5. Crossing the Line (1:15-18)
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Streamer X Main: [00:00:00] What's the purpose of a Christian? Like, what are we supposed to be doing? And if you weren't a Christian, you suddenly become a Christian. What is it now your job to do? Now we might come up with all sorts of answers to this question, but one of the common ones would probably be, we're supposed to make converts.
You ever heard that? Like that's the goal of a Christian. A good Christian makes converts. In fact, I've met Christians over the years. that are so anxious about this. They have so much stress about the amount of converts they should be making all the time that they just constantly are dealing with the anxiety of that and the stress and the tension of that.
And maybe you think, well, yeah, that's a good thing. Shouldn't we want to make converts? And that sounds like a pretty good goal. Well, here's the challenge. If you actually look at the facts. And go, okay, well, let's assume that this [00:01:00] is the goal. How good are we at making converts? How are we doing? According to the book, The Tangible Kingdom, we learn this, that in America, it takes the combined effort of 85 Christians working over an entire year to produce one.
Um, wow. Statistically speaking, if the goal is making converts, we're in trouble. I mean, it takes 85 of us a year to make one, one convert. We have got a problem here. And yet for most of us, we would say, no, this is the idea. You got to make disciples, make converts, get people, you know, on board with what we're doing.
Well, let's explore what John writes in John chapter one. We're going to look at verses 15 through 18 says John. Now that remember [00:02:00] this is John the Baptist because the author John, who we think is probably the disciple never mentions himself. So this is John the Baptist. John testified about him, about Jesus.
When he shouted to the crowds, this is the one I was talking about. When I said, Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me. From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God's unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God, but the unique one who is himself God is near to the Father's heart. He has revealed God to us. No one has seen God. Last week we talked about how Moses saw the shadow of God. That's the most that he could see. And now, John's talking about how we have seen God. That we have seen [00:03:00] the face of God.
What would Moses say? I mean, how jealous would Moses be of the chance that we've had to see God revealed? in the person of Jesus. And this is the language you find all throughout the verses that we've already been studying. This is how John talks about Jesus in verse 14. We have seen his glory for 16. We have all received verse 18.
He has revealed God to us. See the reason you and I are here today. is that a group of people saw the glory of God as revealed in Jesus and they told other people and those people told other people and on and on and on and because of what they had seen and because of how they shared it we are now a part of a very long tradition all the way into today so are you a part of that we have you [00:04:00] seen what these early disciples had seen Well, let's go back to what's the goal here.
Let's think about once we've seen it, what do we do with what we've seen? Well, here's an illustration of how we often present Christianity. Now, you can think about Christianity kind of like a line to cross, and we might say the most important thing in life is to be on the other side of this line. And so we, we focus all of our attempts on people who are on the opposite side of the line, getting them to the side where we are.
And this is how we think about converting someone, right? This is how we got to get you through a door or over a barrier or across the line. There's some tangible marker and we, we've got to get them to get over that. Now let's assume that we do it. We're successful. What now? Well, then we say, well, we got to get more people across the line and then you have to join us in getting other people [00:05:00] across the line.
And then what happens when they do that? And then just on and on. And we think the whole point is to move people from one side of the equation to the other side of the equation. And once you're there, there's nothing to do other than trying to get people on the other side with you. Now, how do you know if this is the version of Christianity that you're experiencing, that you're seeing?
Well, often this model of Christianity makes a huge deal out of baptisms. Why? Because baptisms is one of the easiest ways for Christians to measure some kind of change. And so we say, Hey, look, you were baptized. And that becomes this idea of you crossed over and now you're with us. And the focus often in these environments is on saving people from hell.
And so we'll say things like, I'm so glad we, we delivered you. We saved you. We rescued you. And the baptism is a sign [00:06:00] that now you're not in danger of what you were in danger of before. The challenge with this is it takes a starting line and it turns it into a finish line that once you cross that line, you've got your fire insurance and you're good to go.
And this is why many Christians in, especially in America, once they get baptized, they not really interested in looking more like Jesus. There's not a lot of discipleship that happens after that. And there's another problem that emerges with this model as well. Is that if you are hyper focused on a line that you and I often become gatekeepers And we become the people who decide who is in And who is out and christianity becomes about doing it the way we think It should be done Like have you ever met a christian who doesn't think you're christian enough for them?
They're gatekeeping. They're saying hey and their understanding of the line. You're not doing it the right way. Well, you know, welcome to the [00:07:00] comment section on many of my social media posts, right? These are tons of gatekeepers who tell me, Hey, you're not doing it the way that we think you should do it.
But what if we thought about this with a different way? What if we thought it more of a journey rather than aligned across? What if it was a journey to bring people? Now notice it's no longer about non Christians and Christians. It's about inviting everybody to get closer to Jesus. And it really doesn't matter what you believe on this thing because we're just trying to bring you to Jesus.
We're trying to show you Jesus. You might say, well, how do we know if someone is in or not? We don't know. That's the beauty of it. But the good news is it's not our job to know who's in and out. It's just our job to show people Jesus, to bring them to Jesus. And I have found there's a big difference between crossing a line and following Jesus on a journey.
So my question for you today is, do you [00:08:00] ever feel stuck in your faith? Do you feel complacent? Do you feel like you're just a little bit aimless? Maybe the line is to blame. Maybe you are stuck in front of the line or maybe you're stuck just after the line and the line is you're realizing the issue that, Hey, well, I was just either getting over this or this was all I was focused on and now what?
Instead, what if you focused on a journey with God and seeing more and more of Jesus every day of experiencing more and more of Jesus, just like John is describing in chapter one. You see, when you and I stop being the gatekeepers, we can invite others into the journey with us. The goal isn't to cross the line.
The goal is to pursue. Jesus. And there's a big difference between crossing a line and following Jesus on a journey. I want to close [00:09:00] with John's argument that we've already seen. Jesus has revealed God to us. Friends, you and I get to do the same thing that John did as he's talking about this. We get to reveal that same Jesus to other people.
We'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.
