The Simplicity of the Gospel
Does this sound like Christianity to you?
Do you love God? Then you should read your Bible, a lot. Find a church and be part of it; settle in as part of the community. Get baptised! Continually pray, and confess your sins, for we are all sinners. We are a chosen people, to be holy and set apart. Do not follow the ways of the world.
None of these contradicts the teaching of the Bible. But I bet some of you start to think, hmm, this sounds a little... legalistic?
What is the problem? The problem is, Jesus is not there.
Since Jesus is the centre of the gospel, it is fair to ask the question, who is Jesus? Some say he's a good teacher, some say he's a liar, and some say he's a myth. Then, some of us crazy ones believe that He is who He said He was–that He is God Almighty incarnate, who created the world, who is existence Himself, and the definition of goodness and love. And this God decided to reveal Himself to the humankind as Jesus.
That is a BIG mystery, because it seems that God did not bother to make it easier to believe. For some of us who have an overactive rational faculty, believing that this dude two thousands years ago was really God Himself sounds completely unthinkable. Utterly insane. To this day, I am still trying to wrap my mind around it.
But, if we read closely about what Jesus did and preached, how He befriended the outcasts, writing off any condemnation but also holding people accountable to never sin again... how He voluntarily sacrificed Himself and went on the cross to suffer to understand what it means to feel like being abandoned by God... The whole gospel can be boiled down to this:
God created the world, and at the apex of the whole creation He created humans as imagers of Himself. He wants to have a relationship with these humans. Since He loves them, He gave the humans a choice to be with Him or not. Unfortunately, given the freedom that is necessary for a meaningful relationship, many humans do things that go against God's intention, and could not help but walk away from God because they felt ashamed and not worthy of God's love.
God understands it. At one point of history, He came down to Earth and be human once. He lived a life showing that it is possible to not sin and live a meaningful life in the human body. He taught that the key to a meaningful life was love: making voluntary sacrifices for others. He took upon Himself to die on the cross to be the price of our sins and paid off any justified condemnation. This is a gift. And without the guilt separating us from God, He challenges us to follow His example and live a meaningful and sinless life.
The two commands (read: big rules of thumb) to live up to the challenge are (paraphrasing Matthew 22:37–39):
- Love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind
- Love your neighbours as yourself
Command #2 is very interesting. It is difficult for a third-party to know whether someone obeys #1 because it consists of mostly internal activities... but #2 is out in full display for everyone to see. And Jesus himself said:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35)
Also notice that command #2 actually is a two-step process. Because if we don't love ourselves, how are we supposed to know how to love others?
All the church activities and doctrines we develop are important for us to fulfil command #1—to grow our understanding of God. So, I am not dismissing anything that I wrote in the opening. However, if those are the entirety of Christianity, we are missing a big part of what Jesus stands for. He washed the feet of the disciples because He loves them. He died on the cross because He loves us. He issued two commands instead of just one. And if we read carefully, many laws and commandments in the Old Testament are relational. They are supposed to central around love, i.e. how we should treat people (Matthew 22:40).
Why is love so central to our faith? The reason is simple: we are all imagers of God, who is love. So we are created to love everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone... which includes ourselves and our enemies. It's our responsibility to love if we believe the gospel.
When you take away Jesus and the message of love, all that is left of "Christianity" is only a man-made oppressive religion. Guess who were the people Jesus rebuked the most severely when He still walked on Earth?
