This is the central truth on which all authentic
Christianity rests. You cannot work your way to heaven. You cannot do
anything to earn the grace or forgiveness of God. Your good behavior
does not balance out the guilt of your sin.
The great distinction between Christianity and cultural
religion is that cultural religion believes all these things can be
obtained by our own efforts. True Christianity is looking for something
much greater.
Authentic Christianity
True Christians look to God to restore the image of God to
their souls but know that this is not something they are able to
accomplish. All their hopes of attaining this rest on total reliance on
the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell them when they open their lives to
Jesus Christ.
Notice the critical order here. Our change of behavior
does not precede our reconciliation to God and somehow become the
cause of God’s favor; it follows our coming into relationship with God
and is its effect!
It is by faith in Christ only that a man or woman is made
right in the sight of God; is delivered from God’s judgment and the hold
of Satan; is adopted into the family of God; becomes an heir of God and
a joint heir with Christ, entitled to all the privileges that belong to
this high relation; is partially renewed to the image of the Creator in
this life; and is totally renewed to the perfect likeness of Christ in
the life to come, when we will experience God’s eternal glory and love
forever.
Having entered into this relationship, the true Christian
then seeks to grow in his or her spiritual life by studying the Bible in
order to understand the doctrines of the faith. In studying and
contemplating the life of Christ, the true Christian attempts to model
his or her behavior after that of Jesus.
It is the neglect of study of the Bible and reflection on
the life of Christ that is at the heart of the practical errors of the
majority of confessing Christians. Mere morality is dwarfish compared to
the results of true faith. Morality as an answer to the pitiful state
of the human condition reveals a total misunderstanding of the enormous
problem of the fallen human condition.
This is a problem so massive that God gave His Son to die
on the cross to solve it. When we think we can atone for our sin by
becoming good, it is like a slap in the face of Christ. The cold sense
of obligation and the grudging attitude of any act of service that
accompanies cultural Christianity is completely inconsistent with the
fact that a true Christian “is the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor.
6:19, KJV) and that our response to Christ is to demonstrate that we
have been “delivered…from the power of darkness, and…translated…into the
kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1:13).
All our behavior, as those who have entered into this
union with Christ, is to flow from these biblical truths. These truths
are to motivate us to serve God with joy, thankfulness and love. We are
to be a people who live with the experience of eternal gratitude.
If we are going to walk worthy of Christ, we have to
practice one central discipline. As the writer of Hebrews exhorts, we
are to fix our eyes on Jesus. We are to run our race looking unto Jesus
as our motivation.
This is the key. If we do this one thing, we will be
unable to treat our faith in the superficial way most cultural
Christians do in our time.
In looking unto Jesus, we:
• realize how logical it is to make an unconditional
surrender of our total beings to the will and service of God
• see how hateful sin is to the perfect holiness of God
• grow in the love of God and receive the motivation to
treat our fellow man with compassion
• become more humble
• develop the attitude that is required to be a true
servant of Christ on Earth
• learn to live by faith.
To the men and women who possess authentic faith in Jesus
Christ, the core truths of the gospel are the center of gravity
toward which all of life is in motion. They are the origin of all that
is excellent and lovely and the source of light and life.
The human mind cannot reason to these conclusions. But
when you read the Gospels, your eyes are unveiled and you can see “the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”
(2 Cor. 4:6). And as we behold His glory, we are transformed so that we
can reflect His glory in all we do and in all we are (see 2 Cor. 3:18).
William Wilberforce (1759-1833) has been described as
“the greatest reformer in history.” He was born in Hull, England, on
August 24, 1759, and soon after graduating from St. John’s College,
Cambridge University in 1780, he secured a seat in Parliament for his
birthplace.
In 1783, he was elected a Member of Parliament for the
county of Yorkshire–one of the most powerful seats in the House of
Commons. Yet after his election, Wilberforce experienced a spiritual
crisis and began to question whether a Christian could serve God in
politics.
He sought out John Newton, the writer of the hymn
“Amazing Grace,” who helped him see that he could serve God in politics
and make a difference there. By 1787, Wilberforce had taken up the
charge for which we remember him today: the fight to abolish the British
slave trade.
Throughout his life, Wilberforce worked to foster moral
and cultural reform in Britain as well as to abolish slavery. He was
active in educational reform, prison reform and the promotion of public
health initiatives.
Wilberforce retired from political life in February
1825, having served his nation for nearly 45 years. Yet his efforts to
secure the emancipation of slaves throughout Britain’s colonies
continued until his death in 1833.
Adapted from Real Christianity by William
Wilberforce, copyright 1797. Revised by Bob Beltz, copyright 2006.
Published by Regal. Used by permission.
James Lasher 
David Friend