A Relationship with Jesus? (Part 1)

THE PHRASE
I was at a restaurant having lunch a few weeks back with a few of my co-workers when one of them, a feisty devout Catholic, asked the rest of us charismatic crazies what our stance was on the salvation issue. You know the topic. You’ve probably been suckered into the same conversation at some time – “do you believe in once-saved-always-saved?” (I can hear the moans and groans as I type) I’ve wised up recently to stay away from this conversation when it’s possible. Too often these talks wind-up in hurt feelings, damaged relationships, and most regrettably – a splintered gospel.

As I sat quietly and let my Protestant brethren tackle the answer, I prayed to myself and simply listened to the debate. At some point someone told our Catholic co-worker that “Christianity isn’t about religion, it’s about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ? My full-gospel buddies in the Lord, I ask you – how many times have we either heard or uttered that sentence? Why do we believe that these words alone will lead others into understanding our earthly and eternal purpose? I believe that at one time this statement held significant meaning, but without extremely careful follow-up conversation, it’s simply a bastardized phrase that no longer holds the power that we thought it once did. Yet still, without thought, we say it and say it and hope that someone will hear it and suddenly find themselves in hot-pursuit of a “relationship” with our Lord.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I commend my co-worker for what she was trying to convey. I’m not knocking her for saying it. In fact, I probably used the same phrase in talking to someone else the day before. But for the first time, on this particular day, I heard how little this phrase helps someone, saved or unsaved, understand what kind of life we have been called to in Christ.

Although I completely agree that we have been called to a personal relationship with Jesus, there is an even bigger chunk of this very truth that the American church has been surgically removing from the equation – the type of relationship it is we have been called to with Jesus. We have been called to a relationship of submission to Christ. It is the removal of this key component of the gospel that has caused an epidemic of powerless Christianity.

As passionate followers of Jesus, we want nothing more than to see others desire to seek after God with the same level of reckless abandon that He has worked into our hearts through our experiences with Him. We search for the right things to say to get them on the "fast-track" to the same Jesus we know. We want to be able to explain to our loved-ones with a witty one-liner approach what being a Christian is all about. The truth is there are no one-liners that we can come up with that will magically illustrate what it means to live a God-pleasing life. But because we want everyone to feel good about the decision to follow Christ, we use these words and unknowingly hide the gospel of submission behind the fluff of friendship with the Almighty.

So we say things like, “Don’t worry about religion. Religion is bad! It’s about having a close and personal relationship with Jesus!” Then we follow-up with , “You just have to ask Jesus to live in your heart, and pray to Him every now and then and try to read your Bible when you get a chance, and love Him and know that He loves you…that’s it!” The biggest problem with this vague approach to truth is that it creates a life aware of Jesus, not a life hidden in Him. It produces the gospel of cheap grace, not a gospel of complete self-denial.

I’m not against one-liners for the sake of causing conversation or interest in Christianity. In fact, there’s a really great book that I know of that is filled with just over 30,000 effective “ice-breakers”. It’s called the Holy Bible and I highly recommend it to everyone. And just to prove that I completely support a quick way to sum-up what it is you believe as a Christian; what it all boils down to, I’ll give you the one verse that I believe works best for striking-up conversation and stirring-up intrigue while vividly illustrating what it means to live a God-pleasing life:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 (NIV)