When I talk with Christians today – and when I look into my own life – I recognize a frightening fact: most Christians don’t have a real relationship with God. They are saved. They believe in God. They are faithful practitioners of Christian ritual and law. But they are not disciples in the biblical sense of the term. They are not in constant communion with God. They are not experiencing an intimate, personal relationship with God day-by-day that empowers them and is transforming them into the likeness of Jesus.
It was the rigorous opponent of Christianity, Friedrich Nietszche who once observed:
"There has been only one true Christian, and he died on the cross two thousand years ago."
Nietszche was, in a sense, right.
It is a common saying in engineering and management circles that your system is perfectly designed to produce the results you are getting. In other words, the beliefs and processes and structures in place control what is produced. If our churches are producing weak, ineffectual, sinful Christians instead of the powerful disciples of Jesus, it is because the system is perfectly designed to produce these kind of people
Another way of thinking of this on a personal level is your behavior is exactly according to your true beliefs. If you are struggling with sin, perhaps it is because you have not been utterly convinced of its sinfulness.
The bottom line is simply this: most Christians just don’t look like Jesus.
It may even be said that much of our popular preaching and teaching and structure promotes such a philosophy. Clyde Reid observed:
"The adult members of churches today rarely raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being thought of as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree."
We may be programmed to fail – to miss out on what Jesus intended for us all along. We have been trained to put our trust in rules and structures and laws.
And if our system is designed to produce this result, then what are we missing?
It seems odd that the religion which takes it’s very name from Jesus Christ, would have so effectively marginalized His life. Yet, that seems to largely be the case.
Perhaps it became so out of resistance of liberal Christians who wanted to "water down" Jesus’ message to make it nothing more than a program for social reform. Perhaps it was due to the real need to oppose legalism and emphasize God’s grace – therefore placing central emphasis on Jesus atoning death. Perhaps because Christians found His life was simply too demanding to believe we were supposed to take it seriously. Any number of reasons and rationalizations could be made to explain the steady and sure shift in emphasis within Christianity from the life of Christ to the death of Christ.
In truth, Christianity has relegated the Jesus of the gospels to a role in the past in much the same way as we have relegated the God of the Old Testament to the past. But neither is right!
Jesus’ mission didn’t begin at Golgotha. It began at His birth. The entire life of Jesus is a message to us. His life shows us who God is because Jesus was God in the flesh. It shows us who we are as human beings because Jesus lived the perfect human life – perfectly balanced, perfectly meaningful, perfectly centered in the life of God.
But more than just the way He lived, Jesus also taught us how to live as we were designed to live. Jesus mission wasn’t here just to get to the cross. His mission was also to tell us what we were missing and show us what we were missing with his own life.
If we wonder why the abundant life Jesus preached and lived has escaped us. If we are puzzled by our inability to overcome temptation and sin. If we are stammered by the illustrations of the kind of people Jesus says His disciples will be. If we have settled into believing that this life is meant to be a struggle and a chore and a burden for Christians and we’re not rewarded until heaven. Then it’s time for us to return to our master; to our lord; to the logos – the word; to God’s perfect image.
It we want to experience eternal life now; if we want to know joy and peace and purpose now; if we want to live lives of meaning and power; if we want to grow out of temptations instead of into them, then we must come back to Jesus. Not just as Savior, but as Lord. Not just as Redeemer, but as Rabbi. Not just as Sacrificial Lamb, but as the Quintessential Man.
The right focus is on Jesus – not just for forgiveness of sins, for atonement; but for life itself. Every aspect of our lives should be viewed through the filter of Christ.
How many times have you seen or heard the phrase "Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven"? I realize the intent of the phrase was to point out that Christians shouldn’t be self-righteous and aren’t being hypocritical when we sin.
But it has come to describe many Christians’ attitude toward their own life in God – that they aren’t really expected to "get better" or "sin less" or "become like Jesus" because these are, after all, impossible goals and, after all, we’re saved completely by grace and nothing we do makes any difference, and our reward is in heaven, so our job here is to "keep a stiff upper lip, smile a lot and wait to die".
We have the wrong expectations of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. We think it means becoming a Christian and then hanging on until heaven. We don’t expect a lot else to happen here.
Based on this understanding that Jesus can show us how to live and that He fully intended for His followers to seek to live like Him and would provide the power for them to do so, we must have a real expectation to:
It is the clear expecatation of Scripture that we change and become like Jesus. That we be transformed, little by little, in our innermost being in our desires, our motivation and our habits to look more like the Kingdom kind of person (the Jesus kind of person) that He illustrates in His teachings (especially in the Sermon on the Mount).
It is also clear from Scripture – as well as from the fact that we’re to become like Christ – that we are expected to grow into sinlessness. That we are to actually learn to break the habits of our sinful past and learn to defeat Satan in His attempts to lead us astray.
The goal is not heaven. There has been perhaps no greater threat to the discipleship of the followers of Jesus than the erroneous concepts of heaven that are so prevalent.
While I believe we are saved completely by grace – and there is no requirement to obtain a specified level of conformity to Christ in order to be saved, I think we have mistaken the point of heaven itself. Heaven is not a big party to celebrate all the things we missed out on under the rule of Christ in this life. Heaven is the completion of a maturation process. It is the end to our development and our transformation into the likeness of Jesus. And I wonder if perhaps those of us who have been saved by grace will be surprised in heaven if we haven’t been true disciples here. How much can a person whose heart is filled with prejudice and hatred (though he be saved) enjoy a place where such things do not exist? We act as though God will, upon our death, forcibly change us into something we have no desire to be in this life. If you don’t want to be like Jesus now, why in the world would you wish to be spend eternity being forced to be like Him?
One of the chief complaints people lodge against Christendom is that once we get "saved", we pretty much just write off this life and wait on the next one. We are accused of being "in it for selfish motive".
But the rewards of being a Christian are not mercenary. It’s not about being "paid" for our labor or sacrifice or faith. We do not submit to discipleship here so that we may be relieved in heaven. We have missed the power of being Christians now because we’ve come to view heaven as a reward – as a prize. The "prize" isn’t about reward or recompense for difficulty and suffering. It’s about finally seeing things as they really are; about finally knowing our purpose and our ultimate source of joy.
Do you remember learning to read and write? What a struggle it was! How tedious and boring! Yet now, when you write a letter to a friend who is struggling; when you create a poem expressing your emotions; when you read the words of a masterful novelist or a classical poet; what joy! What a wonderful thing to have the ability to do!
But it was difficult to see that this is what lay ahead for you when you were learning, wasn’t it? It all seemed to be a waste of time. Sometimes Christianity is like that, too. We feel as though the way Jesus tells us to live is irrelevant or out of touch with our culture; as though it is pointless and tedious. Many of us even blur the lines and "step over boundaries" that we think are pointless or arbitrary.
But we have missed the point! The rules and structures are not the point of Christianity at all! And God didn’t give us lists of things to do just to test our faith so He could decide who He’d let into heaven. The rules and structures are there not to establish our worthiness or our faith, they are there to lead us to maturity and completion.
And when we begin to finally grow into it (which is intended to take place here, in this life – not postponed until after our physical death) – just as you did when you could finally pick up a book and read it – we will experience the joy of a new kind of reality – possibilities that never before existed for us will now be achievable.
So, the goal we are to have as Christians is not simply to get to heaven – though that will be wonderful – but to become fully a part of God’s kingdom as it relates to our present nature. It’s not because this is commanded of us. It is because this is what we were designed for. It’s what humanity was meant to be. It is the only way we will ever find joy and peace and purpose and contentment.
The right goal is to become a full citizen in the Kingdom of God – to be transformed into the image and nature of Jesus.
And it is that transformation that is at the heart of the sermon on the mount. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ manifesto. It is His summary of what the Kingdom of God is about – who is in it, what they look like, what they believe. It is not a list of commands to be learned and obeyed. It is an image – a picture in words – of what God will turn us into if we let him.
But how do we get there? We’ve tried legalism & rules – learning the lists of do’s and don’t’s and trying to check the boxes. We’ve tried mustering our will power. But we’ve failed in our attempts. Those around us who’ve been Christians for decades tell us that they’re still struggling with the same sins in their 50’s they grappled with in their 20’s. This isn’t the abundant life Jesus promised. This isn’t being "transformed into his image".
This weekend we’re going to seek to discover what Jesus’ expectations are for his disciples. We’re going to look at what it means to be a disciple – what it requires. Then we’re going to talk about the things we can do to fall in love with Jesus – not just come to an agreement with him; not just live under an arrangement with him. But to love him. To walk with him daily so that he empowers us and changes us so that we begin to look like image he paints in the sermon on the mount.
Just as we have lost the life of Jesus in our emphasis on His death, we have lost the central doctrine of His teaching in favor of His moral proverbs and predictions of His Passion. The centrality of Jesus’ message was not His redemptive task. It was the fact that the kingdom of God was opening up. Of course, the redemptive task was essential to this opening up, but for His followers, it is only the doorway. The kingdom being opened up was the really radical message Jesus came to give us.
The beattitudes aren’t about characteristics we should stive to obtain, they’re an illustration of the radical new constituency of the kingdom – Jesus is telling us, "Look at who can get into the kingdom now! It’s no longer the rich, the well-connected, the beautiful, the upright, the respectable! Now, because of me, everyone is welcome! Even these losers and outcasts! Everyone!
These "ordinary people" – in many cases the least likely people you could think of – will be God’s representation on earth – tasked with both preserving humanity and with showing forth God’s luminous existence to the world
Paul, in his letter to the Romans, shows that Christians – disciples of Jesus – are not just "saved" (merely forgiven), but are truly a different kind of humanity. We have been transformed from the kind of humanity in the lineage of Adam, to the kind of humanity in the lineage of Christ.
The gospel has been reduce to either "sin management" or "afterlife insurance". We’ve taken the unimaginably rich life of God and reduced it to a forensic agreement where are sins are "taken care of" and we obtain a "contractual agreement" with God to enter heaven upon our impending and ultimate demise on earth.
But the gospel is truly good news. It’s not just that the obstacle between us and God has been removed (which is certainly amazing and to be praised). But that we can become whole persons who can experience joy, purpose, peace and love and the eternal kind of life here and now – not after this life is over.
The statements Jesus gives in the sermon on the mount about morality aren’t laws to be followed, they are illustrations of what kingdom people are like. The worst thing we can do is attempt to create a list of rules and regulations from the statements Jesus gives and then attempt to keep them. Not only will this doom us to failure and frustration, it will just be the next step in legalism – from legalism of outward acts to a legalism of inward acts.
Jesus is concerned about the root, not the fruit!
As we’ve already discussed, the world at large – and, sadly enough, much of Christianity – has reduced Jesus to one of two things. Either He has been reduced to a great moral teacher who said some profound things about how people should treat each other. Or He has been reduced to a sacrificial lamb who perhaps uttered some important and profound words prior to His death, but which are, in the big picture, largely irrelevant to the primary purpose of Christianity.
But if Jesus is who He said He is, then he must be neither of these two trivializations. He must be the very image of God (where have we heard that before?). And if He is this, then He must not be viewed as merely a wise sage who uttered pretty words, but the very living God who is brilliant in every field of knowledge – politics, ethics, economics, and religion. His work on earth must also not be limited to simply dying on the cross. If He is who he said He was, then every word He uttered must be of primary importance to humanity. Every statement He made about how we are to view God, how we are to view our fellow man, how we are to pray, how we are to grow in Kingdom living, must be taken as the perfect, unsurpassable utterance of the God of All Things.
One of the critical problems in Christian life today is that we’ve simply turned away from Jesus as our leader. As we’ve discussed, we needed Him to die on the cross and be resurrected, but that’s taken care of now.
So, in times of trouble and struggle in living the Christian life, where do we turn? To the popular speakers and writers of our time – whether they be Christian or not – Stephan Covey, Zig Zigler, Robert Schuller, James Kennedy, Max Lucado, James Dobson. These are the people we turn to to actually figure out how to live the Christian life. We don’t turn to the words of Jesus to learn how to live. We’ve either relegated his words to the status of "sentimental ideals and dreams that we can never really obtain or apply" or merely lofty laws and rules that He didn’t really expect us to keep even as he spoke them.
But if Jesus is Lord – if He is God’slogos to us – God’s expression of Himself – who He is, what He is like and what He desires to give us and lead us into, then these are simply unacceptable beliefs. If Jesus is truly the Perfect Man – God’s demonstration to us of what life in harmony with God is to be like, then He must be the one we turn to in order to learn how to live.
And even when we concede that perhaps Jesus does have something to tell us about how to live that we can actually achieve and that is not just "unrealistic idealism", we try to boil it down to a few simple moral maxims. So we, like some philosophy teachers and atheists, boil the teachings of Jesus down to the parts that we think are relevant – primarily believing that He had great moral knowledge, but little else.
But if He is God, and His life was about demonstrating and teaching us the life in the Kingdom, then He must be our One Teacher – in every arena of life and knowledge:
Until we return Jesus to the centrality of our lives; until we place Him at the central point of our understanding of reality and life, we will continue to miss the primary purpose of His teaching and His life: to show us how to live in God’s kingdom and to give us the power to achieve it.
Jesus clearly says that He has come to give us a new kind of life – a life that is literally His kind of life. We are to dwell in Him. To move and breath in Him. To be completely immersed in Him until we are no longer discernable from Him. What must it be like to be with God? To see things from His perspective? To truly believe to the point of knowing and seeing that all injustice will be made right; that all evil will be destroyed; that all goodness will triumph; that nature itself continues to revel in His constant presence and interaction with it. When we begin to experience this oneness in our relationship with God, we will be experiencing in part what heaven is all about.
This relationship with God that we come into is a slow transformation of our limited, sin-addicted selves into that new kind of humanity that Jesus exemplified and promised that one day we would become. Jesus in His human form was in perfect union with God. You and I will not achieve this, but as we get closer – as we grow in Christ, we will be growing in that relationship with God. We will begin to see things as He sees them. To care as He cares. To be angered by the things that anger Him. To be broken by the things that break Him.
Can you imagine Jesus enjoying getting drunk or doing drugs? Participating in illicit sex or enjoying viewing pornography? For Jesus, He truly and perfectly saw as God saw. These things held no pleasure for Him because to Him they were repugnant – offensive. When we have grown in Christ, temptations that once troubled us and plagued us will become offensive. They will lose their hold on us. True, other temptations may seek to fill this void. But we can, little by little, begin to experience life as God meant it to be experienced – as a continual, on-going relationship with Him.
If there is one rule in the kingdom, it is the rule of asking or requesting. "Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find." Why is this so?
In asking or requesting, we achieve several things. First, we immediately state that we are not in control of the thing being asked for. We relinquish our attempts at possessing and dominating and controlling in asking. There is a realm over which each of us has proper doman. Our own bodies, for instance, are the proper domain of control of our souls. But others’ bodies and actions are not. God’s power is not at our command or under our control.
This is why attempts to manipulate God through legalism are so offensive to God (as they were to Jesus). Our attempts to judge others are also improper extensions of our "domain of control". But in asking – our brothers and sisters or our God – we are admitting and acknowledging that the object of the request is beyond our proper domain – essentially that we have no right to it. Thus we are free to accept either a positive or negative response to the request, since we had no right to expect it in the first place.
Second, by asking and requesting, we immediately show appropriate respect towards the person receiving the request. So much in our culture teaches us to take what we want – to look out for ourselves. The rule of the kingdom begins with respect and honor towards one another.
Third, by asking and requesting, we build relationships. Whether it be in prayer to God or in community life with our brothers and sisters, we create by proper asking and requesting a relationship of common understanding, common respect, common goals.
What we have discussed so far can be summed up with these four statements:
(1) The life of the follower of Jesus Christ – according to the picture Jesus himself paints was meant to be an on-going experience with and of God – a continual immersion in his kingdom where God reveals himself to us and in which we build a real, personal relationship with God.
So what is the path to discipleship? We know it begins with returning to Jesus – to his life, not just his death, and to his teachings. We know it involves believing that we can experience the eternal, abundant life here and now – not just in heaven. But how do we go about doing it? How do be put ourselves on the path of discipleship?
First, let’s clear up what it does not involve.
The path of discipleship – the path into the kingdom of God and the likeness of Jesus - does not consist of
Note what I am saying: These are not the primary objectives of the kingdom life – these things will not lead you into the abundant life. They are, however, going to be present in the lives of disciples of Jesus – but they will result from the inner change – the good fruit comes from the good root.
The results of these methods are in. They do not provide a course of spiritual growth and development that routinely produces disciples who "hear and do" the will of the father. They produce frustrated people who wonder why God would have given us such impossible expectations.
So what are the steps in the path to the kingdom? There are two key objectives you and must focus on if we are going to seek after God. I want to give them to you now and then spend a few moments discussing each one:
So, this is our path to discipleship: to desire God and to discipline ourselves to overcome our sinful habits. Let’s spend a few moments digging deeper into what these two things mean.
So, we must come to desire to be with God. What are we saying? I asked you to review your relationship with Jesus – to compare it to any other relationship you might have. I realize that this may have been an uncomfortable thing to do. Many of us are not accustomed to thinking of Jesus in terms of real relationship. But this is what desiring God means. I desire to be with my wife – and with my daughter and my friends. Why? Because I love them. When we say that we must come to desire to be with God, we are saying that we must come to love him in a similar way to how we love other persons.
Sadly, most Christians don’t have a relationship with God that is anything like the relationships they have with other people. Instead, our relationship with God is viewed as a legal arrangement. We don’t actually feel "love" for him, we just know that we owe him a lot. Yet the picture of the followers of Jesus in Scripture is passionate. They really loved Jesus in the same sense that we love a brother or sister or father or mother. They really came to know Jesus as we really come to know other persons.
How do we come to love God? It is an odd question because God is love – there is no person who more deserves to be loved or would draw others to love him more than God. In fact, I believe we can say that those who come to see God will love him because he is so beautiful and so wonderful. The real question becomes, then, how do I see God so that I might love him?
Thomas Aquinas said that "real love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved". Love is born when we seriously think about and consider the object of love. The first step in truly knowing and loving God is to spend time thinking about him.
It is important to know that whatever occupies your mind will very largely govern what you do. If sexual desire occupies your mind, you will find yourself lusting. If physical appearance or what others think occupies your mind, you will find yourself constantly looking in the mirror or seeking to find out what others think of you.
We must take control of what we think – of what we place before our minds. If we are going to develop a relationship with God – a desire to be with him and know him – it will begin with putting God at the fore of our thinking.
There are three primary ways in which God comes before our minds, where we can begin to know him and love him:
We must learn to look for God in nature, in the Bible, in history and in our own lives. In our science-worshipping, legalistic culture, we have made God distant and old and out-of-touch. We need to see God as he really is: near, ever-present, active, vocal and available.
But, even as we begin to desire God and build a relationship with him, we will still find ourselves battling with sin – and with our inability to overcome it.
Why is this so? Because human beings are animals, frankly. And as such, we are creatures of habit. We must break our habits of sin. We try hard to imitate Jesus’ behavior. Yet when we are slapped, our every fiber cries out to strike back. This will always be the case until we change our automatic reactions – our immediate responses.
We need to recognize that evil is not an external force working against us as much as it is an internal force being cultivated by Satan. It is our own weaknesses and warped desires that lead us to sin – not some external force. Until we can realign our desires and reactions into godly desires and reactions, we will not be able to overcome sin.
For years I thought I could just pray my sinfulness away. "God, remove this sin" ; "God, remove that sin"; "God, purify my thoughts"; "God, give me courage to stand up for you". I always wondered why God didn’t go these things!
But think of the example of professional sports. How many of us expect to be able to walk out onto the basketball court and perform like Michael Jordan simply because we’ve watched him on TV? We know that this is impossible because he’s spent his entire life in practice, discipline and training in order to perform as he does. We know that we haven’t and therefore don’t expect to be able to achieve his level of performance.
Yet, we are disappointed when we can’t overcome temptation as Jesus did!
Jesus spent his entire life training, too!
He trained everyday to be under God’s control. Paul sought to do the same. Yet we think we can read a few scriptures, attend church and fling up a prayer or two and be able to overcome sin as they did. It just doesn’t work that way!
So how do we overcome these habits? How to we break our sin-addiction? First, because we are creatures of habit and rhythm, it will be through new habits and rhythms.
Of all the things the Catholic church may have gotten wrong, one thing they got right – and the buddhists and muslims after them – was to create a pattern or rhythm for the life of the Christian. Each day had appointed times of prayer. Each week had appointed times of worship. Each month had appointed times of confession and communion. Each year had appointed times of fasting and sacrifice.
Now, I am not suggesting that the church should establish such practices as laws – we’d be right back where we started from. I am saying that you and I already have a rhythm to our lives. And if we want to overcome sin, we’re going to have to set up a godly rhythm – a set of habits - disciplines, really – that will lead us to displace our sinful habits with godly ones.
What are these habits? Nothing new or amazing. The same things Jesus did and told us to do. The same thing Abraham and David and Paul practiced to help them overcome sin and draw them to God. Things such as prayer, fasting, meditation, studying God’s word and memorizing it, worship, fellowship, serving others, spending time in silence and solitude.
Our lives move in cycles and to a pace. If our discipleship does not set the pace of our lives and define the rhythm of our existence, we will find ourselves to be Christians in their 50’s or 60’s who are still struggling with the same sins we foundered upon when we were in our teens.
The disciplines create a context for us to move and breathe in. They create an environment for us to experience dependency on God. They allow God to move into our lives – giving him space and freedom to show us our faults and failures – and perform the surgery required to correct the defects.
In the handout material are a list of the two primary types of disciplines – disciplines of abstinence and engagement. Along with each are a series of Scriptures demonstrating their use.
I want each one of you to commit to setting up for your life a pattern of discipleship. Your goal is two-fold: first, to learn to think about God daily – maybe try to commit yourself to think about God once every hour of the day. Take time to think about God’s creation, about those stories you’ve read a thousand times about God saving his people, about how God has worked in your life and the lives of those you know. Ponder God – seek to see him all around you.
Secondly, put into place in your life a discipline of prayer, study, solitude, and fasting. Couple this with a regular pattern of fellowship, worship, and service to others. Put these things on your calendars. Make time to do them.
I am completely convinced that if you will do these two things, God will change you. You cannot come to know God and not be changed. You cannot be putting yourself in God’s hands regularly without him invading your life and making you something you could not be on your own.
The Sermon on the Mount is a picture of what Jesus wants you to be. You cannot do by your willpower. You cannot do it by making a list of rules and seeking to keep them. Only God can make you into that kind of person. Only God can make the words of that sermon burn into your soul and change you forever. Only God can give you eternal life here-and-now. If you insist on trying it your way, you are already doomed to fail. I hope that you’ll trust Jesus to be who and what he says he is. I hope you’ll desire to know him enough that you’ll commit to being not just a Christian, but a follower of Jesus Christ. A person who seeks daily to love him and be changed by God into his image.