Becoming Human
The following blog post is an edited manuscript for Becoming Human by Kyle Davies taught on September 12, 2021.
"Write out the instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
The above prompt is a common assignment for high school students. Once the student writes out how to make a peanut butter and jelly, someone must then make the peanut butter and jelly sandwich using your specific instructions.
Now, this activity’s goal is to have a kid practice using descriptive vocabulary, communicating ideas to others, recognizing steps in a process, and recognizing the importance of the use of clear language. Usually, the person who follows the directions makes a big mess because the writer imported their way of making the sandwich into the process. As humans, we often import our way of doing things into the process and we assume people will know what we mean. Failure to connect the dots and provide specific steps results in a big mess.
Anyone who is married and or has kids encounters this regularly. Put your shoes by the front door and then you turn the corner and shoes are strewn across the entryway. What you meant was to put your shoes in the shoe holder by the front door. This problem isn’t just limited to interpersonal relationships. We encounter the challenge of seeing the process of following Jesus from our perspective and leave onlookers wanting, thus when they try to imitate resulting in a big mess. We can often start a sentence by saying or including, well you know what I mean"…blank stare. When in fact, "No, I don’t."
This is what you do for church…says who…according to who...question everything...
Now, if have a challenge with this within the church, then imagine someone who has no religious background or no Christian background. How to make a Christ-follower starts by looking at your Christ-followership.We need a clear pathway that gives direction. We also need a person to ensure the dots that are needing to be connected in the space are there as well. Here’s the scenario…
You strike up a conversation with someone and you start to hit it off. You start swapping stories about kids, sports, work, and more.
Your conversation ranges from politics to the economy to parenting for marriage and careers and yet, one painful reality is usually clear: the gospel has not touched down on Planet Earth for many Christians.
When does the spiritual come up….especially the real spiritual? Not the, well I go to church. Going to church doesn’t mean a thing apart from the love of Jesus.
When and where the Gospel lost its place in the everyday life of believers is a mystery, but there is no doubt that it is not informing most of our basic life issues, priorities, and decision-making. We often end up shrinking the concept of the gospel down to a small set of beliefs of doctrines focused on the afterlife, or a set of right behavior where the why isn’t ever questioned. Imagine what could change if the Good News of Jesus’ life death and coming back to life was allowed to shape and inform all the areas of our life.
Some of you are hearing - Kyle that’s so basic - of course, it has. As we get started this morning, let me put it this way.
Has your life changed? Have you connected the dots for others? Because if you don’t then others will do it for you.
Second, think of this as equipping teaching where you are reminded and then store up so that you can share it with someone else. Here’s the reality, even with technology, your friends and family may never hear me speak, but they will hear you and see the way you live. Last week, I shared that in order to become like Jesus we must be with Him. Realizing that He is always with us. When we learn to be with Christ then we will be able to take the step to be in Christ.
We struggle to bring the gospel into our everyday conversations because…(1) we really don’t believe are that bad,
Deal with your past - even when your past isn’t that bad. We grade ourselves on the curve. The brokenness out there is bad, but the brokenness in me is justified. This means you have reasons. Having reasons doesn’t make it reasonable. Many times we don’t want to change because we don’t think of our sin as bad. We only think of the consequences of our sin as bad. The affect on our life, or even its effect on others. The moment we recognize that sin is bad we have to deal with the question. Am I bad? That’s precisely the point of the gospel. You do not have to settle for fallen humanity — you can be fully human again.
(2) because we still grapple with the brokenness in us and the world.
Faith in Christ makes us a new person. The daily change helps us catch up with the heavenly reality. Does the new person think, act, live differently than the old person?
This is Paul’s plea to the Corinthian Church in the letter we have as 2 Corinthians. As we get into our text today, which Richard read for us, we must be informed by what comes before this…In verses 14 and 15 we are given the ”because of Jesus” foundation. The gospel has saved us from the penalty of sin. The gospel is saving us from the power of sin. The gospel will save us from the presence of sin. To be a new person in Christ means that we constantly live with a past, present, and future mentality. We give in to sin when we fail to recognize that Christ has dealt, is dealing, and will deal with our sin. Jesus deals with the “walking dead humanity” that exists. Think of any zombie movie. There is a pervasive disease that makes people less than human. When we sin we are passing the disease and settling for a zombie-like reality.
“Paul’s joyful proclamation in 2 Corinthians 5:17 expresses a conviction which seems all too frequently contradicted by our experience. We affirm that life in Christ produces a new kind of living and are embarrassed to find so little difference between our actual living and the lives of those who make no such claims. We rejoice in the forgiveness of God for our sinfulness and then recognize how our living often fails to convert this reality to others. We worship the Christ who gave his life for others, yet devote so much time and energy to promote ourselves. We proclaim allegiance to Christ as Lord while living by priorities and values which indicate that there are indeed “many gods and lords” by which we really live.
Like us, the early Christians to whom Paul addressed those words recognized that in many ways the “old” remained with them and the “new” life of faith in Christ needed to be appropriated again and again. These early Christians saw that Rome and its oppressive power continued. Injustice and immorality prevailed in their world. They experienced continuing bondage in their personal lives, bitter strife within the communal Christian life, the continuing reality of personal failure, anxiety, frustration, and sin. Why the old when the new has come?
There is a tension between the Christian affirmation and the Christian experience.” 1
“Paul’s words must be viewed in light of Israel’s prophetic hope. One of the main features of that hope was the belief that the end of time was going to be like the beginning of time. When the prophets spoke about the expectation of God’s final coming and reign in human history, they frequently describe that time in imagery associated in the Old Testament with paradise and the original creation. For Paul, the end of time had dawned on a broken world. The world was a new world insofar as it had encountered the Creator in Christ. The person “in Christ” was part of a new humanity, created in Christ Jesus for a new existence. As Adam and Eve, the typical representative human beings, stood before the Creator in radical freedom, so the new person in Christ stands before the Creator in radical freedom. In some sense, the situation before the Fall has been re-created for the Christian. In that sense, the Christian is a new creation. As Adam and Eve were faced with the decision to give allegiance to God the Creator or to creator their own gods and give allegiance to them, so the new-creation person has been freed from the Fall’s bondage for the same decision. As they lived with the possibility of either dependence on the Creator or independence from him, so the new-creation person exists within that possibility. As they could either exist in fellowship with their Maker or hide from God among the trees, so the new-creation person can live in trust before God or make jungles in which to hide from God.
“Jesus came to remake us in God’s image. Charles Wesley put it like this in his famous hymn “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”:
Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Efface” means “wipe” or “rub out.” God is in the business of change.” He’s in the business of giving us our humanity back. Expect change. Jesus gives us the strength to face the fears that in the past have caused us to fight, flee, or freeze. In essence, Jesus gives us the cure for fallen humanity--our zombie-like existence.
We know we settle for our zombie-like existence when we evaluate our own lives and determine if we really are experiencing the new creation reality in our everyday lives. So, are you having difficult conversations with yourself? Having difficult conversations with others? How often am I replaying conversations in my head or scenarios where I could have…When was the last time I thought about caring for someone else in a tangible way? Did I follow thru? Do you see more peace, patience in me? Do you see more courage? Am I making more time for others? Do I seem more rushed? Do I seem more isolated? Do I seem quick to jump into a conversation to make sure I am heard or my point proven?
God’s redeeming love in Christ has reclaimed us for relationship with our Creator. In this relationship, we are free from the bondage to sin which characterized us while alienated from God. But this relationship does not automatically remove us from the influence of sin’s reality which surrounds us in all areas of life [both internally and externally].
“For Paul, “the old” which has gone is the condition of alienation from God and its bondage to sin. “The new” which has come is our relationship with God in Christ, a relationship which empowers us for a kind of living in which the continuing reality of sin can be overcome again and again. To be a “new creation” is not to be perfect or faultless, or immune from anger and pain, or insulated from the tough experience of life. Rather, to be a new creation is to live life turned toward the God whose grace has reclaimed us in Christ.”
The gospel has saved us from the penalty of sin.
The gospel is saving us from the power of sin.
The gospel will save us from the presence of sin.
Because of Jesus, our salvation isn’t related just to the afterlife. Jesus enables me to say “no” to the power and pull of sin in my life NOW, beginning to live the life I was created to live. And, when I’m too weak to live it the Holy Spirit is there to remind and empower me.
We need people and practices to counter form us to be the new person we are in Christ.
It’s in this moment, that I want to return to where we started. Our life in Christ must be lived out for others to see. Again, this isn’t living a perfect life, but one that continually returns to how God is at work in our lives past, present, and future. To do so effectively, we must have practices and people who help be formed into the likeness of Jesus—displaying our fully human.
Some of the clarifying points of being a new person in Christ is the 5 areas that we have identified in the Everyday Fatih Jesus card. You have heard me allude to them this morning, so let me make them clear.
- Hearing and Knowing God
- Identity In Christ
- Story of Scripture
- Dealing with Doubt & Emptiness
- Formative Practices & Patterns
You need people who are helping you be formed and showing you how to make a pb&j lest you make a mess. You also must be showing someone…that’s what next week is all about.
- Bruach, Manfred T. Hard Sayings of Paul. pp. 185-186
- Chester, Tim. You Can Change. p. 17