What Difference Does Christ Really Make??

“Faith today is treated as something that only should make us different, not that actually does or can make us different.  In reality we vainly struggle against the evils of this world, waiting to die and go to heaven.  Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that the essence of faith is entirely a mental and inward thing.”—Dallas Willard

I recently began reading the book The Hole in Our Gospel:  What Does God Expect of Us? by Richard Stearns.  Stearns seeks to answer a number of relevant questions pertaining to the Gospel.  Questions such as:  What does God expect of us?  What is the Christian faith about?  What does it mean to be a Christian? How are Christians to live in the world?  What kind of relationship are we to have with a holy God?

Sterns puts forth his thesis in the Introduction as he writes; “The idea behind The Hole in Our Gospel is quite simple.  It’s basically the belief that being a Christian, or follower of Jesus Christ, requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God.  It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world.”

What difference does Christ really make in the life of a Christian?  Does the acceptance of Christ into our life, in fact, change our belief system, our worldview?  Does the behavior of the Christian really change?  Do the desires of life change when one becomes a Christian?

What concerns me greatly in recent years is that when life’s issues and crises push hard into the life of the Christian, how do we respond?  It is alarming that, according to The Barna Group, the born-again Christian is just as prone to divorce as the non-Christian.  So what difference has Christ made in the life of the Christian?  Do Christians take better care of themselves physically than non-Christians?  So what difference does Christ really make in the life of the Christian? It is alarming that Christians seem to gravitate toward the same system of values that non-Christians possess.

Sterns postulates that “in our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of ‘fire insurance’ that one can buy.  Then, once the policy is in effect, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living—of wealth and success, or of poverty and suffering.  As long as the policy is in the drawer, the other things don’t matter as much.  We’ve got our ‘ticket’ to the next life.”

So what difference does Christ really make, if in hard times we revert back to the way of life we lived before we came to Christ?

I am astonished that you  are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all.—Galatians 1:6 – 7

The evidence of a life dedicated to Christ must be observed in the transformation, of not only one’s system of values; but, in one’s behaviors, as well.  One’s system of values must be evidenced in one’s behavior, especially in the hard times of life.  Let us intentionally seek to determine how we should live our lives in Christ.  Let’s walk the walk as we talk the talk!  We all know, however, that walking is a much harder task to accomplish than talking!