LEVEL-3 Christians (By The Razor's Edge)
What really comes into your mind when you think of THANKING GOD?
At one level (let's call it LEVEL 1), we thank God for material blessings. Home and hearth, family and kin. Health and wealth, roof over our heads, clothes on our bodies, food to eat, needs being met, healing from sickness, prayers answered, etc, etc. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance," we say with the Psalmist. Basically, this is saying thanks for a good digestion, for a long life, for our fluffy pillows, for not being born or living in modern-day Afghanistan (or even Orissa these days!!!), etc. If in fact we had continued hardships, our spirit of thanks would vapourise like the morning mist.
At another level (LEVEL 2), we thank God for deeper things. We talk of thanks for being "saved" (whatever that means), of being "God's children" (we never ask HOW, but we take it for granted anyway). We thank God for "who He is" (or rather, who we think He is).
When this level gets deeper, the polite, anonymous, discreet world of "saying thanks" disappears. It is replaced by a world where other words quickly appear and become themes of life. We no longer just MOUTH thanks with our lips. We live it with our lives. We're so utterly and irrevocably altered and transformed by knowing that though God needn't have had anything to do with our filthy lives, He still chose to sign His matchless Name with our pariah lives, took us home, and nursed us back to life. Even if He asked NOTHING in return, we are prepared to give EVERTYHING, even our lives.
In this deepest of levels (LEVEL 3), words like "gratitude" appear. Do you realise that whereas you can easily "thank" someone you don't really know too well politely for a perfunctory favour, it is impossible to feel gratitude to a stranger? Gratitude IMPLIES relationship. You've GOT to know the person you are grateful to, and you have GOT to know what he/she did for you or means to you, to feel GRATITUDE. Gratitude has none of the anonymity of mere "THANKS". And gratitude becomes more of a life statement, an attitude, a way of living. We don't just SAY thanks, we LIVE IT every moment.
At which level are you today?
If you're at LEVEL 1, God is associated with security in life, and only security in life. If today you were suddenly transplanted to Afghanistan, God would become academic to you, because your survival and your security would become paramount. God would be a luxury to you that you couldn't afford. At LEVEL 1, we make security and survival our only goals in life; if God supplies these, well, let Him be God; if He doesn't, we move on. LEVEL 1 terminology is "thanks" (if at all), not "gratitude". God might as well be a stranger.
If you're at LEVEL 2, you "accepted" or "made a decision for" Christ at some time you can vaguely remember. It was like, among the many options that life presented, Christ seemed the most lucrative, so you "chose" Him. You feel entitled to a lot of rewards, one of which is 'eternal life' and 'going to heaven' - you feel God MUST bless you with this because of YOUR great step of just picking up His free gift. It's just as business-like and transactional as it was in LEVEL 1, but here there is a small warmth of possible relationship. At least, some of the terminology is better :):) But it is still THANKS more than GRATITUDE, because the relationship isn't as cemented as can be.
If you're at LEVEL 3, a whole new world has opened up. Levels 1 and 2 don't even seem like levels anymore; for those of us in LEVEL 3, there are only two levels - either LEVEL 3 or NOTHING. At LEVEL 3, even life is too small a price to pay for what Christ has done for us. Think for a moment of what that really means. It means that we understand fully the following:
1) Before we met Christ, we were objects of wrath meant for destruction in hell, just like the 'devoted things' Achan stole.
Ephesians 2:1-4 says: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.
We weren't just people who did not know God; we were objects of wrath destined to be destroyed by fire. All our goodness, our coming to church, our tithing, our appreciation of spiritual things, mean NOTHING, till we realise that before we met Christ, we were headed straight for destruction. The 'good' ones among us would share the same fate as the 'evil' ones.
2) There was nothing we could have done to help ourselves. We might have done some "whitewashing" of the tombs of our lives, but our bodies would still only be housing dead spirits, just like whitewashed tombs.
Romans 5:6 says: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
3) In fact, we did nothing; God did everything.
Colossians 2:13 says: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.
I John 4:10 says: This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Have we forgotten that it is always God who makes the first move in reconciliation?
4) We take no credit for being saved; we just live our lives in gratitude.
Ephesians 2:8 says: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.
Think long and hard about the implications of being in LEVEL 3. Here we have moved on from being mere acquaintances with God, to a loving, deep, intimate relationship that God initiated even WHILE we lay undeserving. In response, merely spouting insincere thankful phrases in church won't do....our deep, deep gratitude must be plain to see, a testimony to God and to others, in each moment of our lives. We now realise that we do not live for ourselves at all. Every moment of our lives, we are deeply reminded of what wretches we were, and what we are now raised to.
This has to be life-changing. I seriously challenge you to consider the implications of LEVEL 3 and still go on living your life unmoved. Here are the distinguishing marks of LEVEL-3 Christians:
1) We are REPENTANT people. Every moment is a moment of repentance. There is no sense of "right-ness" inside us except in the Cross of Jesus Christ. We are so deeply grieved at sin that we ruthlessly root it out in our own lives.
2) We look at ALL THINGS (no exceptions; blanket rule - no fine print) through one single mirror - the Cross of Jesus Christ. If the Cross does not matter to us, if it does not bring repentance rushing in to our daily life, then we are still in outer darkness, though we may come to church every Sunday. The Cross of Christ should do MORE than just matter - it should be the only hinge on which our lives turn. Nothing less is enough; nothing more can it be.
3) We have no RIGHTS, except the right to be identified with the Cross of Jesus Christ and all that it means. We have signed away our rights to our earthly comforts, our 'entitledness' and our 'deservedness', even our very physical lives. We have just one thing, that we hold on to with all our being - the Cross of Jesus Christ. This does not mean that we just give away ourselves to charity - whatever we hold, we hold as stewards of the one who gave it to us. This applies as a blanket rule to ALL THINGS we have been given - all material and all spiritual blessings. We are to treat NONE of it as our own, but be faithful stewards who will give an account to our Father on that day.
4) Our lives are gratitude itself. Since we can never repay, we DESPERATELY hope that we can at least be as grateful as we possibly can, in ALL THINGS. We feel we don't have enough time to be grateful!!!!
5) Our preoccupations, our thoughts, our lives are built around God's marvelous work of redemption in us; we can never stop marveling at it. In fact, we FEEL so blessed that we continuously step out in faith, trusting in God for great things and putting our lives at stake. We expect God to do great things all the time. Tell me this - what is being a Christian COSTING us today? If our answer is "nothing", then our focus is not right. There must be a spirit of sacrifice, of denial to oneself, of giving up.
6) We want to keep on telling the wondrous story of the Cross!!!! We can never tell it enough.
7) We don't merely live for our needs or for our security; we live first for Jesus and then purely for others, and lastly, for ourselves. We've stopped providing for our needs; God's doing that already, we say; rather, let me do something for Him!!!!!
8) We've finally learned that WE ARE NOT THE POINT; GOD IS!!!!! In Levels 1 and 2, we thought we were the point of everything. In LEVEL 3, the scales drop - we realise that we have been left alive on this earth only to glorify God with our lives.
I want to ask a serious question - is your thankfulness for material blessings and secuirty MORE than your gratitude for Jesus and the Cross? If so, you have a serious, serious problem. If the Cross of Christ is only something you think about at Church, you have a log in your eye. Are your prayers only for material and physical needs? Then you're not getting through to God, and neither is God getting through to you.....
It's not possible to come to God without coming to Jesus. And it's not possible to come to Jesus unless you come to the Cross.
I pray that I will not thank God merely with my lips on Sunday, but that I would come to the Cross and feel my gratitude for the Cross so much that I will live every moment for Jesus. I want to move deeper into what the Cross means, because it is the SUPREME expression of God's love for me.
The writer to the Hebrews said, addressing LEVEL 1 and 2 Christians, in my view:
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.
- Hebrews 5:11-14 and 6:1-4
How long ago did we 'accept' Christ? How have we grown in our knowledge of God since then? We sit in church Sunday after Sunday, but is it possible we still are living 'on milk' and not on 'solid food'? Is our knowledge of Christ still the same as the day we first believed? How can our knowledge have grown, when we still are grappling with the 'elementary teachings about Christ' and still scrambling to meet our own needs, bargaining with God for blessing after blessing? Forget being teachers, we still need teaching (and that too elementary teaching) ourselves, even now!!!
If our encounter with Christ has NOT PROVEN TO BE a life-changing one, then we would have to question whether there was an encounter at all in the first place; because it is not possible to truly come to Christ and live the same life after that.
At one level (let's call it LEVEL 1), we thank God for material blessings. Home and hearth, family and kin. Health and wealth, roof over our heads, clothes on our bodies, food to eat, needs being met, healing from sickness, prayers answered, etc, etc. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance," we say with the Psalmist. Basically, this is saying thanks for a good digestion, for a long life, for our fluffy pillows, for not being born or living in modern-day Afghanistan (or even Orissa these days!!!), etc. If in fact we had continued hardships, our spirit of thanks would vapourise like the morning mist.
At another level (LEVEL 2), we thank God for deeper things. We talk of thanks for being "saved" (whatever that means), of being "God's children" (we never ask HOW, but we take it for granted anyway). We thank God for "who He is" (or rather, who we think He is).
When this level gets deeper, the polite, anonymous, discreet world of "saying thanks" disappears. It is replaced by a world where other words quickly appear and become themes of life. We no longer just MOUTH thanks with our lips. We live it with our lives. We're so utterly and irrevocably altered and transformed by knowing that though God needn't have had anything to do with our filthy lives, He still chose to sign His matchless Name with our pariah lives, took us home, and nursed us back to life. Even if He asked NOTHING in return, we are prepared to give EVERTYHING, even our lives.
In this deepest of levels (LEVEL 3), words like "gratitude" appear. Do you realise that whereas you can easily "thank" someone you don't really know too well politely for a perfunctory favour, it is impossible to feel gratitude to a stranger? Gratitude IMPLIES relationship. You've GOT to know the person you are grateful to, and you have GOT to know what he/she did for you or means to you, to feel GRATITUDE. Gratitude has none of the anonymity of mere "THANKS". And gratitude becomes more of a life statement, an attitude, a way of living. We don't just SAY thanks, we LIVE IT every moment.
At which level are you today?
If you're at LEVEL 1, God is associated with security in life, and only security in life. If today you were suddenly transplanted to Afghanistan, God would become academic to you, because your survival and your security would become paramount. God would be a luxury to you that you couldn't afford. At LEVEL 1, we make security and survival our only goals in life; if God supplies these, well, let Him be God; if He doesn't, we move on. LEVEL 1 terminology is "thanks" (if at all), not "gratitude". God might as well be a stranger.
If you're at LEVEL 2, you "accepted" or "made a decision for" Christ at some time you can vaguely remember. It was like, among the many options that life presented, Christ seemed the most lucrative, so you "chose" Him. You feel entitled to a lot of rewards, one of which is 'eternal life' and 'going to heaven' - you feel God MUST bless you with this because of YOUR great step of just picking up His free gift. It's just as business-like and transactional as it was in LEVEL 1, but here there is a small warmth of possible relationship. At least, some of the terminology is better :):) But it is still THANKS more than GRATITUDE, because the relationship isn't as cemented as can be.
If you're at LEVEL 3, a whole new world has opened up. Levels 1 and 2 don't even seem like levels anymore; for those of us in LEVEL 3, there are only two levels - either LEVEL 3 or NOTHING. At LEVEL 3, even life is too small a price to pay for what Christ has done for us. Think for a moment of what that really means. It means that we understand fully the following:
1) Before we met Christ, we were objects of wrath meant for destruction in hell, just like the 'devoted things' Achan stole.
Ephesians 2:1-4 says: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.
We weren't just people who did not know God; we were objects of wrath destined to be destroyed by fire. All our goodness, our coming to church, our tithing, our appreciation of spiritual things, mean NOTHING, till we realise that before we met Christ, we were headed straight for destruction. The 'good' ones among us would share the same fate as the 'evil' ones.
2) There was nothing we could have done to help ourselves. We might have done some "whitewashing" of the tombs of our lives, but our bodies would still only be housing dead spirits, just like whitewashed tombs.
Romans 5:6 says: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
3) In fact, we did nothing; God did everything.
Colossians 2:13 says: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.
I John 4:10 says: This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Have we forgotten that it is always God who makes the first move in reconciliation?
4) We take no credit for being saved; we just live our lives in gratitude.
Ephesians 2:8 says: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.
Think long and hard about the implications of being in LEVEL 3. Here we have moved on from being mere acquaintances with God, to a loving, deep, intimate relationship that God initiated even WHILE we lay undeserving. In response, merely spouting insincere thankful phrases in church won't do....our deep, deep gratitude must be plain to see, a testimony to God and to others, in each moment of our lives. We now realise that we do not live for ourselves at all. Every moment of our lives, we are deeply reminded of what wretches we were, and what we are now raised to.
This has to be life-changing. I seriously challenge you to consider the implications of LEVEL 3 and still go on living your life unmoved. Here are the distinguishing marks of LEVEL-3 Christians:
1) We are REPENTANT people. Every moment is a moment of repentance. There is no sense of "right-ness" inside us except in the Cross of Jesus Christ. We are so deeply grieved at sin that we ruthlessly root it out in our own lives.
2) We look at ALL THINGS (no exceptions; blanket rule - no fine print) through one single mirror - the Cross of Jesus Christ. If the Cross does not matter to us, if it does not bring repentance rushing in to our daily life, then we are still in outer darkness, though we may come to church every Sunday. The Cross of Christ should do MORE than just matter - it should be the only hinge on which our lives turn. Nothing less is enough; nothing more can it be.
3) We have no RIGHTS, except the right to be identified with the Cross of Jesus Christ and all that it means. We have signed away our rights to our earthly comforts, our 'entitledness' and our 'deservedness', even our very physical lives. We have just one thing, that we hold on to with all our being - the Cross of Jesus Christ. This does not mean that we just give away ourselves to charity - whatever we hold, we hold as stewards of the one who gave it to us. This applies as a blanket rule to ALL THINGS we have been given - all material and all spiritual blessings. We are to treat NONE of it as our own, but be faithful stewards who will give an account to our Father on that day.
4) Our lives are gratitude itself. Since we can never repay, we DESPERATELY hope that we can at least be as grateful as we possibly can, in ALL THINGS. We feel we don't have enough time to be grateful!!!!
5) Our preoccupations, our thoughts, our lives are built around God's marvelous work of redemption in us; we can never stop marveling at it. In fact, we FEEL so blessed that we continuously step out in faith, trusting in God for great things and putting our lives at stake. We expect God to do great things all the time. Tell me this - what is being a Christian COSTING us today? If our answer is "nothing", then our focus is not right. There must be a spirit of sacrifice, of denial to oneself, of giving up.
6) We want to keep on telling the wondrous story of the Cross!!!! We can never tell it enough.
7) We don't merely live for our needs or for our security; we live first for Jesus and then purely for others, and lastly, for ourselves. We've stopped providing for our needs; God's doing that already, we say; rather, let me do something for Him!!!!!
8) We've finally learned that WE ARE NOT THE POINT; GOD IS!!!!! In Levels 1 and 2, we thought we were the point of everything. In LEVEL 3, the scales drop - we realise that we have been left alive on this earth only to glorify God with our lives.
I want to ask a serious question - is your thankfulness for material blessings and secuirty MORE than your gratitude for Jesus and the Cross? If so, you have a serious, serious problem. If the Cross of Christ is only something you think about at Church, you have a log in your eye. Are your prayers only for material and physical needs? Then you're not getting through to God, and neither is God getting through to you.....
It's not possible to come to God without coming to Jesus. And it's not possible to come to Jesus unless you come to the Cross.
I pray that I will not thank God merely with my lips on Sunday, but that I would come to the Cross and feel my gratitude for the Cross so much that I will live every moment for Jesus. I want to move deeper into what the Cross means, because it is the SUPREME expression of God's love for me.
The writer to the Hebrews said, addressing LEVEL 1 and 2 Christians, in my view:
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.
- Hebrews 5:11-14 and 6:1-4
How long ago did we 'accept' Christ? How have we grown in our knowledge of God since then? We sit in church Sunday after Sunday, but is it possible we still are living 'on milk' and not on 'solid food'? Is our knowledge of Christ still the same as the day we first believed? How can our knowledge have grown, when we still are grappling with the 'elementary teachings about Christ' and still scrambling to meet our own needs, bargaining with God for blessing after blessing? Forget being teachers, we still need teaching (and that too elementary teaching) ourselves, even now!!!
If our encounter with Christ has NOT PROVEN TO BE a life-changing one, then we would have to question whether there was an encounter at all in the first place; because it is not possible to truly come to Christ and live the same life after that.
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