Christians are Spiritual Athletes
Christianity is a practice.
There are two extremes that Christians often fall into when it comes to righteous living. On the one hand, you have what I am going to call the “once a sinner always a sinner ” Christians. These Christians have the idea that because of our sinful nature, we have no hope of acting righteously and therefore should not spend that much time trying to. They might say something like “Jesus saved me from those sins because I am a sinner by nature and have no hope of ever living righteously on my own. Therefore I’m not going to worry about my actions.”
The other extreme is what I am going to call the “self-righteous” Christian. This Christian believes that once you are saved, you are now required to live righteously and anyone who doesn’t is a rebel of God. These types tend to be very strict about rules and punishments and think that failure to live up to God’s standards is a conscious choice. They might say something like “Jesus gave us liberty to live righteously, and if you don’t, you are either not saved, or a rebel.”
Both of this viewpoints seem to miss a crucial aspect of the Christian faith, and that is the idea that Christianity is a practice.
In 1 Timothy chapter 4, Paul exhorts Timothy to “exercise yourself (Timothy) unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things…” This theme of practice or exercise, is woven throughout the New Testament.
We see another instance of this idea in 2 Peter 1:5-8;
’And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘
There are certainly other examples, but from these two, we get the idea. Our walk with Christ should be similar to a practice, or exercise, or maybe even discipline.
We also see the error of both the extremes we pointed out earlier. To the “once a sinner always a sinner” Christian, we should point out that we are to exercise ourselves unto godliness. This means that the standard still holds; God expects us to act in a certain way. To the “self-righteous” Christian, we see that this is an exercise, and that we are to add virtue and add knowledge and add all these things. This means that we don’t come out of the womb of salvation already perfect. There is a process of transformation that happens.
Similar to an athlete training, we are to practice our faith, “press(ing) to the mark of the high calling of Jesus Christ.”(Phil 3:14) This should be refreshing realization, because it allows you to recognize that you are not perfect, but that you also have work to do. The expectation of our Lord is a high one (as we will see in future posts), but just like the soldier isn’t expected to be a soldier before basic training, or just like the baseball player doesn’t expect hit a home run on their first day of practice, Christ does not expect us to be perfect straight out of the gate. What he does expect of us is effort and practice.
We should also be careful to notice that this effort does not mean we should trust in our ability to to “try” and “force” ourselves to live righteously. No, this too is by the grace of God. He extends His grace towards us, not so that we can be off the hook from living up to his standards, but so that we would be empowered and transformed into people who can live up to those standards. In Philippians 2:13-14 Paul says “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” It is God who is shaping us and enabling us not only to do what is right, but to even want to do what is right. This takes any weight off our shoulders to trust in our own abilities.
Like a good coach, the only thing expected of God’s players is a solid effort. He will take care of the rest.