The Secret of a Healthy Christian Life
Professor Gordon W. Allport of Harvard University urges that more psychological studies be made of healthy people in order that we may learn what makes us tick. "Many psychological theories," he says, "are based on the behavior of sick and anxious people, or upon the antics of captive and desperate rats," and "few theories are derived from the study of healthy human beings, those who strive not so much to preserve life as to make it worth living." There have been many studies of criminals, he said, but few of law-abiders; many of fear, but few of courage; more studies of hostility than of effective living with fellow men.
Allport's comments are very applicable to Christians. We often think of the Christian life as a struggle against sin, instead of considering it as a record of the continuing triumphs of Christ. Many, many believers do not even approach the edges of what Christian life is to be. The experience of Christians is not necessarily Christian experience.
We are confronted early in our Christian life with the thought of the cross of Jesus Christ, and become accustomed to thinking of our salvation in terms of the death of the Savior. That death took place several thousand miles away and nineteen hundred years in the past, yet we early learn to annihilate the difference in time and space and think of the death of Christ as something that has immediate application to us. "Jesus, keep me near the cross," is entirely comprehensible. The cross is not at Jerusalem but wherever I am. The cross is not of the year A.D. 30 but as of this moment.
In exactly the same way we must look to the future and to the Lord seated in Heaven. Perhaps the most important verse in the Bible for Christian growth is that found in the second chapter of Ephesians where we read that He has "raised us up (not in the resurrection but in the ascension) and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ." This is not a prophecy of our future but the available condition of our present sphere of life. This is the normal, this is the healthy Christian life. The throne of God is not to be distant but here, not future but now. Our life is to be lived on the earth, but God has made provision in Christ for us to go "in and out" (John 10:9), in to the throne and out to the earth; in to the source of power and out to the sphere of activity. No other life is spiritually normal.
1. In what ways is Christ’s death providing immediate application?
2. How does that affect the way we minister to our friends, neighbors and family?
3. Is God immanent or transcendent? Can he be both? How?
