What is your motivation with Jesus?
Have you ever noticed some things in the world look the same? Have you watched the winter Olympics? On the downhill slope ski slope all participants look exactly the same. They will each ware a white helmet, blue uniform and a white vest that said Vancouver. Alligators and crocodiles look a lot alike. There are even citrus trees that produce sweet and sour oranges. And they also look alike.
But on each of these I mentioned, there is something that sets them apart. Each of them is distinctive in some way you just have to know what to look for. The sweet and sour oranges even though they look alike have different peels and leaves. The alligator and a crocodile their differences are in their teeth and snout. Even the winter Olympic participants had distinguished markings on their uniform to let you know what country they represent.
As church members to the outside world we all look the same. But the truth is when looked at closely we’re all different. I believe we can discern the difference of churchgoers by asking one simple question, “If hell didn’t exist, would I follow Jesus?”
John writes in chapter four starting in verse 16b through 18, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in Him. 17 in this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment, because in this world we are like Him. 18 there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. Though one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
We could ask the question this morning in a different way. Instead of if hell didn’t exist, would I follow Jesus to; what is my motivation for following Christ. Is it only to avoid hell or do I have other reasons? I believe that the majority of us will identify with one of the two categories this morning. Maybe, even both of these are motivators for you to follow Christ.
Motivation #1: Very simply, we don’t want to go to hell. We believe what the bible says about sin. We have all sinned and fall short of God’s Glory. And the result of our sin is that we are separated from God, and the ultimate consequence of that separation is hell. The solution is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died to reconnect us with God so that we do not go to hell when we die. Does any of that sound familiar to you today? Are you afraid of hell? I certainly am, and many times it is a motivating factor in my life.
But what are the results of living this way, motivated to follow Christ because of fear? I want to share some of the results that I saw in my own life as long as avoiding hell was my motivation for following Christ. I think we can best compare this type of living to the way that we drive on our roads. We know there is a speed limit, and we sure don’t want to get a ticket. So for the most part we try to follow the speed limit. But what that really means is that we go by the 5 over rule. If it is a 25 area, we can go 30. Or if it is the highway, we go by the 5 to 10 over rule. Or if we are on a long trip, and we want to save time, we go by the 10-15 over rule. You see we still want to drive as fast as possible, yet we take some steps to avoid getting a ticket.
As humans who don’t want to go to hell, so we become Christians who follow Jesus just enough. Just like we follow the speed limits just enough not to get a ticket. We end up doing just the minimum that is required to avoid hell because that is our only motivation.
So what is wrong with that? The first thing that makes me nervous is that I don’t see a list anywhere in the Bible that is titled “The Minimum Requirements.” I see the Ten Commandments, but not a list of the minimum requirements that we try to get away with. Secondly, allow me to illustrate the concept this way. Does Jesus enjoy being followed only because we don’t like the other option? What if your spouse told you they married you because they didn’t have any better options? You came along and weren’t exactly what they wanted, but their clock was ticking, and so they said, ok, I never know if anything better will come along. Tee if that is why you married me, I don’t want to know the truth.
So Motivation #1 for following Christ is simply a fear of hell. What is the second motivation? The 2nd motivation is the love that Christ has shown us. Because of this amazing love that God has lavished upon us, we respond out of gratitude towards God the father and the Son. The book of Romans says…
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The love that God has shown towards us so fills us that our actions, our thoughts, our intentions begin to glorify Christ. Everything we do is a response to the love that God gives.
Going back to our passage from I John, it says we no longer live in fear because as verse 18 says perfect love drives out fear and we change from living in fear to living in God. V. 16 says whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him.
We can sum these two motivations up into two words: fear and love. We can obey God out of fear, or we can obey God because of love. We, probably, all begin to follow Christ because we didn’t want to go to hell if when we died; we wanted to go to heaven. But there is still a desire within us for what we want to do. We still react to situations the same way as before we accepted Christ. There hasn’t been much transformation.
At some point in our spiritual journey, and hopefully for all of us that point is right now, the love of God begins to change us. We begin to follow Christ not in order to avoid punishment and not only to reach heaven. But we begin to do things out of gratitude to Christ. We obey his commands not only to avoid punishment, but because we love God and want to please Him. Worship begins to make more sense because we sing songs that say thank you to God. The areas of our life that were off limits to the influence of God can now come under His guidance. Why? Because He is God, because He is trustworthy, because He won’t trick us, because He loves us and His plans are better than our own.
Let’s return to the question we are pondering this morning. If hell didn’t exist would I still follow Jesus? When our motivation for following Christ is to avoid hell, perhaps the answer would be no, no we wouldn’t continue to follow Christ. That is not an absolute, but it is a very real possibility. But when our motivation is love, I don’t believe it would matter whether hell was a reality or not. We follow Christ because of the love he has poured upon us.
My desire for you this morning is that you begin to make the transition from a fear motivated walk, to a love motivated walk. Because when you do this, you can honestly say that you would follow Christ whether hell existed or not! Why? Because you desire to show your appreciation to God for all he has done for you. Because you believe that the life God asks you to live is a better life than the one you would live on your own. Because God is still God and He is still worthy of our praise. Because the immense love of God requires a response from mankind.
If you would like to make that transition today, we are going to close with a time of prayer. You might want to come to the altar and ask God for help in your spiritual walk. You might want to admit that your main motivation for following Him is to avoid hell. Ask Him this morning to show you His love, to show you His love in such a way that you might begin to follow Him not because of fear but because of love. God help us to learn this morning how to follow you simply because you are God.
I offer this to you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen
