The Goal of the Christian Life

By David Hobbs

-----When Jesus came to Earth and purchased a people for Himself with His own blood, what was His plan for those people? Likewise, when Christian parents send their children off to Christian schools to be prepared for life, what is their plan for their children? Shouldn’t the goal of Jesus for His people and the goal of Christian parents for their children be the same?

-----Here are the goals of two Christian schools as taken from their websites:

The mission of ____ Christian School is to help students mature spiritually and excel academically by offering a Biblically-integrated, college preparatory program that will enable them to impact the kingdom of God by living productive Christian lives.

-----Notice that the way we “impact the kingdom of God” is by “living productive Christian lives.” (I thought we were supposed to impact the world for Christ. And if we do it best by living productive Christian [i.e. moral] lives, we should all become Mormons. They lead some of the most productive lives I know of). Here’s another:

_____ Christian Academy is an independent, co-educational, PreK - 12, college preparatory school with an educational culture built on the classical Trivium and historic Biblical Christianity. _____ provides an academic curriculum that trains students in the grammatical, dialectical, and rhetorical arts with an equal emphasis on the acquisition of the empirical and mathematical sciences preparatory to, or at the level of, College Board Advanced Placement standards. The program aims not only to equip students with knowledge of the different disciplines, but also to aid their understanding of learning as the pursuit and application of truth. The program's distinctives include Latin instruction that begins in third grade, a full year of informal and formal logic, a full year of rhetoric, the writing and defense of a senior thesis, and the age-appropriateteaching methodologies required of each subject.

Now that’s a mouthful!

-----The goal of many Christian parents, as reflected through their schools’ programs, seemingly is to out-produce the world in the field of education. Armed with our Christian principles and worldview, taking things seriously and applying ourselves, we can produce better educated and more successful (i.e. “productive”) kids than the unbelievers down the street whose kids party away their lives at Worldly U.

-----There is truth to this. I wasted my college years with drinking, drugs, bad attitudes, and general cluelessness. How I wish I could relive those college years now as a head-screwed-on-straight Christian when I could take full advantage of the opportunity offered!

-----But is that the goal of Christ? He died on the cross so we might be better educated and more together than the world? Many parents’ goals for their children are for them to be well educated, have a good career, a godly spouse, nice children, a comfortable retirement, and to be esteemed in their communities. We want them to be “good Christians,” meaning we want them to be respectable. That’s how we measure success. If we parents can accomplish that, with the help of our Christian schools and our church, then we can die happy, sure that we have succeeded in life.

-----I was not raised as a Christian. In fact I despised Christianity because I thought its message was: 1) be nice to everybody; 2) if it’s fun, it’s forbidden, 3) do unto others as you would have them do unto you (at least I got one right!).

-----When I got saved, the glorious story as told in Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed, The thing that amazed me most was that I could meet God for myself through Christ and have a ongoing, personal, supernatural relationship with Him. “How come they never told me about this?” I marveled. In fact I came to call it the “best-kept secret of Christianity.” In studying the Bible, I saw that that was in fact why Christ came and why He died. He wanted the same thing-- an ongoing relationship with us. Sure He wants us to be good students; He wants us to do good works and not mess up. But more than anything He wants to know us and love us and have us know and love Him.

-----Which of these two people would you most approve of? A well respected person with a good job and family who goes to church every Sunday and considers himself a “good Christian man.” Or a homeless person who lives in rags in the river bottoms, who cries out to God about the mess he’s made of his life, who has nothing and has to pray every day for food to eat and shelter from the elements. Which person has our approval? Which person has Christ’s approval? Before you answer, read Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14.

-----If the humble sinner is Jesus’ great prize, why do we make respectability and success by this world’s standards our great prize? Having met Christ for myself, I would rather live in the river bottoms and walk every day with Him than be Warren Buffet and only know about Christ and all the doctrines and theology of the Christian church.

-----If we’re saved “out of the world,” why do we go back and try to beat the world at its own game?