Healthy Traits of the Christian Life
Part XIII
Healthy Traits of the Christian Life (part XIII)
Over the span of a few articles I have tried to explore traits of a healthy Christian life. Beyond the obvious Christian traits I might have lifted up, often we forget to look closely at those internal pulls and pushes in one’s life that nudges one and compels one to those more obvious things. Life that is not static, but rather it is always in process -- moving through constant pushes and pulls, ebbs and flows of a steady tide. In focusing on these pushes and pulls I have hoped that we might get in touch with those internal nudges that make faith dynamic, exciting and alive.
But like all good things, for now this series is coming to a close. And as a concluding thought about healthy traits I want to turn to scripture and that place where John tells us that “we love BECAUSE he first loved us.” This implies to me that there is much we do because He first does something in us. I tend to think that those things God does in us creates those pushes and pulls I have mentioned that then can take shape in the form of other important Christian activities.
One trait John’s words lead me to when I consider healthy traits is COMMITMENT, or that aspect which nudges one to draw a line in the sand and declare, “here I stand and will not budge.” But rather than focus on this trait as something we generate, as I listen to brother John’s words, I feel called to look to God first. When considering commitment, I wonder if we might take John’s lead and consider that “we commit our lives to God because He first committed Himself to us.” It was Rabbi Abraham Heschel who once wrote, when considering commitment:
To be
Is
To stand for.
My sense of Rabbi Heschel’s brief but powerful words this is that existence has something to do with a stand taken or a commitment. I might even push this so far as to say that when we take a stand and commit ourselves, we live in complicity with our own existence. A commitment is not only about who we are, but also about our very being. To take no stand is to stand nowhere, and if one stands nowhere, do they stand anywhere? Huh?
Paul placed in one of his letters to Timothy a powerful and noteworthy old axiom: If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He will also deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful – for He cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:11-13). In a nutshell, here is commitment!! God takes a stand, and to waffle on that stand is to deny Himself. To deny, in a sense, His very existence. Something God is not willing to do, though many would seem to be willing to do that for him now days by implying god doesn’t really take a stand.
But if we know anything from the Gospels, we know the God does in fact take a stand, and that stand is best seen in the cross, because “no one has seen God at anytime. It is God the begotten, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (John 1:18) WE even proclaim the Jesus, the resurrected Lord, “sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” What we mean by this is that God’s overt activity in now and evermore tempered by Christ. God CHOOSES and COMMITS to this tempering of grace freely. It is God’s commitment to Himself on our behalf. And as Paul would remind us, “if God is for us, who can be against us?” Well, certainly NOT God.
A friend shared an image with me recently, reminding me that many experience life and faith like a yo-yo. We can feel close to God and then feel far from God in a brief span of time. Our feelings, our sense of things, can be capricious, wavering and uncertain. It is the string, which remains constant and attached, that keeps the yo-yo from flying off too far, and even gives momentum and guidance to the yo-yo. The string is constantly committed to the yo-yo. It is this commitment -- an unfaltering and constant connection -- that holds the yo-yo fast, giving content and purpose to it’s motion.
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love” the hymn proclaims. It is God’s firm commitment to us that ultimately holds us fast and sure.
“WE are saved by grace through faith,” Paul reminds us, and then adds quickly so that none of us gets the wrong idea, “and even this is not of ourselves, but is the gift of God.” What saves us is not a what at all, but a Who. And that Who that saves us is God, who is committed to His saving act in Christ, His very self committed to us. Our faith only has potency in relation to God’s commitment to save us in Christ. Abraham Heschel would say that God commits himself to an active suffering out of His commitment to love us, which means that God voluntarily opens himself up to us in such a way that He is intimately affected by us. Christ suffered on the cross within the very heart of God because God IS committed to us and to our redemption.
Perhaps, then, I might say that the most important healthy trait of the Christian life is God’s very commitment to us, of which our commitment in return is at best a feeble and fragile recognition, a glance in a mirror dimly, and a standing on shaky-legged-hope upon the only firm foundation we have got that is fashioned in God’s intent TO BE graceful.
So I close these articles of Healthy Traits of the Christian Life with this last word: The healthiest trait of all in the Christian life is not a trait within us at all. Rather it is a trait hidden in the very heart of God who “proved His love for us.”
Your brother in Christ, Rick