The Burden of Being Better

One of the most devastating influences upon the Christian faith has been egalitarianism. Christians trying to signal they are no better than anyone else has been ruinous for the faith.

69. The Burden of Being Better

If there is a phrase that we could retire once and for all from the Christian lexicon it is:

“I am just a sinner like you.”

If you are Christian, this simply is not true. You might have once been a sinner like others, but you no longer are. You have been redeemed, saved, rescued, made new, born again. You are described as being saved and redeemed, so much so that you have been made completely new. 2 Corinthians 5 says it this way:

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: The old has gone, the new has come!”

“In Christ” you are fully, completely one hundred percent saved. We are seen by God as we are “in Christ.” This means that we are no longer our old self anymore. There has been a fundamental change in who we are at the level of our being. We are “reborn.” We have been made new. The implications of this are many, but foremost among them is that once you are “in Christ” you are not the same person you once were. You are better. When you say, “I am a sinner just like you,” it is a denial of your own salvation.

You might be thinking, “He is overstating that for rhetorical flourish.” Not really. Part of the problem is that Christian teaching has be corrupted by an egalitarianism that isn’t there in the scriptures the way people think it is. Yes, our accomplishments and abilities do not matter at all to God when it comes to our salvation. You can’t earn your way with God. Neither does it matter for our salvation which people group we come from or which sex we are. We all get saved the same way, through repentance and faith. But, this saving work does not erase out differences, our unique characteristics, or the differences which result from our cultures or gender. God uses our uniqueness for his purposes. What he has done, though, is given us a new identity under the banner of Christ. We are “in Christ.” We have been changed at fundamental level. We have been made new. Yet we have not been erased. We remain fundamentally who we are. Like many of these things, this is a mystery. What we believe when we say that we have faith in Christ, is that by being “in Christ” we are made new.

Presently, we see this newness with the eyes of faith. Hebrews eleven, verse one:

 “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Christianity is fundamentally not about making you feel good about yourself. It is not about God accepting you the way you are. The exact opposite is the case. If you are outside of Christ, frankly, God doesn’t like you very much. But he does love you. He loves you enough to sacrifice his Son for you. He died and was raised again in victory for you. But it was not so that he might accept you the way you are. It was not so that you might stay a sinner like everyone else. God did all of this because he wants you and your life, you and your eternal future to be radically different than it is now. And “in Christ” you are made new. This is what faith in Jesus Christ is all about. It is about you believing that you are a new person, that you have had a fundamental change in your being.

You ask, “Why don’t I feel any different? If I have been made new, why do I have all the same flaws? If I have been made new, why I am still tempted by all the same old stuff that lured me down dark ally ways in the past? If I have been made new, why is it that still carry all this baggage from old hurts and wounds? Shouldn’t everything be different?” The answer is that it is, but it is hidden in Christ. In the biblical way of thinking about the life and the pathways we walk, it operates from an understanding that the end of the path we are on is revealed in the pattern of choices we make today. The fancy word for this is that the Biblical way of thinking is “teleological.” The present is determined and given meaning by the end state. Thus, there are fundamentally only two choices, two paths, two ends that reveal themselves in the present. One ends in destruction. The other ends in life. One is the path of evil. The other is the path of good. One is the journey of wisdom. The other is that of folly. One is the embrace of order. The other opens the door to chaos. There is really only one choice that we make, do we choose good or do we choose evil? What ending are we choosing for our life? Do we choose obedience and loyalty to God, or do we choose ourselves? The hard part of this, is because a choice is a choice for the end of the path, when our forbearers chose disobedience, they were not making that choice just for themselves, but for all of us. Because of Adam, we are born already walking on the wrong path. This is why the good news of Jesus is such good news. “In Christ” you can leave the path you are on that is bound for destruction and death, and you will be placed on a path that ends in life. It is the end of this path that will be revealed in our choices today.

Breaking the Habits of Western Thinking: Cause and Effect is Not a Thing

The essence of the life journey for Christian is not a journey of struggling and working to become something we are not; rather, our path is one of revealing who we already are in Christ. There are various ways to think about this. One image is that of a treasure, kept for us:

^3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”

This passage from 1 Peter 1 tells us explicitly that we are born again. All things are made new. This newness, though, is kept as a treasure for us by God and we know that nothing can happen to it. This is our fixation. We keep our eyes on this reality. This is now who we are. Like Peter walking out on the water to Jesus —the wind and the waves are all those things all around you, that chattering voice in your head, trying to tell you otherwise, trying to pull you down and make you drown— we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. We need to believe that he is telling us to come to him. Hebrews 12:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Our modern world is built on this idea of cause and effect and the notion of making small incremental changes. The Bible testifies to us that it does not work this way. Because you are “in Christ,” because you have been joined to Christ through repentance —the deep admission that our life is on the wrong path and that there is nothing we can do to get ourselves off this path— and faith, this change in us is so complete that we can say that for us the resurrection has already happened. Colossians 3:

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Again, there is this same pattern. It begins with the statement of reality: you have been raised with Christ. In the past tense. It has already happened. You have been made new. Therefore, fix your eyes on Jesus, on the heavenly treasure, on heavenly things. What heavenly things? Who you are in Christ! Your life, your real life, your true self, is not what you see with your eyes. Your true self is not the wind and the waves. You true self is who you are in Jesus Christ. This is what Paul means when he tells us in Philippians 2:

“…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling”

He is not telling you to engage in some project of herculean effort to be a better person. No, he is simply telling you to be who who you are. Let Christ reveal who you are in him to the world. It is an act of deep humility because you know that you could not be this person without Christ, and yet you are. You see it with the eyes of faith. For everything that has been sacrificed on your behalf, tremble before God with fear and gratitude for what he has given you. See it. Delight in it. Give praise for it.

What this means for us, though, is that when we claim faith in Jesus Christ, we are declaring to the world that we are different. We are saying that because of Jesus Christ we are made new. We are declaring to the world that we better because we are “in Christ.” It is nothing we have done. It is a great and marvelous gift. But because of repentance and faith we have been reborn and made new. We are better people. Good. Perfected in Christ. We are already our resurrected selves. What was dead is now alive.

As soon as we say it, “I am a better person, because I am in Christ,” there will be voices within us telling us not to be proud. Don’t put yourself above others. Be humble. But true humility is seeing ourselves exactly as we are, no better or no worse.

Humility: A Key Virtue of the Post-Liberal Order

We do not elevate ourselves above what we are, nor do we diminish ourselves because of others. Faith places a burden upon us. When Jesus says that we are to take up our cross and follow him, this is a multi-faceted thing. One aspect of this cross is that we must learn how to live good lives among unbelievers. This requires confidence and strength in who we are. Part of the wind and waves that will blow against us will be those who will remind us of our failings, who will point out our flaws and our hypocrisy. What is in Christ is still clothed in what it perishable and flawed. The world, and even many who claim to be believers will tell us that we cannot be made new, that we are forever defined by our past, our old selves. They want to see us sink down. They want us to be sinners just like them. And the world, which is bound over to destruction, cannot stand the light of goodness. It will do all in its power to pull us down, to soil us and pollute us, to prove that we are just like them. This, in many ways, is what the culture war and the sexual revolution are all about. It is about weakening and undermining believers, the church and the witness of both. And far too often we are willing participants in the undermining of our faith. We don’t want people to single us out, to put a spotlight on our lives. We don’t want to have to live up to who we are in Christ. We want to fit in. We want to remain “sinners just like you.”

The Culture War: It Really Is About Using Sex to Undermine Resistance to the Regime

When we declare to the world, “I am a better person because I am in Christ,” the world will hear an accusation, “I am better than you because I am in Christ.” Now, that is probably true. But we are admonished in Galatians 6:

^4 “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else…”

The comparison we want to make, and the core of our testimony, our witness, is that we can talk about the transformation in our own life. I once lived in sin, but because of Christ I am made new. But even when we are not casting our eyes around to compare ourselves to others, it does not mean that those who live outside of Christ will not look at us and feel diminished because our new life in Christ is revealing itself. The Gospel of John speaks to this:

^19 “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

The light that shines out from us because of Christ will make us unbearable to the world. They will want to point that accusing finger and tell us that we are no better than them. “You are a sinner just like us.” And far too many of us then interiorize that and say that we are just like the world. No one wants to be singled out. But this is what Christ calls us to do. 1 Peter 2:

^12 “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

And for a long time we have thought about this merely in terms of making converts to the faith. But as the community of believers, we must begin taking ownership again of our own heritage, our own faith. This fundamental transformation, this fundamental newness “in Christ” is as much a political statement as it is a religious statement. The Biblical vision is that what establishes a people, God’s people, is that we have a right relationship with God. That right relationship, that righteousness, comes because of Christ, our repentance and faith in him. But just because it comes from Christ, it does not change the fundamental, ontological difference in our lives. We are made new. We are a people that has been made new. The world will hate us because of this. John 15:

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

We are, because of Christ, God’s “chosen people.” 1 Peter 2:

^9 “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

The passages just pile up, one upon the other, teaching the same message again and again and again, the same images of light and darkness, holiness and goodness. There is a new, good, righteous self that is being revealed in and through us by the work of Christ. We are being forged by Christ into a nation, into a people. That means we are also being formed into a reality that has political implications. One of those political implications is this light bearing that we do because of who we are “in Christ.” Because we dare to say, “I am made new in Christ and in Christ I am a better person,” because we dare to testify to these things the world will hate us merely for being good. Why? Because our goodness exposes their darkness. That is intolerable to them. But this is also our great strength. We are living the resurrected life here and now, even if only a part of that life shines through. What better foundation for a people can there be than living the new life in Christ? We carry that great responsibility, that burden, that cross, but we do so knowing that our strength comes not from ourselves, but from Christ, in whom we are made new.