This book is the result of several thoughts coming together. I had been thinking about the shallowness of many American Christians, as well as the impetus for Christian living and the call to Christianity. I had the feeling that these things were related, and it all came together as I walked through the Christian bookstore. There it was, a whole shelf full of “Christian” best-sellers. Bleached white grins and expensive haircuts offered me the chance to let Jesus improve my life drastically. Perhaps by accident someone had left
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs right in the middle of the display. It was certainly a drastic contrast, the irony of which caused me laugh out loud. A few people glanced over, then looked down again, oblivious to the spiritual lesson that was staring them in the face. How would it look if I changed the name of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to
Your Best Life Now Book of Martyrs? Consider this: the only apostle not murdered for his faith was John, and even he was harshly imprisoned on Patmos. What might these men think of the faith peddled in our bookstores?
In business courses, future CEOs and executives are taught valuable lessons about cost versus value. The cost of a product or service is how much a company pays to produce it. The value is how much the customer thinks that product or service is worth. Think for a moment how much value the apostles must have placed upon their faith! They were willing to suffer and die for it. Paul explains some of his hardships in his second letter to the Corinthians. “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” But the hardships and martyrdom were not reserved for the apostles alone. Paul expects the Romans to rejoice in suffering , commends the Thessalonians for enduring in suffering, tells Timothy to share in suffering and expects him to endure it. James exhorts his readers to be joyful through their trials and encourages them to copy the prophets in enduring suffering. Peter expects his readers to suffer, and calls their trials “necessary”. He expects sorrow, suffering, and endurance for his readers, and tells them that this is the common experience for all believers throughout the world. Prior to his conversion, Paul himself persecuted, imprisoned, and killed believers. This was the normal Christian experience in the first century A.D. Imagine, then, just how much a person would have to value Christianity to convert in those circumstances. Clearly, the value of Christianity was inestimable to the early church.
But value is a perception, not a cost. The truth is, however, that the apostles actually saw the cost. They saw the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These men had walked with Jesus, listened to Him teach, and worshipped Him. And they had watched beaten, mocked, and hung on a tree. They had seen him gasping for breath, tattered ribbons of yellow fat dangling from the lacerations in his side and back. They had seen the crown of thorns and the piercing nails, and the bloody water that gushed from Christ’s abdomen. And they had seen Him alive again, and caught up into heaven. To the apostles, they were not over-valuing Christianity. They were not even able to grasp the depth of cost. So when it came time to pay their own cost – as their possessions were stolen, their children were taken, and their lives went up in the smoke of burning stakes – these believers suffered it with all joy. Their cost was only a shadow of Christ’s cost, and the reward was inestimable. The truth is, the gospel demanded something very great from the early church. It demanded a life of service and dedication to The Way; a life where death was imminent and suffering unavoidable. This Way demanded one’s whole life.
But today we offer a faith that costs nothing. We offer a faith that rarely talks about the gruesome spectacle of redemption or the suffering that Christ endured. We never talk about Christ demanding anything of believers, and we only mention suffering if it is part of a (usually melodramatically glamorous) missions presentation. There is no cost. And for most people casually donning this leisure-suit Christianity, there are no demands. We are told to say a prayer and then we’ll go to heaven. There is no cost. Should it surprise us, then if we do not value our faith? We try the Christianity thing like the latest summer fashion. But when it starts to storm, we quickly change into something else, or cover ourselves with a trench coat of self-help psychology. Is our easy faith normal? Or is it a recent and short-lived aberration from the historical norm? It is even real?
These are the questions that drive this book. These are the questions that will shape our faith and practice. We will look at this life, and what God has to say about our faith and future. We will look at regeneration, and what a new life means for living out Christianity. We will look at the true cost of following Christ, and the demands that the gospel places on us. We will examine the rewards God has promised us, as we glimpse something of the future glory that awaits us. And as we answer these questions we will begin to see with awe the glory of the richness of God’s grace.
Copyright, © 2008 by John R. Thacker Jr.
Houston, TX
All Rights Reserved
Thanks to Justin Taylor for posting this:
