What makes a Christian? Certainly not anything superior to others. Christians who believe what the Bible actually says will be the first to admit that they don’t deserve anything different from God than their non-Christian neighbors deserve. There is no room in the Christian Church for a “holier than thou” attitude. That’s why Christians frequently have to repent. There is no place in the Christian Church for our sins, but strangely enough, there is plenty of room for sinners.
It’s not really what but who makes a Christian. A person becoming a Christian is an act of God! He draws and converts us from things that are not solutions. He moves our hearts instead to trust in Him. This is not a vague trust where we have to fill in the blanks ourselves, but a trust in specific and even personal promises. This God-given trust in His Word is what makes a Christian, and the shape of a Christian life comes from His declaration of our forgiveness. That’s why Christians can repent every day, even as we can live confidently and boldly in God’s service, no matter what we do.
By all appearances, our society in Washington is about to cross a threshhold from a time of pandemic restrictions to whatever comes next. During the pandemic, this society has been pulled in several opposite directions at once. Even churches experienced it. We had to choose what to trust from an array of conflicting information sources. The non-Christian world around us was concerned above all about preserving life and health. This makes sense, because the world without Christ has no certainty of a better life to come, or of a gracious God who works even in the midst of sickness and death to give peace and life. But with our trust in God’s promises, Christians have security for now and eternity. Yet during the pandemic, we have been caught up in the currents and tides of earthly thinking. Since our Old Adam (the sinful nature that remains with Christians during our earthly lives) is still worldly, our time in the pandemic has been filled with confusion and conflict, fear and frustration. We were thrown against the realization that sickness and death are unnatural, horrifying, and inevitable at the same time. While Christians can understand and accept this through the cross of Jesus, the loudest voices around us did not. Unfortunately, those voices resonate with Christians, too.
Christians had the Old Adam even before the pandemic. In a way, the pandemic only aggravated some of our worst habits. Our lives contracted, perhaps by necessity to help preserve life in our community. We followed guidance that may or may not have been effective, but in the process we changed our habits and our thinking. At first, it was crisis mode. “I can put up with anything for a while, especially if it keeps my vulnerable neighbors from suffering and dying. It’s only temporary.” But we hoped for a return to normal, even as we feared it might never come. Now that it seems to be around the corner, what will that normal look like?
I suggest that Christians take this as an opportunity to do better than before: to embrace and apply the Christian faith in our daily lives more consistently and more ambitiously than we did before the pandemic. When the masks come off, let’s not take it for granted that we can smile with our neighbors in church, while working or shopping, and eventually even while traveling by air. Let’s live, display, and share the joy that we have been given through God’s promises. Let’s resist the tendencies of the Old Adam to corrupt our priorities and attitudes. Do you have some specific ideas for your life? Here are some for mine, and you may feel free to borrow what you like.
First, I would like my personal priority to be what’s most important to my existence, and that this should be reflected in my use of time each day and each week. I would also like to involve my entire being in this. That means that my faith should not be restricted to my heart or my mind, but also be on my lips, in my ears and eyes, and practiced with my body every day. If I read the Bible each day, why not do it aloud so that I can also speak and hear it? Why not sing it in hymns or psalms? If I fold my hands to pray, why not actually kneel as well, perhaps in a place set apart for that? If my new normal is better able to keep my priorities in order, then I should enjoy my life with better overall health and the peace that passes all understanding. Besides that, other things should work out in a more God-pleasing way.
I would like to better promote this healthy priority in my family, in our congregation and school, and among my other neighbors. A vital congregation needs members who support each other in this, and it always begins with the habits of the person who realizes it. In my case, that’s me. If you would also like to strengthen our congregation, it also begins with your own spiritual vitality. This is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but not apart from His Word and Sacraments. If you’d like to kickstart your thoughts on this, I invite you to re-read the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism of Dr. Luther.
The source of life is Jesus Christ. By His life and death, He obtained righteousness for us before God. Because of that, we don’t need to be perfect to be acceptable to God. In fact, every individual in the world is eligible as a sinner to receive the pronouncement of God’s complete forgiveness. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And all are equally justified freely by God’s grace, through the redemption in Christ.
But this source of life is not theoretical. You don’t possess it by knowing it, or by feeling it. You possess it by the trust that God creates and feeds in you through His Word and Sacraments. That means we can’t suppose that we will remain Christians by staying at home on Sundays. We need to hear the gospel applied to us externally through our ears. We need to receive the body and blood of Jesus by which He enters our own bodies to purify us from sin, for a holy life in service to God. To a somewhat lesser degree, we even need the community of fellow sinners. We gather to confess and unload our burdens of sin together, so that Jesus can replace them with His light yoke and easy burden of freedom in the mercies of God. In this way, we become the New Man in Christ, who will be our new normal for eternity.