn't a sound in the whole church.

When he spoke again his voice was quieter, yet just as firm. I could tell he was nearly done.

“Is this remarkable life of dynamic and practical Christlike Christianity,” he asked, “—is it meant for only a few, for especially ‘religious' individuals, for pious older men and women, for monks in a monastery or nuns in a convent?

“Is it meant only for pastors, perhaps such as Avery Rutledge and myself, and maybe also for our wives, but not for working men and women who have to exist in the real world facing the sorts of struggles and strains that we clerics do not have to?

“Is it somehow
easier
for someone such as myself because I happen to be called a pastor?

“Is the life of Christlikeness reserved only for church time on Sundays?

“What do you think of all this I have been saying? Is there anything here . . . for
you
?

“Well, my friends, I will close with my final point—and it is perhaps the most important of all.

“I believe that the life of self-denial, servanthood, and obedient Christlikeness is the destiny and calling of
every
man and woman who calls himself or herself a Christian. That means every one of you listening to me here today.

“It is to such a life as I have been describing, as I told you some weeks ago, that I will challenge you every Sunday, and every day during the week between Sundays. Consider the challenge carefully. This is the life
all
Christians are called to live—not pastors only.”

Christopher paused, then added with a sincere smile, “But that's where the pastor comes in—to make the challenge, and to help you however I can to live this life of Christlikeness.

“Let me say once again how thankful I am to be living among you. My wife and I love you all dearly. Let us conclude in prayer together.

“Father,
we are grateful that you love us and that you call us your children. Help us to be more fully
the sons and daughters we are. Help us to live
obediently to your will. Transform us, each and every one,
into people who reflect the character of your Son, Jesus.
Go with us as we return to our homes, and keep us mindful of you every day in the week
which follows. Thank you, Father. Amen.”

As Christopher opened his eyes, he nodded down to me where I sat. I stood, took his arm, and we walked down the center aisle together toward the door of the church.