Anonymous asked:
How can you tell when you’re actually living out your faith? Is it simply the fruits of the spirit gradually becoming apparent in your daily routine or does it look more radical?
So it looks we’ve set up a conflict here between fruits and radical living. In other words: Is the Christian life just about personal holiness? Or should I be fighting crime and rescuing slaves and beating up dictators?
Let’s be clear: The American church absolutely loves the whole personal holiness thing. Almost every Christian book in your bookstore is about transformation, renewing your mind, a better you, “Gospel Centrality,” fixing your heart, tending to your emotions, and a bunch of other self-involved disciplines. Not all these are bad, but the focus is obvious.
Even missional work in America is considered a personal holiness thing. I’ve heard it preached, “In the end you’ll grow closer to God and see what He’s doing for you.” Again, not really wrong, but you see the implication.
We’ve very much disconnected God’s saving grace with His call to glorify His name. When we stick a wedge between Grace and Glory, we’ve lost the Gospel. A lot of theologians want to set up Jesus and Paul like they were saying different things, but NO, they were not. Jesus and Paul would both say Jesus is both the Gate and the Road.
I’ll put it simply, in sort of a rhyme:












