I was one of these kids who came to faith early in life. My parents met in a Nazarene Sunday School class and church was a very foundational and formative influence in my life. It was as a child that I sensed I was a sinner and needed a Savior. In fact, my well-developed and overactive guilt complex compelled me to walk to the altar and kneel in prayer most any time I felt I had offended or displeased God. For that reason, I can’t put a specific time on my salvation experience; all I know is that, on one of those occasions, it “took.”
I embraced the message that I was a sinner and Jesus had come to earth to serve as my Savior. The reason for His journey to this planet was so He could serve as my substitute and pay the price for my sins that I couldn’t pay for myself. While God loved me greatly, my sin and rebellion had created a chasm between me and Him that I couldn’t span. But because Jesus died on the Cross I, by placing my faith in Him, could be forgiven and assured that I’d go to heaven when I die. If, however, I chose not to avail myself to the personal benefits available through his death, I risked the distress and torment of an eternal hell.
As a result, I was obsessed with making sure I was on the right side of this equation. I used to wonder what would happen if I lied and then got struck by lightning or experienced some sort of tragic accident before I had the chance to make things right with God. Would I be the victim of my momentary shortcoming and be banished to hell? While it didn’t seem fair that a longing and desire to do what was pleased God could be offset by a brief and isolated failing, I also understood that my sin disqualified me from enjoying the benefits and blessings of His companionship.
As I got older, I realized there was more to being a Christian than this initial act of faith and waiting to either die or for Jesus to return so I could be whisked off to this eternal residence I’d heard was waiting for me. I was instructed that I should read my Bible and pray every day and that there was certain behaviors and practices that I should abstain from—smoking, drinking, dancing, going to movies. For a while I was into journaling—writing down my impressions from reading Scripture and thoughts as it related to my relationship with God. I even took evangelism training my church provided so I could learn how to share my faith with those who had not but needed to make the life-altering decision that I had made. (In fact, to this day, I can still share the substance of the gospel according to the outline and structure that I learned when I was in high school.)
As a child and teenager, I thought being a Christian meant separation. I was taught that God is a holy God and he calls us, as his followers, to live distinctive and unique lives. This meant avoiding the appearance of evil and making sure we did nothing that smacked of impropriety. I learned to define my faith by a decision I made at a moment in time and a resulting commitment to engage in certain practices of piety and separation from sin and the world. To a great degree, my Christian faith was defined by what I did and didn’t do.
Not that any of this is misguided or wrong—it’s not! At its core, Christianity involves embracing the fact that Jesus, by his death, took the hit that I deserved and paid a price that I couldn’t pay. It involves living a life that is distinctively and winsomely different. But as I’ve matured in the faith, I’ve learned there is so much more to being a Christian than what I do or don’t do and what personal practices I adopt or don’t adopt. I can’t see anywhere in the Bible where Jesus encouraged people to make a momentary decision. He didn’t frame the Christian life in terms of what private practices we adopt. His call was much more comprehensive and broad—“Follow me!” For whenever we reduce the life to which Jesus calls us to a single-point-in-time decision, the result is superficial Christians. And whenever we reduce Christianity to a matter of what we do and don’t do, we become legalists. Lets face it … the world is not going be to radically changed—transformation is not going to be effectively realized—when it is attempted by a bunch of superficial legalists!
There is a world of difference between making a decision and being a disciple. And the gospel is not so much about eliciting decisions as it is about producing disciples. The decision is merely the gateway—the entrance—into the robust and full-bodied life to which Jesus invites us … a life so expansive and extensive that is demands the entirety of our life.