Let Go of your old life so you can see and take hold of your new life in Christ

In our reading from Acts this morning, Peter is standing with the eleven other disciples when he raises his voice and challenges those Jews gathered before him: "Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Jesus was raised from the dead to reign over all people. He is the Lord, your Lord: the one who made you, who gives you purpose, and the one who orders all things according to his purposes. He is Lord and Messiah; God himself. And you crucified him. 

This last statement is not Peter condemning the Jews, but rather stating facts: “you crucified the Messiah.” Implicit in his statement of the fact is that although they should have known better - they should have recognized him as God’s promised Messiah as per his fulfillment of the OT law and prophetic writings - they failed to see or acknowledge him as God’s promised one. So blinded by their presumption of how God would come into the world to make things right, they missed him coming altogether. Despite this, Jesus and his followers like Peter, didn’t cut off or exclude these Israelites. Instead, they provide them another chance.

These early Jews set the precedent for a long line of those, who at least initially, miss the mark in seeing who God truly is. I was reading an article about the similarity between Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and the conversion or use of Christianity for many today. The author of the article, Brad Littlejohn, cites theologian Peter Leithart’s claim in his book, Defending Constantine, that, “Constantine was not seeking merely his own glory or the glory of Christ; he was seeking the glory of Rome, and he saw Christianity as the civilizational glue that could rekindle the dying embers of Roman order. He genuinely recognized and esteemed much that was good in Christianity, but saw it chiefly as a means to an end, not an end in itself—at least at the outset.”

Littlejohn goes on to draw a comparison between Constantine’s initial reason for converting, and that of former Muslim, turned New Atheist supporter, turned Christian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a conservative thinker, writer, activist and former politician. On her conversion to Christianity Ali says, “The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilise the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all ….” But many both within and outside the Church have questioned whether these conversions about seeking the particularity of God revealed in Jesus Christ, or is Christianity simply useful for achieving one’s own desired ends.

Littlejohn cites a passage from CS Lewis, showing that this concern has always been a part of the story of Christian conversion and its challenges and temptations. In the Screwtape Letters, Lewis writes of Satan advising demons about how to convince people to follow him rather than God: “[w]e do want,” writes the devil Screwtape, “to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice…. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations.’ You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game” (pp. 126-27).”

Littlejohn concludes: “The convert who embraces Christianity as a means to save America may be in for a rude awakening, since God holds out no promises in the gospel about the lifespan of the American republic. Any Christian who stops short on the journey to the heavenly city and clings to a proximate good over an ultimate good is in the throes of idolatry, and liable to lose both earthly and heavenly goods. And yet the convert who sees that all that is best in America is the fruit of Christ and his church should be welcomed, not despised, and invited to raise his gaze a little higher.” The reality for all of us, not just new converts, is that we are so prone to preferring our ways, our ideals, what we have been conditioned to see as normal, good, right, just, and valuable, that we are constantly tempted to exchange our vision for God’s own. 

God recognizes our temptation. He chides us for our blindness in judgment; but in mercy, he also provides the way out: “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Come to me all you who are weary of trying to make the world in your own imperfect images; and I will give you a new life. Be aware that wherever you are at or however you come to that new life, you cannot stay there. You will be called out of your old life, your old ways of thinking, your presumptions, your temptations, again and again. What must we do to receive this new life, the Israelites ask Peter? “Repent”, Peter replies. Repent, let go of what you cling to so that you can see how Jesus is calling you, changing you, stripping away the old, so that you might be made into a witness who can serve other people just as he sacrificed himself to serve you. AMEN