Living in the light of Easter

TROWEL & SWORD

Rev. John Westendorp

Lifestyle

Have you noticed lately that new car advertisements on the television are telling you less and less about the motor vehicle being touted as the latest and greatest? Instead of details about the V6 engine and the computerised braking system we are treated to images of high-speed travel down an airport runway – this car really flies. Instead of being told how many litres per hundred kilometres you can expect to get from this machine, you are given glorious vistas of wide-open countryside – this car will take you places. The reason for this new look in advertising...? The promoters do not want you to think that you are merely purchasing a motorcar. They want you to believe that you are buying a lifestyle.

The same is true of many other products as well. Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, recently drew attention to the fact that when you click onto the homepage of Benetton you don’t immediately get images of the latest sportswear draped around sports heroes. Instead you get the ‘mug shots’ of three criminals on death row. You can then download interviews and information about these prison inmates. The thrust is that we must reprieve these people whom the courts have judged as having forfeited the right to live. The reason for this strange introduction to Benetton...? They don’t merely want to sell you sports gear. They want to leave you with the impression, not only that they are a caring, compassionate company but also that the ‘united colours of Benetton’ link you to the same compassionate cause. They are selling you a lifestyle.

It’s a strange and worrying trend. Advertisers and corporate executives are increasingly linking their products to lifestyles. At the same time our Western society is increasingly relegating something far more profound and far more important than cars and sportswear to some little corner, removed from real life? I’m talking, of course, about the Christian faith?

The advertisement for the latest hair shampoo promotes a lifestyle of freedom and happiness with more than just a hint of glamour and sexual attraction. That sort of lifestyle message is trumpeted from a million television sets across our nation. But try saying something in public about the freedom and happiness that comes from knowing Jesus Christ and you’ll be silenced very quickly. Those sorts of things are private matters. That’s religion. And religion, as we all know is something that should be kept for church and for home Bible reading. The Christian faith doesn’t really have much to do with lifestyle. At least, that’s what society would have us believe.

That issue became even more pronounced for me some years ago. The statistics had just come out about the growth of the Muslim population in Australia. A daily newspaper took the opportunity to tell its readers something about the Islamic religion. One comment in the introductory article stood out for me. The writer pointed out: Islam is not just a religion... it is a lifestyle! That author didn’t say it but the implication was clear – other religions (including Christianity) are not lifestyles, they are merely religions that have little to do with the nitty-gritty of real life.

Easter Victory

It’s appropriate for us to address the issue of the Christian lifestyle in this the Easter issue of T&S – and then for two reasons. First because the Easter season not only draws our attention to Calvary and the saving work of Jesus but it especially brings to our minds the empty tomb and the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over sin, Satan and death.

That victory earned Jesus the role and title of Lord. One could argue of course that Jesus always was Lord by virtue of Him being God. We often think of Jesus, during the three years of His public ministry, demonstrating His divine power by His miracles. The disciples already recognised Him already as Lord before Easter morning.

Nevertheless it was especially the Easter victory that gave Jesus the title of Lord and the rights of Lordship. Paul tells us repeatedly that Jesus was declared Lord because of what He did. In Romans 1 Paul says: Jesus was declared Lord by His resurrection from the dead. In other words – by completing His work of saving us. Jesus became Lord because He achieved the great miracle of our salvation.

But we have a problem at this point that the word ‘lord’ doesn’t mean much anymore in our day and age. So we need to get back behind the meaning of the word.

England today still has a House of Lords and the lords who occupy that are people with titles of nobility. But those titles go back to an age of lords and peasants when the ‘Lord of the Manor’ controlled the surrounding lands and the peasants were under the control of the Lord and owed him their total allegiance.

We see what it means to be Lord most clearly in an age of slavery. If you had been a servant or slave at the time of Jesus you would have no doubt about what it meant to be lord. Your lord was your master who owned you. You were not merely his employee but his possession, called to be at his beck and call twenty-four hours of every day. So ‘lord’ speaks to us of a master-servant relationship – one of total subservience and one that was very common in the ancient world.

You may wonder what all this has to do with lifestyle – the subject that this article is concerned about. That’s a good question and many a Christian has not yet grasped the relationship between Jesus being Lord and our lifestyle. Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. But what does that mean? At a large ecumenical gathering last year, green and gold balloons were released that had on them the words, “Jesus is Lord”. That was obviously a confession of Jesus as Lord. But it would be a sad reflection on the Christian Church if our acknowledgement of the Lordship of Jesus were limited to slogans on balloons. Sadly, for some people there will not be much more to it than that.

We need to revisit that ancient master-slave relationship. If Jesus is our Lord then the whole of our lives for twenty-four hours of every day are totally at His disposal. The whole of our life is to be lived under His rule with His will directing our every step. If we take that seriously then there is no way we will ever be able to limit that to some private area of our life such as prayers and devotions. Living under Christ’s Lordship is a lifestyle, not just a religion.

Changed Lives

But there is a second reason why it is appropriate to speak of lifestyle issues in this season of Easter. The Christian teaching is that whatever happened to Jesus also happened to us. We are in Christ. He took our place. That means that when Jesus died we died with Him. But it also means that when Jesus arose we arose with Him. We were buried with Christ and we were raised with Him too.

This amazing concept comes out in numerous ways in the Scriptures. Jesus spoke about ‘being born again’. Paul, in his letters, talks about the ‘new self’. When a person becomes a Christian she is no longer the person she once was. How can that not affect her lifestyle?

The difference is actually so great that Scripture calls us ‘the children of light’ while those who are not yet believers are spoken of as living in darkness. It is inconceivable that this will not become evident in a different lifestyle.

Today we are living in a society that insists on privatising religion. You are free to worship God as long as you don’t bring your faith into the public arena. For those who have the new life of Christ in them that is an impossibility.

There are too many indications in Scripture that Christians are to live their regenerated lives under the Lordship of Christ – also when under the public eye. We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. That means that the Christian teacher is going to teach differently to a non-Christian teacher. The Christian businessman is going to run his business in a different way to the non-Christian businessman because he knows that Christ is Lord of all of life – also of his business.

It’s a sad thing that so often we allow society to seduce us into privatising our faith. If the ‘united colours of Benetton’ are associated with a lifestyle and if the latest motor vehicle is advertised in terms of a lifestyle, then how much more is not the new life in Christ, flowing out of the Easter victory of Jesus Christ, a radically different lifestyle?

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