In his book After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters N. T. Wright tells of James. James was worried that we Christians have settled for less than Jesus came to give:
James…had been attending the church where he’d had that wonderful, life-changing experience. He had learned a lot about God and Jesus. He’d learned a lot, too, about himself. He had been taught, quite correctly, that God loved him more than he could ever imagine—indeed, so much that God sent Jesus to die for him. The preachers he had listened to had insisted that nothing we humans do can make us acceptable to God, now or in the ultimate future. Everything is a gift of God’s sheer grace and generosity. James had drunk all this in like someone who’s walked ten miles on a hot day and is suddenly given a large glass of cold water. It was wonderful news. He was living by it. But he found himself now staring at a big question mark. What am I here for?
He put it like this, as we talked. This is how it stacked up: God loves me; yes. He’s transformed my life so that I find I want to pray, to worship, to read the Bible, to abandon the old self-destructive ways I used to behave. That’s great…And obviously all this comes with the great promise that one day I’ll be with God forever. I know I’ll die one day, but Jesus has guaranteed that everybody who trusts him will live with him in heaven. That’s great too. But what am I here for now? What happens after you believe?
The reason James knocked on my door was that he wasn’t satisfied with the answers he’d been getting from his friends and from people in the church he was attending. All they could say was that God called some people to particular spheres of Christian service—into full-time pastoral ministry, for instance, or to be teachers or doctors or missionaries or some combination of these and other similar tasks. But James had no sense that any of that was for him. He was finishing his doctorate in computer science and had all sorts of career options opening up before him. Was all that knowledge and opportunity simply irrelevant to the “spiritual” issues? Was he basically going to be hanging around for a few decades, waiting to die and go to heaven, and in the meantime using some of his spare time to persuade other people to do the same? Was that really it? Isn’t there anything else that happens after you believe and before you finally die and go to heaven?
James wasn’t trying to belittle or begrudge the gift of heaven. He was simply wondering if heaven was enough. Was that all Jesus came to give? If so, why are we still here? Why didn’t we beam directly to heaven after our baptism?
I think James is right. Jesus offers us a gift larger than…
- just being loved (although it’s wonderful to be loved by God!)
- just practicing religion
- just going to heaven
- just becoming ministers or missionaries.
Jesus offers more than life after death. He also offers life before death.
This larger-than-life gift is revealed by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. Here, Jesus envisions this massive life as a house (Mt. 7:24). In the rest of his Sermon on the Mount Jesus describes this house. It’s a house/life larger than we could possibly imagine.
In my forthcoming Ten Minute Transformation (Chalice Press) I explore this life and the steps we can take to move into it. I hope you’ll pick up a copy when it launches this September.
In the meantime, how would you answer this question: If Jesus came to give you life before death, not just life after death, how would that affect the way you live today?
