Bonhoeffer said, “When God calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Jesus commanded us to take up our cross and follow Him. When April and I arrived in South Africa almost twenty years ago to begin our Discipleship Training School, we were greeted with the following salute from Youth With A Mission’s national director, Wilson Goeda: “Welcome to the tribe of death!”
I’ve written and preached a lot about how the life and the death of Christ are inseparable, and how we have been called as His disciples to join with Him in the fellowship of His suffering. I’ve also run across a lot of suspect theology in my sojourning down here—one of the worst of which is the misapplication of the great commission as a command to make converts rather than disciples. The difference between those two is stark. The Church is not a social club, and the grace that was purchased with the blood of God is not cheap. Disciples will walk through anything for their Master. Converts, being members of a club, scatter quickly under pressure.
But if God’s objective is to win souls, and His call so prominently features death, I have a question: How is any of this stuff attractive? How does He win us? And what has He called us to?
God’s Objective
The ancient Hebrew concept of the heart included both the intellect and the emotions. To me it’s the soul; the mind, will, and emotions of a person. The parts that most define the legacy of a man or woman are invisible.
It is the same with the God we serve. There are many layers to what Jesus and Philip talked about in John 14.8-9. He asked Jesus on behalf of the disciples to “show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus told him that if he had seen Him, he had seen the Father. But Jesus isn't only physical; that isn’t the only dimension of His identity. If it were, His death would not have been a new beginning for the creation but an eternal waste. We can behold the Father in much more important, supernatural ways. And as for us, we don’t just bear His image in visible flesh. This is why the heart of a man matters so much, and why Jesus made it clear that we had no hope of fulfilling the law apart from Him. He didn’t die for externals or appearances, and resurrection isn’t just coming back to life.
In the same way, there is much more to knowing the Father than what we can readily behold. He can be known by His works. Those works were made manifest by His Christ, and He even said that if we couldn’t believe Him for who He is, we could still believe Him because of the works. And the works are clearly visible even today.
The Father can also be known by what He’s like. We have to dig a little deeper to get to revelation in this ground. God is love. He is longsuffering, and if He hides Himself, He also lets Himself be found by the diligent seeker. But do we seek Him for who He is? Do we seek Him at all? If God is love and our understanding of love is false, how can we hope to know Him?
The Word tells us that God is spirit. The command follows immediately that we must worship Him in spirit and truth. What does this mean? One thing it means is that He is far above and superior to the corruption of the flesh, which means that when He descended and was begotten in the likeness of a man, it was a very big deal. He began to bridge the gap simply by being born. Worshiping in spirit also means that you can’t earn what has already been given. Further, it means that you need spiritual eyes to be able to see His glory.
Counterintuitive, not Countercultural
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: Jesus didn’t die to save the culture. The culture can go to hell, and it will. Redemption and renewal are too costly to be squandered on social mores. The blood of Christ is for souls.
Therefore the war that the heavenly host wage is much more concerned with the objective of the soul: the mind, will, and emotions. The battle is fought in the space between regenerated spirit and unregenerated flesh, and it goes back and forth as decisions are made, emotions rise and fall, and the will is brought into submission to its maker. The soul is a battleground. For now, God is far more interested in renewal in the invisible, eternal places of our construct than He is in our flesh.
The mind of mankind is where the gospel’s transformational work is most radical and efficacious. The noblest efforts at reforming humanity’s culture will not make a bit of difference in eternity. What matters is the mind, how we think, what is true, and what is good. We are instructed from scripture to focus our efforts on taking hold of renewal for ourselves here, in the mind, where it matters most.
This is why defining the purpose of things like art, insisting that truth must be absolute to be true, and requiring good and evil to be defined by the Bible are such crucial provisions for us as we sojourn down here.
We disciples of Christ aren’t some weaksauce countercultural reaction, philosophy, religion, or political ideology. We are the Church of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, and there are greater works than those which have been passed down to us in the Word that have been reserved and prepared in advance for us to do. Resurrection power cannot be stopped, it cannot be bought, and it cannot be overcome.
The tribe of death and the way of the cross don’t make any sense to to the unregenerate mind. It is carnal; it is blind and dead to invisible things. It is consumed with its rules. It knows nothing of grace or mercy, even if it traffics in many of their counterfeits.
If the way of the cross is this difficult and yet still so attractive that people once violently strove to get into it, why? Because life in the dark is wretched indeed, but only if blind eyes are given sight. The violent can only take the kingdom by force if they realize how valuable it is. And value down here isn’t produced by scarcity alone. There must also be desire.
You have to want it.
Engage!
Allegedly we’re living in the post-church age. Who here in America today is pushing and shoving to get into the kingdom? Where are the violent taking it by force, where are those who by virtue of their proximity to the presence of God have caught fire and live for the sole purpose of lighting up the whole world with the glory of God?
I’m not here to enable you and make you feel good. Very few in this generation are taking the kingdom by force. If we live in a world that has gotten over its need for the light, it’s at least partly our fault for failing to preach the truth with our lives instead of our lips. Where are those who are willing to go beyond preaching and live the proving? We the Church are few indeed.
But if God had a few willing to tear down idols like Gideon did, to wrestle with Him like Jacob did, to trust him like Josiah did, the whole messy equation would be simplified, and the world would have a simple choice: blessing or cursing. Life or death. Light or dark. Illusion or reality. And everything would change in an instant.
The Cost
I’m convinced at this stage of the journey that the fact of its costliness is what draws many to life in Christ.
I’ll explain.
Life in the world is a paradox because it persists even though it is soaked in and surrounded by death. Nature is red in tooth and claw, it has been said. If life in Christ strips this toxic law away from us, and if the cost of walking with Him is to shed utterly the old way—that is, to turn loose of all that is slowly killing us—then of course the only rational decision any of us can make is to embrace the cost of our salvation by allowing the blood of Christ to wash us clean from all that hinders, entangles, poisons, and kills us.
I was recently in the room when a dearly loved person in the family passed away. The grief of the moment was palpable, but hope was in attendance. The moment was therefore bittersweet. It was an honor to have been there to witness a priceless human soul transition out of these frustrations we all share in and cannot by our efforts obtain release from. The remains, lifeless, made it clear to me how convincing an illusion life under the sun has been masked with. The force that animates the flesh is what is valuable. Jesus said it best: “The flesh is no help at all.”
If it “costs” us “everything” to be able to walk with Jesus, what a blessing that cost is. In the kingdom that I am bound to inherit at the end of my own brief days, even the cost is blessing sublime. Only my Father could do a thing as miraculous as this.
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