Years ago, I knew a young man who experienced our life together in Christian community as so demanding he gave it up—and joined the Marines. After that, I’d tell people, “We’re tougher than the Marines!”
Following Jesus can be demanding, no doubt about it. But when we focus on the demanding side of it, we make work for ourselves, and we can give other people the impression that following Jesus requires some superhuman capacity for strength and endurance—or that it’s all drudgery. The reality is that it’s much more like the day Gandalf came and whisked Bilbo Baggins away on an adventure.
To be salt and light in this world is to believe in the incarnated Christ, hear His voice and obey His teaching. However, Jesus warns in the closing of His Great Sermon that when we hear His words and fail to obey them, His message is corrupted. Through disobedience we cease to live rightly before our neighbors. We proclaim His name but they see only our hypocrisy not the Lord’s character revealed through us. Doing so, we are no longer salt; we are no longer light; we offer only religion: a worldly distraction. Jackson Cramer rightly taught, “Religion is one of the great tools for excluding God from our lives.”
Jesus calls us to be salt and light void of irrelevant religious practices heaped in narrow, petty attitudes entangled in spiritual self-righteousness. Instead, Jesus, the Lord of Light, compels us to obey His commands: manage anger, forsake hatred, seek justice for the oppressed, reconcile conflict, and dispense grace and mercy. Through obedience to Jesus we reflect light in the darkness, illuminating an abundant life unhinged from the dark shadows of lifeless, soul-crushing religion.
Years ago, I knew a young man who experienced our life together in Christian community as so demanding he gave it up—and joined the Marines. After that, I’d tell people, “We’re tougher than the Marines!”
Following Jesus can be demanding, no doubt about it. But when we focus on the demanding side of it, we make work for ourselves, and we can give other people the impression that following Jesus requires some superhuman capacity for strength and endurance—or that it’s all drudgery. The reality is that it’s much more like the day Gandalf came and whisked Bilbo Baggins away on an adventure.
To be salt and light in this world is to believe in the incarnated Christ, hear His voice and obey His teaching. However, Jesus warns in the closing of His Great Sermon that when we hear His words and fail to obey them, His message is corrupted. Through disobedience we cease to live rightly before our neighbors. We proclaim His name but they see only our hypocrisy not the Lord’s character revealed through us. Doing so, we are no longer salt; we are no longer light; we offer only religion: a worldly distraction. Jackson Cramer rightly taught, “Religion is one of the great tools for excluding God from our lives.”
Jesus calls us to be salt and light void of irrelevant religious practices heaped in narrow, petty attitudes entangled in spiritual self-righteousness. Instead, Jesus, the Lord of Light, compels us to obey His commands: manage anger, forsake hatred, seek justice for the oppressed, reconcile conflict, and dispense grace and mercy. Through obedience to Jesus we reflect light in the darkness, illuminating an abundant life unhinged from the dark shadows of lifeless, soul-crushing religion.