Saving Yourself

By Scott Wetzel
 

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”  John 15:8 (NIV)

If you are a Christian, I have one question for you:  Why?

I know this probably sounds like a stupid question but chew on it for a bit.  See what your answer is.  I vaguely remember asking Jesus “into my heart”.  I was four years old (certainly not old enough to understand the meaning of discipleship) and I was scared of Hell.  I didn’t want to go there because I knew it was a bad place and fire was involved somehow.

So I lived my life doing everything I could to let people know that I wasn’t going to Hell.  I went to church, Sunday school and youth group.  I wore cross necklaces and t-shirts designed to look like Gold’s Gym and Malcolm X, but really were not so subtle attempts to wear my faith.  My activities and wardrobe were specifically designed to deflect my soul from Hell.  My whole Christian walk was actually just trying like heck not to go to Hell.  I used all of my spiritual energy on myself.

So we know that being a Christian means that we are Christ followers, but do we really understand what being a Christ follower means?  Being a follower means we desire a relationship.  We get to know the very core of who Jesus is.  We hear him and talk to Him.  We eat with Him and begin to invest our lives into His goals.  In this, we take on the nature of Him.  It’s like any other relationship we have, where we begin to talk and behave like the people we spend the most time with. 

Jesus wasn’t trying to save Himself from Hell.

In fact; Jesus, a perfect man, died with a body filled with the weight of all of our sins in order to save everyone ELSE from Hell.   Jesus lived His life to serve others, even those He didn’t know.  I feel like the term “personal relationship with Christ” needs to be nixed from every church service in the world.  It’s making our relationships with Christ seem like something we hold on to, when in reality we need to give it away.  It has this feeling of hiding, when it should have a feeling of proclaiming.  We should be introducing our friend Jesus to anyone and let Him begin to touch their hearts.  But it seems like we hold on to Him like He’s our possession, talk about Him like He’s not really here, pull out 5 points to a get out of Hell free card, and then tuck Him away into our private devotional time or structured church services. 

So that brings up the question once again:  why are you a Christian?

The more and more I read the words of Jesus, the more and more I realize that it’s not just about my salvation.  The more and more I seek Jesus the more I realize that Jesus isn’t just my Holy Cash Machine.  The more and more I talk to Jesus, the more He tells me that if it’s all about me then it’s not about Him.  If I’m a Christian to avoid Hell, I’ve missed the point of Christ.

The point of Christ is to advance the Kingdom of God.