Important Aspects of the Christian Life
As should be clear from the preceding discussion, it is not appropriate to reflect on the Christian life in any way that bypasses the actual revelation of God in human flesh in Jesus Christ. In him and only in him do we truly see what the life wholly devoted to God looks like. Even in the lives of the apostles or the saint throughout the ages our insight is broken. Each of them, in varying degrees, succeeded in following their Lord, but none lived their entire life, from cradle to grave, in absolute obedience to God; but Jesus did. This does not mean that we cannot use the lives of eminent Christians to encourage us and to remind us of what the grace of God has actually accomplished in the midst of frail, disobedient human beings, but that we must always remember that it is Jesus who gives us our standard and must, therefore, be the focal point of our reflection. There are a few things that are worthy of highlight that we learn from the actual example of Christ regarding the nature of the Christian life.
Holistic
We learn from Christ that the Christian life is holistic, that is, there is absolutely no part of the life of a Christian that is unaffected by the fact that the Lord is God and that this God has made himself known to us in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Well-meaning Christians have often reflected as to what extent their Christian faith should extend to the way they live their lives. Should our faith have a concrete impact on our public lives, where others can see us and where our conduct most directly reflects upon God for the observation and evaluation of anyone who should come into contact with us? Should our faith have a concrete impact on our private lives, where nobody sees us but ourselves, where we sin in secret and where we cultivate a distinct way of living unaffected by our evaluation by others? Should our faith have a concrete impact on our intellectual lives, where we engage in mental activities and solve mental problems that seem to be so easily distinguished, if not separated from, daily life? Should our faith have a concrete impact on our emotional lives, where we are beset by hormones and feelings that rage like a torrent that seem so utterly out of our control?
The simple answer, in light of what God has actually done in Christ is “yes.” The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ should play a role in every conceivable aspect of our lives. Such a conclusion may be somewhat uncomfortable if we are not yet living in such a way where we have allowed the reality of God’s interaction with us to impress itself upon us in every way, but if we take just a moment to reflect on these issues, it should become clear.
When we discussed the significance, in chapter three, of God becoming man, it took a two-fold form. The first thing that was emphasized was that, in Jesus the living and active God of the universe has come among us in a real way so that, though God has drawn close, he is still the God he had always been. The second major theme that was emphasized was that, when God came among us as Jesus Christ, God really and truly entered into our humanity. This humanity was by no means deficient in any way, as we can see by the fact that God became incarnate in an actual, particular man, as one who was born of a woman and was equally descended from Adam and Eve as we are.
Early debates in the church raged over the nature of this humanity, some saying that Jesus did not take on real human flesh, others that he did not take on a real human mind. The church came to reject such views, emphasizing that if there were any part of Christ’s humanity that was not held in common with our humanity, it called into question our salvation in precisely that area. If Jesus did not have a fully human mind, our fully human minds would remain unredeemed. If Christ did not share our actual human flesh, our flesh would remain untouched by God’s saving work.
So, just as the incarnation of God entered fully into absolutely every aspect of human nature, it has touched and impacted every aspect of our lives. It means that not only our outward behavior is condemned and regenerated in Christ, but our inward behavior, the thoughts of our minds and the emotions of our hearts are so as well.
However, if we are not very careful, we will fall away from the concrete revelation of God in Christ at precisely this point. As far as the Christian life is concerned, we are not interested in speculation as to what godly thoughts and emotions are. If we were to think out the perfection of human emotion, not in accordance with the actual example of Christ, but in accordance with an independently generated way of thinking, we would probably conclude that emotions such as anger or sadness and grief are unworthy of the Christian. However, if we came to such a conclusion, the reality of Christ stands against us. After all, we see that Jesus displays anger and wrath as well as sadness. To deny these to a Christian would be to say that we are to be something other than human, as true humanity is demonstrated in Christ.
To take up the language of “What Would Jesus Do?” again, we might modify this by adding that we are concerned, not only with what Jesus would do, but also with how Jesus would think and feel. After all, in Jesus, emotion and intellect were not divorced from being and action, but were all integrated together.
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