The Christian Story

Our story begins with God.

God stands outside of space and time. He created all things, including time itself. He created all things to bring Himself pleasure and to bring glory to Himself. The crowning achievement of His creation was humanity. We were made with a particular ability to delight in God and to bring Him glory. We were created with perfect wills, enjoying the ability to glorify God in every aspect of our being.

One of the great mysteries of life is that we did not stay in our perfect state and did not continue to pursue God’s glory. The first humans rebelled against God, choosing to pursue lesser pleasures. Their actions affected themselves and all that would follow. They brought sin into the world, and when they did they corrupted themselves and all of us that follow. We inherit a basic corruption from them, such that all of us become willful participants in sin as soon as we are capable. Now, we all live in a state of perpetual rebellion against God, pursuing our own desires without an eye for glorifying God.

Left in this state, we would have no hope. But God the Father, out of the abundance of his grace and mercy, determined before time began that we would not stay in that state. God chose to build a church, a gathering of people who would be changed from their doomed state into a people who would find their highest pleasure in God. He did this by coming to us as God the Son, the person Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. He was miraculously born to the virgin Mary, and lived a sinless life. Through His ministry of teaching and preaching, healing and miraculous signs, He revealed to us His true nature, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was here. He was crucified on the cross on Friday, but was resurrected on Sunday. After appearing to the apostles and to others, He ascended to heaven 40 days later, where He now works to prepare a place for His children.

Jesus Christ came to bridge the gap that sin created between humanity and God. We participate in the work of Christ through the grace God gives in the miracle of faith. This faith is a transforming gift in our lives, freeing us to love God more than we love ourselves. By being identified with Christ, God considers us justified, forgiving us for our sins by allowing Christ to stand in our place.

Christ revealed to us the presence of God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who continues to work in the lives of Christians, convicting us of sin and transforming our hearts so that we can express genuine faith, and know true delight in pursuing the glory of God. The work of the Spirit moves us beyond the gift of justification to the gift of sanctification, in which God does a lifetime of surgery on our hearts, changing our desires such that we become more holy people, searching after God in increasing amounts throughout our lives.

As Christ does this great work in our lives, He forms us into a new community, a gathering of people that are composed from every tribe and tongue, every people-group in this world. As we come to Christ, we are also identified with His bride, the church, this gathering of God’s people.

We express our participation in the life of Christ and our membership in the bride through our participation in the local church. Through the local church, we experience the gifts of baptism and communion, our marks of membership in the body of Christ. In baptism, we participate in the great turn that God has brought and is bringing about in our lives. We see in baptism a symbol and testimony of God’s great work in our lives, and submit to it in faith that God will continue to work out that gift of faith in our lives.

In communion, we celebrate the memorial feast of Christ’s life-changing work on the cross. Through the act of weekly remembering, we testify in faith that God continues to work in our lives, and so we conduct our lives in hope and faith that God will bring His work to completion.

God is building His church. In our individual lives, His work is revealed in the way that He is changing our lives. We expect as believers that God will give the sin in our lives a slow death, so that we will know increasing delight in God in all things. That work will continue throughout our lives, and will await its fullest completion at the end of time. Through this work, God will increase our desire for Him, our compassion and love for other people, and our desire to see God’s justice done in this world. He will increasingly free us from lives of self-involvement and self-justification, and will grant us a love for others that is other-worldly in its origins.

God is building His church. As a church, His work is revealed in an ever-expanding kingdom of people. God calls His church to live as missionaries and resident aliens in this world, and so as we engage the world with the expectation that the Word of God will bear fruit. We will see people finding faith in Christ who come from every walk of life and who represent all of the peoples of the world. We will see glimpses of God’s kingdom in the way that Christians reach out to the poor and the oppressed, extend compassion and mercy to the needy, and pursue good in our communities and nations. God’s kingdom will grow through the suffering and humble service of God’s people, and though the world will reject us, the victory of the church is secure in Christ.

Our story ends with God, as history awaits for God to make the final move. While we experience in this age the growth of the church and experience in part the sanctification of the church, we wait for God to move in an emphatic way. That will happen when Christ returns. When He does, God will judge the righteous and the unrighteous, and will complete the transformation of the church into a people who are fully free of sin, whose deepest longing is only to glorify God. While the unrighteous will know an eternity of separation from God, God’s church will enjoy an eternity in the presence of God as we live in the new heavens and the new earth. God’s story will find its completion as all of His creation gives Him glory for all time.