Reality

Reality – 1

The Bible doesn’t tell us how to live. It explains reality. It tells us who we are and where we live and who else is here. Out of these sorts of things we understand how to live.

Reality – 2

Being a Christian is more than doing this or that. Being a Christian is all about the difference in what you are and in who you are. Only then is it about what you do.

Reality – 3

What is it about Christians that sets apart from others who are not Christians? It is not that we are nicer, friendlier or more helpful. It is that we are different from others. We don’t simply act differently. We are different. We are different in what we are and that leads to other differences. So, because of this difference, we have a different agenda for life and thus different priorities and loyalties. It is the difference in what we are that is key. Without this difference we are just like everyone else, except with a different veneer.

Reality – 4

What lies behind our behavior is different from what lies behind their behavior. We are motivated by life, the life that Jesus has and shares with us, and they are not. After all, they are still dead. There is the complicating factor that we are not always motivated by this life from Jesus. But that’s all it is – a complicating factor.

Reality – 5

Being a disciple of Jesus is different from being a disciple of Buddha or a disciple of Mohammed or of Joseph Smith. Those are not really different from being a disciple of Marx or Darwin. Such people have adopted some principles taught by some teacher and work at applying them to the situations that they encounter. And some do a good job of it. Being s disciple of Jesus is different because what is key is not that we have adopted some principles but that we have been adopted by God. Part of that that means is that we have been changed in a most fundamental way. We are alive and they are not. So, we are able to see reality accurately, clearly. It is out of this ability that we live.

Reality – 6

It’s not that your doing has been changed but rather that your being has been changed. When Paul talks about being raised with Christ he’s not talking about the imagery of baptism by immersion, nor is he talking about turning a new leaf because you have now adopted Christian ways. He’s talking about a metamorphosis. When our bodies are raised again they will be fundamentally changed. Any trace of death in any of its forms will be gone. We will be fundamentally different. That change, dealing with the same fundamentals, has already happened to our souls. We are different in a deep and profound way, from those who are not Christians. Our spirits have been raised, resurrected, regenerated. Being a disciple of Jesus is different from being a disciple of anyone else.

Reality – 7

The calling of the Christian disciple is to live according to reality. He is to live according to what he is and forever will be, and not according to what he once was. That is so different from trying to be as nice, as friendly or as helpful as others are.