Modern Piety, Grace, The Christian Label

I have run in to a lot of people who don’t like to be told how to live. They want to continue living their form of Christianity because it’s easy and because it feels good to them. Watching them from an outsider’s point of view, someone who’s not completely connected with their lives, they fit the profile of a sinner more than they do a saint.

Common rebuttal to all this? … “we’re all sinners saved by grace.”

Just because we’re saved by grace doesn’t mean we can continue live however we choose–continuing sinful lifestyle and damaging habits.

The Bible tells us a lot about how we should live if we call ourselves Christians. These passages are difficult for those who stress grace more than piety in their lives. To the grace-lovers, it sounds like a bunch of rules–that very thing Christ set us free from. What are we then left to do with this dilemma?

I think it’s important to remember that we don’t strive to live by the rules, by the commands of the Bible, solely because it tells us to. That is empty religion. Instead, we choose to live pious lives, lives that follow the commandments of the Bible, not because we’re told to, but because that’s who God is.

The Bible tells us to “be holy as [God is] holy.” It tells us to love our neighbors, to seek justice, to refrain from adultery and idolatry. It tells us to welcome the sinner no matter who they are. It tells us to let God avenge those who do wrong against us. Instead, we’re to spread God’s love around, bringing peace to the world–namely, God’s version of peace! The Bible tells us to pray, to spend our time living as examples and imitators of Christ.

Why?

Because that’s who God is.

If we call ourselves “Chrsitians”, we label ourselves “followers of Christ.” It’s the designation we give ourselves. To follow Christ means to get to know him so well in every aspect of our life that we start to become like him.

Why become like Jesus?

Jesus is our example of one who is free from sin. The whole point of God sending his son is so that we can be freed from the sin that tangles us and keeps us from accessing a full relationship with God. You and I know very well that everybody sins and has sinned. We’re all guilty of it. But when we become like Jesus, it puts us further from the sin that keeps us from God, and naturally, closer to God. When we’re close to God, we experience the abundant life that he promised long ago.

In this light, to strive for piety is not a rote following of the rules, but the method in which we allow God to draw us nearer to him. The point of following Jesus is to be freed from sin and experience that new life in closer relationship with our Father in Heaven. To continue damaging lifestyles that we justify by this cold version of “grace” is nearly to reject the very grace that God provides by allowing us to access God no matter the sin that entangles us.

What now?

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.[Eph. 5]

How, in your life now, are you like Jesus? How does being like Jesus shape the way you live out your life? Are you a “little” Jesus roaming this earth as an example and light for the world?

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