You are not your own; you were bought at a price

I’ve been a Christian now for more than forty years. The danger of getting old is that you can become nostalgic; you can think that things were better in “the old days” - when you were young.

There are so many things that have changed in the Christian world since I was a young Christian in the 1970’s. And I am pleased about most of them. However, there is one thing which we have lost which I think is a mistake.

When I was a young Christian, there was a big stress on being totally committed to God, on self-sacrifice, on putting aside one’s own interests and ambitions for the sake of the gospel, of “dying to self.” Along with it there was a whole load of ‘legalism’. For the first seven years of my Christian life, I spent most of the time feeling guilty. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t praying enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t reading my Bible enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t getting up early enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t telling people about Jesus.

I was hugely relieved when I discovered the truth of God’s grace. When I realised that all my sin – past, present and future – is forgiven by God and covered by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. When I realised that I am adopted by God as his son, that I am accepted totally by him, and that it doesn’t depend on my behaviour. It was truly liberating to realise that my standing with God comes from what he has done for me, and not what I can do for him. It’s great to live as a Christian without guilt. It’s good to know that my walk with God depends on relationship with him and not on keeping rules and regulations. It’s good to know that God’s Holy Spirit is working within me to change me from the inside out, and that being a Christian is not trying in my own strength to conform to an outward standard of behaviour. I’m not trying to conform to someone’s idea of what a Christian life looks like – whether my own ideas or someone else’s. Instead I am drawing strength from God’s own Spirit and changing day by day into his likeness.

Nevertheless, I have a nagging feeling that I am missing something. I have abandoned all the guilt, and all the need to obey a set of rules and regulations.  But with it, I have also ditched a strand of truth which runs through the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament: the call to lay down our lives for the sake of Jesus and the gospel  –

‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.’     Mark 8:34-35

‘Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’     John 12:24

‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’      Philippians 1:21

‘For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.’       Colossians 3:3

I have been thinking recently about how to bring together two apparently contradictory strands that run through the Bible. The Bible makes it clear that God deals with me according to his amazing grace –  the death and resurrection of Jesus has dealt decisively with my sin and my standing with God depends on what he has done and not what I do. And the Bible also makes it clear that I am called to a life of self-sacrifice, to lay down my own life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel.

How do I bring these two strands together? It seems to me that the meeting point is found in the death of Jesus. On the one hand, the sacrifice of Jesus deals with our sin: Jesus in his death bore the pain and the penalty of my sin so that I can go free. Jesus became sin for me, so that I am forgiven and pronounced ‘not guilty’ in God’s sight. On the other hand, the sacrifice of Jesus was a price paid for me, or ransom, so that I no longer belong to myself: I belong to God.

‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. .’     Ephesians 1:7

‘Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!’     Romans 5:9-10

‘For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.’     1 Peter 1:18-19

‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.’     1 Corinthians 6:19-20

‘For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’     Romans 12:4-5

In fact, not only do I belong to God, but I also belong to my fellow-members of Christ’s body, the church. I can’t make any decision about my life in isolation – whether it’s about my career, my happiness, my finances – I have to consider the impact of my decisions on the gospel, my fellow church members, and on Jesus himself.