[Note: This is a bilingual sermon. The pastor speaks in English and the content is then rendered in Chinese by a translator. Both languages are preserved as delivered. This is Part A of a series on life quality.]
What is salvation about? Those recently baptized might say it is about the forgiveness of past sins — and that is certainly true. Others would say it is about the desire to be in heaven — and there is truth in that as well. But there is something more important than either of these, and it is almost never heard. We turn to John 10:10, the second half of the verse: "I have come in order that you might have life, and have it in its abundance." In the context, the Lord Jesus is speaking about laying down his life for his sheep, and he says the very purpose of his coming and his death is that we might have life in all its fullness. This is the center of today's message.
As a poor student in London, riding a motorcycle was the most basic form of transportation available. It solved the problem at the most fundamental level, but it was cold, wet, and dangerous — on rainy days there was no shelter, and in cold weather the wind blew straight at the rider's face. After wearing goggles, arriving at college meant looking like a panda bear, with two white circles around the eyes and the rest of the face black with London grime. That is what survival-level transportation looks like: it gets you there, but barely, and at considerable cost.
A few years later came an old car — still very old, with a very small engine. On the German motorway, pressing the accelerator to the floor, this car would gradually reach the enormous speed of 55 miles an hour, at which point the whole frame would shake and rattle as if an aeroplane were about to lift off the runway. The speed had to be cut back to 50 just to reduce the noise and vibration. Then came another car, much better conditioned, with a more powerful engine — quiet at 70 miles an hour across Germany, covering the whole country from north to south in under twelve hours. That, said the pastor, was beginning to approach abundance: not just barely enough, but more than enough, with ease.
The entire commercial world is organized around this fundamental human drive for life quality. Cooking alone has seen constant improvement: from open flame to electric plate, and now the induction cooker, which does not itself become hot but activates the molecules in a steel vessel, so that the pot heats while the surface remains cool — safe even if a child touches it. Computers have moved from 286 to 386 to 486, approaching 586, each faster and more compact than the last. Every revolution in human history has ultimately been about life quality: the French Revolution started with the need for bread; the Chinese Revolution was about farmers who did not have their own land. When a revolution loses sight of this goal, it loses its power and collapses.
Christianity is not mainly about going to heaven in the future, though that is part of it. It is not mainly about forgiveness of sins in the past, though that is essential — because past sins destroy present quality of life and must be dealt with before anyone can live freely now. The real heart of the gospel is present abundant life. How many Christians actually enjoy this fullness of life? Very few. If we are honest, this means that for most Christians, Jesus' stated purpose — to give life in its abundance — has not yet been realized. He came in vain as far as most Christians are concerned.
The two definitions of "abundance" in the Greek are illuminating. The first is extraordinary, remarkable, unusual — a life so different from the ordinary that people who observe it notice something and ask what accounts for it. The second is going beyond the necessary, more than mere survival. Against these two definitions, the question becomes personal: is your life recognizably extraordinary? When people who know you are a Christian observe your daily life, do they find anything remarkable? External abundance of goods does not produce internal abundance: a recent radio statistic in Canada noted that some three million people out of a population of 22 or 23 million are being treated for depression — nearly one in seven Canadians. Poor people with very little can be radiantly happy; some of the most miserable people in the world are those with every external comfort.
When the pastor returned from Hong Kong after a year away, his 18-year-old car would not start. The CAA came with their equipment and also could not start it. In the end, two things were needed: change the oil — remove the thickened old oil that was blocking the engine's movement — and put in a new battery, a new source of power. Many Christians have done only one of these. They confessed their sins and removed some of the old blockage, but they did not receive a new source of power within. Colossians 3:4 says, "He is our life." Unless Jesus comes into us as the actual life force — not merely as teacher or example but as the living source of power — we will not get very far before problems reassert themselves again.
# Life Quality (1): An Abundant Life (Part B) — The Dead Battery, Sin as Life-Destroyer, and Letting Jesus Live His Life Through Us
[Note: This is a bilingual sermon. The pastor speaks in English and the content is then rendered in Chinese by a translator. Both languages are preserved as delivered. This is Part B of a series on life quality, continuing directly from Part A.]
Getting the old battery out of the car turned out to be the hardest part of the whole repair. The pastor knew how to remove a car battery, having done it many times before, but this one was jammed so tightly into its housing that nothing he tried could dislodge it without risking damage to the car. The garage had specialized equipment that made the job possible. Many Christians find themselves in exactly this position: it is not that the old thing cannot be removed, but that they lack the tools to do it themselves and will not submit to the One who has the right equipment to remove it. Only after the old is taken out can the new source of power be properly installed.
Sin destroys life quality in precisely the way disease destroys physical health — this is why Jesus came to deal with sin, not because he has any arbitrary hatred of it, but because sin is ruinous to the life he came to give. Anxiety, for instance, is a sin: it expresses a lack of faith in God, and the lack of faith is itself a sin for a Christian who claims to trust him. The worry about employment, health, relationships, children, academic results — these things eat at inner life constantly and give nothing back. The pastor recalls being completely unbothered by school examinations throughout his life, somehow always passing without studying. The one exception was his first-year theology elimination exam at Bible college: consumed with church work and having studied nothing, he sat up through the entire night reading the grammar book from cover to cover, arrived at the examination hall so exhausted he could barely see, and somehow passed — perhaps, he suggests, because the examiner was also too tired to notice.
All the sins catalogued in Galatians 5:18-19 onwards — jealousy, sexual immorality, murder, discord, and the rest — destroy life quality without exception. Every sin, no matter how small it seems, will damage the inner life. This is why the gospel speaks of righteousness: righteousness is what restores the quality of life that sin takes away. Even something as small as a smile carries this life quality. Supermarkets discovered through survey research that customers return preferentially to stores where the attendants smile — not because those stores have better products, but because people are drawn to that quality of warmth. Husbands and wives who see each other every day can gradually forget to smile at each other, and the household atmosphere slowly deteriorates without either being able to say exactly why. The Lord gives us an inner life force that can produce a genuine smile even when everything around us gives no reason to smile — and that is precisely what "extraordinary" means in practice.
The way this works in daily life is simple to describe but takes a lifetime to develop. When anxiety rises or old patterns push forward, the response is: Lord, I got in the way again — now you live your life through me. It is a continual stepping aside. When you feel down, or low, or anxious, you put that away and you let Jesus take it. He is not merely a teacher to imitate or a model to follow at a distance; he is the actual life operating within the believer when the believer gets out of the way. To say that Jesus is my life means nothing unless he is genuinely living his life through me at each moment. The degree to which this is happening is the degree to which that person's life will appear extraordinary to those around them — the definition we saw at the beginning. By the grace of God, may this life quality be realized and manifested in your life, so that when people meet you they say: there is something quite different about this person. Let us pray.