Christianity in a Nutshell

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009 Posted: 2:32:20AM HKT

AT ITS HEART, the Christian faith is not a religion as such. It is a Person. Rules and rituals may be important but they are not at the heart of Christian discipleship or church life. It is the relationship with this Person that is the soul of Christianity. Everything else is built on this. When we come to know this Person (and the reader will know by now that I am talking about Jesus), we will also come to know the Father and be connected with His Spirit.

Eternal life, as defined by Jesus, is the personal and relational knowledge of God the Father and God the Son. We come into the relationship when the triune God makes His residence in our hearts. By relating to Jesus, we are introduced to the Trinity and the life of the Triune God.

Jesus must therefore be at the centre of our discipleship. We must remember what the Lord said about Himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn. 14:6). This is a radically different way from usual conceptions of the religious life. Even Christians who regularly attend church may fail to grasp this.

Let’s think about religious ways. It is common to think of salvation and well-being in terms of finding and employing spiritual methods. We think that we can live a relatively trouble-free life and finally reach heaven by following a spiritual prescription. Find a better way to pray. Look for a new church. Try a new 10-step programme, or the latest spiritual technique. But the heart of the Christian life does not belong to prescriptions or programmes, but a Person.

It is possible to become busy pursuing spiritual methods more than pursuing Jesus. Beware of the delusion that religious busyness is equivalent to knowing God. It is not. We are well-advised to note the warning of Jesus (Mt. 7:21-23), that the ultimate test will not be how busy we are or how religious our calendars are, but whether He knows us (and whether we know Him). The great separation of people will be between those who had pursued religious ways and those who had pursued Jesus, the Way.

For some Christians, the essence of religion is knowing precepts and principles, doctrines and creeds. Not that they are unimportant, but they do not lie at the heart of the Christian life. The essential Christian knowledge has to do with a Person. Truth is ultimately a Person. No amount of information and factual knowledge can substitute knowing Jesus in a personal relationship with Him.

Here again, Christians can get it wrong. We may focus our attention on gathering facts and information instead of gathering around Jesus and listening carefully to Him through His Word. It is possible to know the Bible quite well and yet fail to know Jesus. There are people who know the Bible as literature or even develop skills to analyse the Bible. But such skills are rather useless if they do not lead to knowing Jesus intimately. Do not get me wrong. Bible reading and meditation are essential Christian disciplines, but they must be done in the presence of Jesus and in the light of a real ongoing relationship with Him. We must read our Bibles as we talk to Jesus the Truth. We must open our Bibles in order to find Him.

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Bishop Dr Robert M Solomon
Christian Post Guest Contributor