Why I am a Christian--Hope!

Grace, Truth, Love, Glory, Hope!
There are many reasons for being a Christian, but in this brief series I have tried to condense those into five great biblical concepts. The God of grace, has shared with his creation truth, both in the written and living Word, demonstrated his love, shared his glory despite our humanity, thus giving us hope. These are my summary--Grace, truth, love, glory, hope!

I want to talk today about our basic human aspirations. We have longings, hopes, dreams, expectations. I am persuaded that these basic appetites, yearnings, are filled by Jesus in a way none other can fill them. I believe this claim has been validated by Christians through the centuries, among whom I think and hope to include myself.

There is a hunger and thirst that only Christ fills. There is a hope for righteousness that is always void. There is an inner emptiness that none but Christ meets. Augustine wrote, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

As I introduce this glorious hope, I must meet some objections.

The correspondence between our longings and the way Christ meets those needs is not due to any of the above, but because of the reality of God's work in this world. Paul states the truth succinctly: Col. 2:9-10: In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Deity in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ. And you have been given fullness in Christ."

Here are two wonderful statements, about Christ, about us. Common are fullness and in Christ. God's fullness dwells permanently in Christ, and in Christ we come to fullness of life. John 10:10. Everything essential to the divine being is in Christ, everything essential to our human being is in us if we are in Christ. To be a Christian is to be fully human, to reach fullness. To reject Christ is to retain some level of subhumanity because one forfeits experiences indispensable to authentic humanness.

There are many aspirations that Jesus fulfills, and perhaps as we think about hope we should focus on eternity more and the present less, but I want to bring the hope we have in Christ into the present, as reality now. Eternal life is not only unending, but is a quality of life in the here and now. It is not completed in the here and now, but it is nonetheless begun here. So using this same approach, I want to talk about hope in this world, knowing that our hope surpasses this world, 1 Cor. 15. There are two extremes--hope only in this world, no hope in this world but only for the one to come.

Four basic human needs--community, individuality, significance/meaning here, transcendence beyond here. Today I speak to these.

  • Individuality
    Identity, integrity, autonomy, power over one's life. Identity is sense of selfhood. Integrity gives sense of cohesiveness to one's identity. Autonomy is sense of freedom and independence; power is ability and authority to shape one's own life.
    From the question, What is Man? To the answer in Christ, I affirm that the Christian life is the only real source of meaningful self-identity. Individuals are valued, loved, served, and useful in serving others. Not only self, but others. Connections and self-differentiation. Jesus fills our hope to know who we are, what we are about, where we came from, where we are going. My hope for meaningful individuality is found only in Christ. HS experience, nerdy, scholastic, books, music, internally turned. But in Christ, everyone is someone.
  • Community
    Roots/origins; place; belonging; sharing and caring.
    We need a sense of heritage/history from which we find continuity and certainty. We are looking to overcome dislocation. Belonging is a search for family and friends. Community overcomes alienation and loneliness. Our technocratic society has all but destroyed community. We are in social disintegration, especially in Western society, even if such is less visible in the smaller communities of our nation. We are not what we once were. Increasingly difficult to relate to one another, to find love in a loveless world.
    People everywhere are seeking community, and some would sacrifice individuality to achieve it. Thus we see experiments with communal living, efforts to replace the nuclear family; more dependence on schools and day-care facilities. Some even repudiating the age-long institutions of marriage and family in an attempt to find freedom and spontaneous, unconditional love. But such often sacrifices authenticity.
    I sincerely claim that only Jesus fulfills this second basic human need. The deepest dimension of love flows form Christ, 1 John 3:16; 4:10.
  • Significance/Meaning
    This is the search for value, purpose, understanding, and thus significance. People do not want empty, worthless lives. Purpose is essential. We want meaning in everyday, ordinary life.
    Again, much in contemporary society smothers our sense of personal significance, our belief that life has any meaning. Among these are technology, scientific reductionism, and existentialism. Frankl claimed a will to meaning for mankind. After the concentration camp, he noted that those most likely to survive were those who had a task waiting. He quotes Nietzsche: he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. In addition to Freud's will to pleasure and Adler's will to power, Frankl affirmed a will to meaning. That is our point here. Frankl thus wrote of the existential vacuum, that is a loss of the sense that life is meaningful. Frankl famously inquired of patients, "Why don't you commit suicide?" And they would answer with something important to them, and Frankl would thus build a case for the importance of their lives. We know now that meaninglessness leads to boredom, alcoholism, delinquency, and suicide. Emile Durkheim wrote of normlessness (no standards) along with meaninglessness. With no goals, no human being can be happy or exist. Jesus Christ fulfills this need. We are image of God people. Christian teaching on dignity and worth are important, for our self-respect and self-image, and for our society, for when human beings are devalued, society is soured.
  • Transcendence/Hope
    Ultimately, I want to be in touch with something beyond myself, bigger than myself. We cannot live on bread alone. We must find spiritual reality. This world by itself is a source of disillusionment.
    When transcendence is lost, people long for recovery. It may be sought through drugs, science fiction, music, arts, materialism, experience, sex, yoga, Eastern religions....New Age... What is the missing dimension of our lives? We give rebirth to the sense of the sacred.
    The appropriate Christian reaction must be to seek understanding, grasp what is happening, Acts 17:27, as Paul saw the Athenians grasping for God in the darkness of their lives. This fundamental human aspiration only Jesus fills, for though sin alienates us from God, Christ died for our sins to reconcile us to God (1 Pet. 3:1*). Once reconciled, all else changes. We want each day with God. We live in his presence. It becomes natural to listen to his voice as he speaks through his word, it becomes equally natural to speak to him in prayer. Our basic Christian life cultivates a personal relationship with God because God is our great reality.
    Then on the Lord's Day, for Christians, we bow down together before him in awe, love, wonder, and joy--worship. We come to meet him, he comes to meet us, and the promise is fulfilled of his presence. He makes himself known through his Word read and expounded and the supper which visibly dramatizes the promise of his forgiveness. Indeed, Christian public worship is the pinnacle of the Christian experience. Worship can be ritual, formal, unfeeling. But when worship is real, hearts and minds are transported beyond time and space, we join the whole church on earth and in heaven in worship. We affirm with Jacob, Surely the Lord is in this place, and unbelievers coming among us likewise, God is really among you (Gen. 28:16; 1 Cor. 14:24-25).
    Against such a continuing experience with transcendence, it is a great tragedy that many seek transcendence in drugs, cults, and extraordinary experiences rather than in Christ where a close encounter with the living God is enjoyed.

    Conclusion
    Here then is our quest--community and individuality; significance and transcendence. Others may not say it this way, but in individuality--people seek to know themselves. In community, they seek their neighbor. In significance, they seek purpose and values, and in seeking transcendence, they are really seeking God. Humankind is universally searching. As a Christian, I remind that those who seek will find--he died to reconcile us to God. He demonstrates our worth in his death; he accepts us into him and his new people. These bring genuine hope. Jesus said about peace, "I give peace not as the world gives peace." I paraphrase, He gives hope, not as the world gives hope. He is the hope of the world.

    This hope is not only for eternity, but is for today and tomorrow. This hope brings me fulness each day in Him. This hope is the reason I am a Christian.

    This hope is a good enough reason for you to be a Christian. To accept the gospel in obedient imitation of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection--you can do that in baptism. To accept the gospel of hope that calls all who wander to return. Come as we stand and sing.

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    Last updated March 20, 2005.