Two questions came to my mind as we went through Easter weekend – two questions that I found good to work through myself and which you would benefit from thinking through as well:
- Why are you a Christian? Is it because you believe that being a Christian will mean you’ll have a better life? Or because you think that Christianity is filled with ancient wisdom about how to use your years well? Perhaps you are a Christian simply because you feel that it gives you answers to some of your big questions in life? Or maybe it is because you really like knowledge? Certainly there are a number of folks who have grown up in churches who have never even thought about this question. But the Good Friday and Easter Sunday answer must be that you are a Christian because you see the need for your sins to be forgiven by the King of Everything and you have been called by the Lord to be a part of His eternal glory in the universe. Do you see the difference? It’s not that God’s wisdom is unimportant, or that you shouldn’t look for answers to the big questions in life. Nor is there a problem with believing that the manner of life prescribed in the Bible is the best way to live – all of those are true. But they are meaningful only in the sense that they point us not to a philosophy or to a nice rational place to put our doubts in life at ease, but instead they point us to a Person – Jesus – and to what that Person has done and will do – died for our sins, risen to new life, and preparing to return.
- Why do you read the Bible? Is it for self-help when life is hard? Or to learn good moral teachings for yourself or your children? Do you read it simply because you “should,” as if it is a textbook? Or perhaps you see the Bible as the answer book for life, the “instruction manual” as it were? But even better than any of those answers is this one: you and I and every Christian should read the Bible with no agenda at all apart from a desire to understand and respond to the big picture that God has preserved for us in the Scriptures. We read the Bible not to get an encouraging word for the day (though that may well happen), nor simply to learn about morality (though it does teach about what is good and what is not), but instead we read the Scriptures to see the truth about our own sin, God’s everlasting righteousness, Christ’s life and death and resurrection, and how the Lord is uniting all things in Christ (Ephesians 1).
I asked myself these questions because my (and your) motivations matter. It is easy to read the Scriptures to simply get a daily bit of wisdom; it is easy to “be a Christian” in certain areas of the country or if your family is religious. But neither of those are the answers that we need – neither of those sets us on a good foundation of following Christ as disciples. Dear brothers and sisters: what is needed is for you and I to follow after Christ based upon His perfect righteousness and our desperate sinfulness. We follow Jesus not because we need a bit of self-esteem, or a lift up when times are hard. We follow Jesus not because we need a better philosophy of life than we have at the moment or because He is a great moral teacher. No, we follow Christ because He – and He alone – has the words of life (John 6).
