“The Normal Christian Life”
Some 250 years ago, two young Moravian men heard of an island in the West Indies which was virtually owned by one plantation master. He was a violent man who treated his slaves with complete contempt. He would not allow them to know anything of Christianity; no minister was permitted to come and form a church among them. So these two young Moravian men, gripped with a burden for a group of people who might never hear about the love of Jesus, sold themselves into slavery to that plantation master. The money they received for their own lives they used to pay for their passage to get to the island. They gave up their lives to go and live among that community of slaves and bring them the gospel.
Their families came to the docks to farewell them, knowing it was highly doubtful they would ever see them again. As the ship pulled out of the harbour, with mothers crying on the shore, the last words ever heard from them was when one of the young men cried out from the ship’s deck: “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering.” That became the catch-cry of the small Moravian community, who sent out 2158 recorded missionaries all over the world. Jesus had died for people who would never hear the gospel unless someone went to tell them.
Now when we hear of those two young men, we are tempted to think “That is not NORMAL! Selling yourself into slavery? Leaving all behind, even grieving family. That is not normal.”
Let me ask you this morning, what IS the “NORMAL” Christian life?
Having searched through what the Bible has to say, I would describe it this way: the normal Christian life is one of FULL DEVOTION to Jesus Christ. Anything less than TOTAL devotion to Him is SUB-normal. Inferior. Not what Jesus intends. Jesus said: “If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, he must give up ALL rights to himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34 – J.B. Phillips)
Give up all rights. Follow him. That is the NORMAL Christian life, as described by the Founder. Full devotion to Jesus Christ.
Well, what would that entail? What does full devotion to Jesus look like? One person who was living the normal Christian life was the Apostle Paul – the man who wrote half of the New Testament. Let’s read this morning what HE said was full devotion to Jesus.
READ: Philippians 3:7-16
Paul says five things about a fully devoted follower of Jesus. Firstly…
1. A Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus COUNTS ALL THINGS “LOSS”.
Let me read verses 7-8 again, and notice that THREE times Paul uses this word “loss”. He’s emphasizing it to make a strong point [READ]. Loss! Loss! Loss!
He says: “The things I used to count as “gain” I now count as loss.” What things had he been counting as his great “gains”? Well it’s all listed in verses 4 through 6. He felt he’d made great advances in living a religious life. That God must have been pleased with him … he was head and shoulders above other people. He says: “I was circumcised as a baby – prepared for a God-pleasing life by my parents – I was raised in church. I had the right family connections – generations of God-fearing people. I became a pharisee – a leader in the church. In fact I was a faultless legalist – I paid attention to detail that I never did anything wrong.”
Paul said: “These are what I THOUGHT OF as my ‘gains’. I did have them in the asset column (oh, I was building a big account with God), but I’ve seen their true worthlessness and I’ve now shifted them over into the liability column.”
“LOSS” – the word here is a word used to describe “a loss at sea”. When a fully laden ship was in a raging storm, things would need to be thrown overboard if there was to be any hope of the ship making it through safely. The things they threw overboard were described with this word here (the greek word “zemia”) – LOSS. Paul says “All that stuff was my distraction. I was proud of it. My hopes were in it. So I came to my senses and threw it overboard.
“But not only that”, he says, “I now count ALL THINGS loss to go after Christ.” Nothing in life could be allowed to take his focus from following solely after Jesus. “It’s all rubbish!” he says. Literally: ”It’s dung”. Career, money, possessions, houses, cars, popularity, fame, security, a “nest egg” for the future, fashion, the toys of this world – IT’S ALL RUBBISH. “And I’m not pursuing it anymore. The lot’s gone overboard … that I might gain Christ.” Him, and Him alone. That’s FULL devotion.
ILLUSTRATION: [Tell story] The conversion of George McArdle (Bass player with the Little River Band) – left the band to prepare for the ministry. Who would give up an $8 million contract like that? A fully devoted follower of Jesus would.
A fully devoted follower of Jesus counts all things “loss”.
2. A Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus HAS A PASSION TO KNOW CHRIST.
Verse 10 – Paul says: I’ve done all this “…that I may KNOW HIM.”
The word “know” here means “to know personally, by experience”.
Paul says: “I used to be content with a lot of knowledge ABOUT God.” Paul had been trained by the best. He sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the leading religious scholar of the day in the world. Paul knew lots of his Bible from memory. He’d studied theology. He knew a lot ABOUT God. He says: “But then one day I MET Him. And you know what, He wasn’t AT ALL what I expected! For all my knowledge, I never knew Him!” When God revealed Himself to Paul in a blinding light along the Road to Damascus … It was JESUS! He’d been trying to serve God by opposing Jesus, and it turned out to be the same Person! And he says: “NOW, having caught a glimpse of Him, ALL I want is to know Him more!”
What could be more important in life than knowing the One who created you for Himself? The One who wants you to spend (not a lifetime but) ETERNITY with Him?
ILLUS: I sit with young couples who are preparing for marriage. Every now and then one will say to me: “Oh, we know EVERYTHING about each other. We’ve shared EVERYTHING. We’re so close.” And I usually just smile. I’ve known my wife for 12 years – been married for 11 (it’s our anniversary next week) – and I feel like I’m just STARTING to know her. All the wonderful things there is to know about another person.
And that’s just another human being! When you talk about knowing GOD – that will occupy us forever. He’s amazing! Wonderful! Awesome! And He wants us to know Him.
The fully devoted follower of Jesus has a passion to know Christ.
3. A Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus LIVES A NEW LIFE.
Verse 10 again – “That I may know Him AND THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION.”
Turn over with me to Ephesians 1:19-20. Here Paul is telling the Christians at the church in Ephesus what he is always praying for them. He says: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know (verse 19…) “…what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places…”
If you have become a Christian by receiving Jesus to forgive you of your past and be in control of your life, then the Bible says that the VERY SAME POWER that came into Jesus’ dead body and raised Him to life again (the power of God’s Spirit) has now come into your life. It’s working and active in you. John chapter 3 tells us that when this happens we are “born again”. That power of God working in us raises us out of our old way of living to a whole new life!
To come back to our passage in Philippians 3:10, Paul says “Now I am pursuing – I want to know in ever increasing measure – that resurrecting power of God. I’m pursuing this new life.”
If you’re a fully devoted follower of Jesus, you can’t live the way you used to live anymore. The Christian life isn’t an “improved” life – it’s an entirely DIFFERENT life! God empowers us to live a new life. C.S.Lewis wrote: “Jesus did NOT come to make bad people good, He came to make DEAD people LIVE!”
ILLUS: Lindsay Clegg was a business man who was selling a warehouse property he owned. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior. As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Lindsay Clegg promised that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. But the buyer said: "Forget about the repairs. When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site."
God didn’t come into your life and rescue you because He liked the building you’d made! He wanted the site. He wanted YOU, so that He could build an entirely NEW building. Something beautiful. Something we could NEVER have built. People who try to improve their own lives so that God will accept them are like people sweeping a warehouse that is slated for the wrecking ball. It’s pointless!
Are you living a new life?! If you have begun following Christ, and God has begun construction of a whole new building in you – if you then go back to old ways of life (sin and the “clutter” of the world), it’s like bringing into that NEW building boxes of all the rubbish out of the old building, and strewing it around.
A fully devoted follower of Jesus lives a NEW life.
4. A Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus IS PREPARED TO PAY THE PRICE.
Paul goes on in verse 10 to say: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, AND THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS, BEING CONFORMED TO HIS DEATH.”
- Sufferings
- Death
Right around the world thousands of people this year (2000) will pay the ultimate price for their faith in Christ. They will give their lives as martyrs.
We don’t see a lot of that here in Australia – but we may one day! Only a couple of weeks back we heard that terrible news from Cairns of one of our pastors who was killed with a machete for no apparent reason. His murderer wanted to kill a minister of the gospel. A Christian. It could have been anyone.
The question we must ask ourselves is are we we fully devoted followers of Jesus. If He called us to go as missionaries to a place where we might be in danger of dying for Jesus, would we go?
But it’s not just physical death. We may never be asked to pay that price. But what about DYING TO SELF. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:31 - “I die daily!”
ILLUS: “Transformations” video – Tell story of Pastor Julio Ruibal in Cali, Colombia. Gave his life for Christ (revival sprung up as a result). But I’d like you to hear the response of his wife and children. Listen particularly to the words of his teenage daughter … [VIDEO].
Hear those words of Pastor Julio’s daughter: “Our father’s death has inspired us to also lay down our lives. Not just in dying, but to LIVE for Christ, which is sometimes HARDER.”
Willing to go to death. BUT ALSO death to self - MY desires, MY attitudes, MY thinking. Fully devoted followers of Jesus.
Finally …
5. A Fully Devoted Follower of Jesus SEES LIFE AS A RACE TO BE RUN TO THE FINISH.
NB - the verbs here:
“pressing on” (endurance)
“reaching out” (focus)
“forgetting the past” - forgetting the bad AND the good!
“moving forward” (progress)
THIS IS CHRISTIAN MATURITY. Maturity as a believer is not measured by how much you know - it’s measured by the passion with which you are committed to LIVING OUT your faith.
James 1:22 says “…be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, (which would be) deceiving yourselves.”
Look at what Paul says (v15b). How SURE is he that this is the NORMAL Christian life?
Paul says: “You may think I’m a bit over the top. That I ought to take it easy ... chill out and be a bit more reasonable. You may think I’m a fanatic. Well, listen, I love you. And I don’t condemn you or judge you. I’m praying for you - that God will open your heart and mind to the truth. Because I am RIGHT in this. I KNOW what God says is the normal Christian life. A lot of things are open for debate - but this is not one of them. There can only be one standard.”
WHAT CAN I DO TO LIVE AS A FULLY DEVOTED FOLLOWER OF JESUS CHRIST?
A checklist ...
- Have you asked Jesus into your life, to forgive your past and direct your future?
- Have you made the conscious decision that you are DONE with low-level Christian living? Are all your Time, Talents and Treasure at His disposal.
- Are you spending time EVERY DAY reading the Bible and praying? Stretching to know Christ.
- Are you part of a small group of Christians that meet regularly to help each other live in full devotion to Jesus?
- Who are you praying for and reaching out to with the focussed desire to introduce them to Jesus?
