The Christian Faith is not Christian.

Posted byBrent SnyderPosted inEssays
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The Substitute Has Taken the Name of the Reality

The Christian faith is a religious substitute for the living life of God.

That is the problem.

We have taken the things associated with Christ and assembled them into something people can learn, practice, defend, and belong to. We have given that construction His name. Then we have assumed that maintaining it is the same as living by Him.

It is not.

A person can spend his entire life within the Christian faith without discovering what Paul meant when he said that Christ lived in him. He can become thoroughly acquainted with Christian teaching while remaining almost entirely unfamiliar with Christ as the inward source of his living.

He can defend the truth and resist the Person.

He can serve the institution and neglect the life.

He can become important in Christianity while Christ remains secondary in the actual movement of his heart.

The religious substitute does not announce itself as a substitute. It presents itself as the proper way to know God. It gathers the Scriptures, the language, the history, and the practices into a convincing whole. Everything appears to point toward Christ.

But the whole can continue functioning without anyone actually living by Him.

That is what exposes it.

The living life of God cannot be reproduced by education, organization, inheritance, enthusiasm, or discipline. It must come from God. It must be received from Him. It must remain dependent upon Him.

I was saved at fifteen. I did not begin with a system called Christianity. There was a man named Jesus who brought me to my knees. The explanations came afterward.

We have reversed that beginning.

We introduce people to the explanations, surround them with the activities, and teach them how to occupy a place in Christian society. We assume that because Christ is mentioned everywhere, He must be the source of everything.

But mentioning the fountain does not give us water.

A religious system can speak endlessly about life while teaching people to survive on something else.

The Christian faith is not Christian because the substitute is not the Person. The things of Christ are not Christ. And nothing carrying His name has the right to take His place.

1. Christ Called Us to Himself

“Come unto me.”

That is the invitation in Matthew 11:28.

There is nothing abstract about its destination. The weary are called to Christ. Their rest is found in Him. They take His yoke and learn from Him.

We have expanded that simple invitation into a religious occupation.

Come to the meetings. Learn the teachings. Join the work. Submit to the program. Become dependable. Discover your usefulness. Find your place in the organization.

Soon the person who came looking for Christ is occupied with maintaining Christianity.

He is busy enough to assume that something spiritual must be happening. He has responsibilities. People depend upon him. His calendar is full of things bearing the Lord’s name.

But the Lord Himself may scarcely be consulted.

The rich man in Mark 10:17–22 was serious about eternal life. He could describe a history of obedience. Yet when Jesus touched the possession that held him and called him to follow, he went away sorrowful.

His religious seriousness did not free him from the thing that owned him.

We should recognize that condition. The possession need not be money. It may be our spiritual standing, our group, our years of service, or the certainty that we have found the correct interpretation.

We are willing to discuss Christ as long as He does not require the surrender of what makes us secure.

Yet He calls us to Himself.

In John 7:37, He calls the thirsty to come and drink. The thirsty person must receive something. Admiring the invitation does nothing for his thirst.

Neither does belonging to a society that specializes in explaining water.

The Christian faith gives us a religious environment in which we can remain occupied around Christ. His invitation brings us into direct dependence upon Him.

Those are different destinations.

One can become familiar, respectable, and manageable.

The other requires us to come.

2. Religious Knowledge Can Keep Us From the One It Describes

John 5:39–40 exposes the entire substitution.

Jesus speaks to people who search the Scriptures. Those Scriptures testify concerning Him. Yet they will not come to Him for life.

They possess the testimony and refuse its destination.

This is not an argument against Scripture. It is an exposure of what religious people can do with Scripture. We can take the witness to Christ and turn it into a possession that gives us confidence apart from coming to Him.

We become knowledgeable.

We learn where the passages belong. We explain their relationships. We identify errors in other people’s interpretations. We may become so capable that others come to us for answers.

And the ability to answer can conceal our refusal to yield.

A man can explain forgiveness while carefully preserving his grievances. He can teach the body of Christ while dismissing members who do not share his vocabulary. He can speak of the cross while organizing his life around protecting his importance.

The truth remains in his explanations. It has not been allowed to judge his source.

The Christian faith rewards this accumulation. Knowledge gives standing. Familiarity gives credibility. The person who can explain the most is easily mistaken for the person who knows the Lord most deeply.

But information does not become life merely because its subject is divine.

James 2:19 reminds us that even demons acknowledge the truth that God is one. Recognition alone is not surrender. Correctness alone is not communion.

The Scriptures must be allowed to bring us before the living Christ. Their light must reach the person reading them, not merely become material he uses upon others.

Otherwise, the Bible itself is recruited into the construction of the substitute.

We hold the map in our hands and insist that we have arrived.

Meanwhile, the Lord continues to say that we will not come to Him for life.

3. The Christian Faith Gives the Self Something to Possess

There is a profound difference between possessing a religion and depending upon Christ.

A religion can become mine.

My faith. My convictions. My tradition. My spiritual heritage. My understanding of the truth.

These things can be gathered into an identity that the self defends. We become the custodians of something valuable, and our responsibility is to preserve it.

Christ brings that whole arrangement into question.

In 2 Timothy 1:12, Paul’s confidence rests in the One he has believed. There is a living Person beneath his assurance. He has entrusted himself.

That is different from standing securely upon an account of what he believes.

The difference becomes visible under pressure.

We may teach that Christ is sufficient while becoming desperate when recognition disappears. We may speak of God’s faithfulness while treating money as the actual foundation of our peace. We may affirm His sovereignty while refusing any circumstance that interferes with our intentions.

Our doctrine says one thing. Our dependence reveals another.

Peter went toward Jesus on the water at His word. When the wind became the commanding fact of his attention, he began to sink (Matthew 14:28–31). His safety was not in possessing a theory about supernatural walking.

It was in the Lord who called him and reached for him.

Colossians 2:6 brings receiving Christ and walking in Him together. The One received remains the One in whom we live.

There is no graduation into spiritual independence.

Yet the Christian faith gives us the impression that sufficient instruction will eventually make us capable. We will know what to do. We will have the answers. We will become established.

Established in what?

If our knowledge makes us less conscious of our need for Christ, it has become part of the substitute.

The living relationship continually brings us back to Him.

The religious possession continually brings us back to what we have acquired.

4. Eternal Life Is Not a Benefit Detached From Christ

Martha knew that Lazarus would rise in the resurrection at the last day.

Jesus answered her by bringing the whole matter into Himself: He was the resurrection and the life (John 11:24–25).

What she could describe as a future event stood before her in a Person.

We repeatedly reverse that movement.

Christ presents Himself, and we turn Him into a subject. We take the life that is in Him and organize it into doctrines, assurances, and expectations that can be held as religious possessions.

Soon eternal life becomes something we believe we have secured.

Christ becomes the means by which we acquired it.

But 1 John 5:11–12 refuses that separation. Eternal life is in the Son. Having the Son and having life belong together.

The life does not become an independent possession we can place beside the rest of our existence.

Colossians 3:4 speaks of Christ as our life.

We should allow those words to disturb the arrangement we have made. Most of us would be more comfortable saying that Christ assists our life. He advises it, improves it, forgives it, and protects its eventual outcome.

Meanwhile, we remain its managers.

But if Christ is our life, the source has changed. We are no longer speaking about the religious improvement of an existence whose ownership remains securely ours.

We are speaking about participation in Him.

The Christian faith separates what God has joined. It allows us to collect the benefits associated with Christ while preserving the self as the center around which those benefits are arranged.

We have salvation. We have assurance. We have teaching. We have fellowship.

But do we live by the Son?

That question cannot be answered by displaying our collection.

The life is in Him.

Whatever teaches us to be satisfied with something we possess apart from present dependence upon Him has become a substitute for the very life it claims to explain.

5. The Old Life Cannot Be Educated Into the New

Nicodemus was a teacher in Israel.

He had knowledge, religious standing, and a serious interest in what Jesus was doing. Yet Jesus brought him to a necessity his qualifications could not satisfy: he must be born from above (John 3:1–10).

He needed another source.

Jesus distinguished what is born of flesh from what is born of the Spirit. The distinction does not disappear because the flesh becomes religious.

Human life can become disciplined. It can become generous, restrained, knowledgeable, and devoted to a cause. It can acquire an impressive Christian character in the eyes of the community.

But education cannot change its origin.

This is where the Christian faith performs one of its most convincing substitutions. It takes the natural person, teaches him the expected conduct, supplies acceptable ambitions, and calls the resulting improvement spiritual maturity.

The person who once sought recognition in business now seeks recognition in ministry.

The person who wanted to be admired for his intelligence now wants to be admired for his discernment.

The person who enjoyed directing others discovers that religious service offers new opportunities to do so.

The field has changed. The source remains familiar.

John 1:12–13 locates the birth of God’s children in God Himself. It cannot be supplied by ancestry or manufactured by human determination.

No amount of conformity can replace it.

Second Corinthians 5:17 speaks of a new creation in Christ. That is more radical than becoming a successful participant in Christian society.

We should stop confusing adjustment with regeneration.

Someone may become comfortable in the meetings, familiar with the language, and reliable in the work while the inward issue remains untouched.

The Christian faith knows how to produce adherents. It can train them, recognize them, and assign them responsibilities.

It cannot produce the birth of which Jesus spoke.

Only the Spirit gives the life that comes from God.

6. Zoe Is the Life of God Received, Not a Vocabulary Learned

I speak of Zoe because I am speaking of the life that is in the Son.

But even that word can be taken over by religion.

We can learn to distinguish divine life from natural life and then use the distinction to establish that we understand more than other Christians. We can explain the source while continuing to draw our importance from our explanation.

The religious self is remarkably adaptable.

It can turn an exposure of its independence into a new reason for self-confidence.

Zoe is a Greek word for life. Knowing the word does not give us the reality. When the New Testament speaks of eternal life in Christ, the issue is receiving the Son, not possessing a superior vocabulary.

Jesus’ language in John 6 brings us to eating, drinking, and living because of Him. In verse 57, He places the believer’s living in direct relation to Himself as the supply.

Something must be received.

A hungry person cannot live by becoming an authority on bread. His knowledge may be correct, detailed, and admired. He remains hungry until he eats.

That is the condition of much religious learning.

We become increasingly articulate about what has not become our daily sustenance.

We speak of peace while living in agitation. We speak of the body while competing for importance. We speak of death to self while becoming offended when the self is overlooked.

The vocabulary cannot conceal the source forever.

Romans 8 presents the Spirit’s indwelling as an active reality. Life and peace belong to the mind set on the Spirit. The passage brings us into an inward orientation, a living dependence, a different way of proceeding.

The Christian faith can teach us to discuss all this.

It cannot become the life it discusses.

Even the word Zoe must lose its usefulness as a badge. Let us stop protecting the impression that we understand and begin receiving the One we claim to understand.

7. Knowing Christ Undoes Our Religious Standing

Paul’s account in Philippians 3 is not the story of a man who finally added the missing doctrine to an otherwise successful religious life.

Christ overturned the value of his whole accumulation.

His ancestry, religious identity, zeal, and standing had given him reasons for confidence. Then he encountered something greater than the entire construction.

He wanted to gain Christ and be found in Him (Philippians 3:7–9).

We admire that testimony while preserving our own credentials.

Our years in the church. Our training. The conferences we attended. The teachers we knew. The sacrifices we made. The truths we recognized before others.

We may not announce these things, but we carry them into the room.

They explain why our opinions should receive attention and why our place should not be questioned.

Yet knowing Christ does not exist to complete our religious importance. It exposes the need for that importance.

Philippians 3:10 joins knowing Him with the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity to His death.

This knowing reaches the self that wants to remain impressive.

We would like resurrection power to make our spiritual lives successful. We are less interested in the death that ends our claim to be the successful person.

But the Lord meets us where our self-protection fails.

We are misunderstood. Someone else receives recognition. Our contribution is not required. We cannot establish that our intentions were good.

What do we seek in that place?

The recovery of our standing, or Christ Himself?

The Christian faith supplies an environment in which religious standing can be cultivated and defended. Knowing Christ brings that standing under the cross.

Paul did not exchange one impressive religious identity for another and call the exchange life.

He counted his former gains as loss in relation to Christ.

We cannot follow him there while insisting that everything which establishes our spiritual importance must survive.

8. The Body Has Been Replaced by Religious Performance

A body lives through the participation of its members.

First Corinthians 12 makes that plain. The eye cannot dismiss the hand. The head cannot tell the feet they are unnecessary. Members considered weaker are indispensable.

The arrangement depends upon a life shared through the whole.

The Christian faith substitutes a different arrangement.

The gifted person becomes the practical center. He speaks, interprets, directs, and carries the burden of supplying the gathering. Everyone else learns how to receive what he provides.

Eventually, the members scarcely expect Christ to express anything through them.

Their contribution is attendance, appreciation, financial support, and cooperation.

A body has become an audience.

First Corinthians 14:26 describes varied contributions directed toward building up the gathering. Ephesians 4:15–16 describes growth from Christ the Head through the participation of the members.

These passages do not present the body as a crowd assembled around the spiritual competence of one person.

The source is Christ. The life moves through the members.

A quieter person may have something of Him that the accomplished speaker needs. A hesitant prayer may carry a reality that a polished message has never touched.

But will there be room?

Or has the meeting already been filled by the person whose ability makes everyone else seem unnecessary?

The problem is deeper than meeting format. We can rearrange the chairs and preserve the same domination. We can sit in a living room and still gather around a substitute head.

What must be surrendered is the assumption that Christ’s expression belongs chiefly to the impressive member.

First Peter 5:2–3 calls those who shepherd away from domination and toward example. Spiritual experience should make room for the life of others.

The Christian faith makes dependence upon religious personalities seem normal.

The body draws its life from Christ.

No human gift has the right to occupy His place.

9. Religious Inheritance Is Not Living Knowledge

We can inherit a Christian environment.

We can inherit language, customs, expectations, loyalties, and explanations. We can know which people belong to our circle and which ideas are considered dangerous before we are old enough to examine any of them.

Later, we may mistake that familiarity for knowing God.

John the Baptist confronted confidence in descent from Abraham (Matthew 3:9). Ancestry could not perform the required response to God.

The same exposure reaches every religious inheritance.

A parent’s encounter cannot become the child’s life merely through proximity. A community’s history cannot supply present fellowship. The testimony of a previous generation cannot be substituted for our own turning to the Lord.

Something living occurs.

People establish practices around it.

Others preserve those practices.

Eventually, defending the practices becomes more important than knowing the reality that originally produced them.

The Christian faith is exceptionally skilled at this preservation. It can carry the language of an encounter across generations while losing the encounter itself.

Judges 2:10 describes a generation arising that did not know the Lord and His works as the previous generation had. The continuity of a people did not guarantee continuity of living knowledge.

The same departure can occur within one person.

We remember when prayer was living. We preserve the words. We continue the habit. We defend its importance.

But the present inward turning has become scarce.

We are surviving on the memory of water.

Christ does not become an ancestral possession, nor does an earlier experience make present dependence unnecessary.

The Lord whom our fathers knew must be known by us.

The Lord we turned toward yesterday must be our supply today.

The Christian faith preserves belonging. It assures us that we occupy the right historical and religious place.

The living life of God cannot be secured by belonging to the descendants of those who once received it.

10. The Religious Machine Does Not Stop When Life Is Absent

Sardis had a reputation for being alive.

Christ called it dead (Revelation 3:1).

We should allow that judgment to destroy our easy confidence in appearances.

Something had given Sardis its name. There were reasons people regarded it as living. Yet the Lord saw through what supported the reputation.

Religious activity can continue without spiritual life directing it.

Meetings still happen. Messages are prepared. Money is collected. Responsibilities are fulfilled. People arrive and leave according to the established schedule.

The machinery has learned how to move.

Ephesus presents another searching exposure. Its labor, endurance, and discernment were acknowledged. Yet the Lord confronted its departure from its first love (Revelation 2:2–5).

The continued work did not excuse the lost relationship.

We assume that as long as the activity remains sound and productive, the essential thing must be intact. The Lord’s assessment refuses that assumption.

We can become capable enough to continue without noticing our diminished dependence.

We know how to speak. We know how to organize. We know what produces the response people expect.

What once required a helpless turning to Christ can now be accomplished through experience.

And experience begins to replace Him.

The work becomes so important that questioning its source seems irresponsible. Too many people depend upon it. Too much has been invested. There is no time to stop and listen.

The Christian faith calls this faithfulness.

But what are we being faithful to?

There are occasions when the interruption of our work would reveal more than its success. When we can no longer perform, our actual refuge becomes visible.

Do we still have Christ when we no longer have usefulness?

A religious machine measures health by continuation.

The Lord measures what is before Him.

The name may be alive while the reality is absent. No amount of motion can close that distance.

11. Abiding Has Been Replaced by Spiritual Achievement

The branch does not produce the vine’s life.

It receives from the vine.

John 15 establishes a dependence from which there is no graduation. The branch remains in the vine, and fruit proceeds from that living relationship.

We understand the picture and then construct a Christian life that contradicts it.

We establish goals for becoming patient, loving, useful, and spiritually effective. We measure progress. We compare ourselves with people who seem further along. We become discouraged by our inability to produce what we believe God expects.

The branch is trying to manufacture grapes.

The Christian faith gives this effort a noble name. It calls it dedication, maturity, or spiritual development.

Yet the source remains the self attempting to become what only Christ can express through it.

Jesus does not tell the branch to acquire enough competence to become independent. He calls it to abide.

That abiding is living and active. His words remain in us. We pray. We obey. We love. But these things belong within the relationship of dependence; they cannot replace it.

The distinction becomes practical in an ordinary irritation.

Someone dismisses us. We feel the immediate desire to answer in a way that restores our importance.

Will we proceed from that impulse?

Or will we turn inwardly to the Lord and let His presence expose what is demanding expression?

There may be no visible spiritual accomplishment in that moment. No one may know what has happened.

Yet something of Christ can emerge where the religious self would have continued uninterrupted.

The Christian faith trains us to become successful Christians.

Abiding brings us to the end of our confidence that such success can be manufactured.

The branch’s responsibility is not to become its own source.

The fruit belongs to the life it receives.

12. The Flesh Has Learned to Dress Like the Spirit

Galatians 3:3 asks whether those who began by the Spirit are now seeking completion by the flesh.

The Galatians were being drawn toward religious observances as the basis of a standing that had come through Christ. Their spiritual beginning was being displaced by another principle.

That same reversal exposes the Christian faith.

We begin in need. We receive from the Lord. Then we are taught how to become religiously capable.

We learn the expected tone. We know when to speak. We recognize the approved authorities. We become skilled at displaying humility, seriousness, and commitment.

The flesh has acquired appropriate clothing.

It can be extremely convincing.

A person may discipline his behavior while feeding his inward superiority. He may sacrifice his time while becoming resentful of everyone who does less. He may accept a lowly task while silently building a case for why he deserves greater recognition.

The outward action and the inward source move in different directions.

Colossians 2:20–23 examines regulations and severity toward the body that carry an appearance of wisdom but fail to provide the answer they promise.

Religious severity does not necessarily weaken the self. It can give the self something new to admire.

We should ask what our practices are actually strengthening.

Are we becoming more dependent upon Christ?

Or more certain that our discipline distinguishes us from others?

The Christian faith supplies a world in which the latter can be mistaken for the former. The diligent person becomes the spiritual person. The articulate person becomes the discerning person. The visibly sacrificial person becomes the mature person.

But the flesh does not cease to be flesh because its accomplishments are Christian.

A religious appearance cannot establish a divine source.

We do not need the old life trained until it becomes an excellent imitation.

We need to live by the life God has given.

13. Christianity Gives Sacred Names to Earthly Allegiances

People once wanted to make Jesus king.

He withdrew (John 6:15).

Their enthusiasm did not establish that their intention came from Him. They wanted Him to occupy a place within their expectations.

He refused.

We continue trying to recruit Him into ours.

We want Him to secure our nation, defend our political loyalties, protect our preferred social arrangement, and defeat those we regard as dangerous.

Then we call the whole thing Christian.

The Christian faith provides religious justification for allegiances the self has already chosen.

We learn to identify the success of our side with the advance of God’s purpose. We excuse conduct in our allies that we condemn in our opponents. We treat political defeat as though Christ Himself has suffered a loss.

But His life has not originated in our political identity.

John 18:36 identifies His kingdom as having another source. His servants were not fighting to prevent His arrest in the manner of those defending an earthly regime.

We cannot make that kingdom the spiritual decoration of our own struggle for supremacy.

The same substitution occurs in religious movements.

The Corinthians identified themselves with Paul, Apollos, and Cephas. Paul exposed those divisions by bringing them back to Christ and His cross (1 Corinthians 1:12–13).

A name associated with ministry had become a competing allegiance.

Our preferred teacher can become more difficult to question than our actual dependence upon the Lord. Our movement’s reputation can matter more to us than the truth.

Zoe has no political party to preserve and no religious brand to protect.

The life of Christ exposes every loyalty that demands first place.

The Christian faith offers sacred language for defending those loyalties.

Christ calls them into judgment.

We cannot remain governed by them and assume that invoking His name has made their government His.

14. Religious Success Conceals the Absence of Spiritual Fruit

Christianity counts.

Attendance, donations, followers, buildings, publications, decisions, and events all become evidence that the work is advancing.

The figures may measure activity. They cannot establish the source of the activity.

Galatians 5:22–23 describes the fruit of the Spirit in the character of a life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Those things cannot be replaced by scale.

A ministry may expand while its workers become increasingly fearful. A teacher may gain influence while becoming harsh and unreachable. A congregation may grow while rivalry governs its relationships.

Success does not resolve the contradiction.

First Corinthians 13 makes the matter unavoidable. Extraordinary gifts, knowledge, faith, and sacrifice do not make love unnecessary.

The impressive thing can be present while the essential reality is absent.

Yet the Christian faith has developed countless ways to excuse that absence.

The leader is under pressure. The work is too important. The results speak for themselves. The demands are unusually great.

Meanwhile, the people closest to the work experience the character of something very different from Christ.

We must stop allowing achievement to answer a question it cannot answer.

The New Testament uses fruit language in more than one setting, including ministry results in Romans 1:13. But no result makes a person our trophy, and no visible harvest cancels the necessity of the Spirit’s character in our living.

The person reached belongs to the Lord.

He does not exist to confirm our importance.

Nor can inward claims escape this examination. If I say I am living by Zoe while despising others and refusing the light, the claim is empty.

Christ’s life expresses Christ.

The Christian faith can reward achievement while making excuses for the source from which it proceeds.

The Spirit’s fruit exposes that substitution.

We cannot grow the work large enough to make the absence of His life insignificant.

15. God’s Purpose Is Christ Formed in Us

Paul’s burden in Galatians 4:19 was that Christ would be formed in the believers.

That is the purpose.

He was not satisfied that they possessed religious identity, correct associations, and a history of spiritual experience.

Christ must be formed in them.

The Christian faith substitutes more manageable objectives. Become informed. Become dependable. Become useful. Support the work. Preserve the teaching. Maintain the testimony.

An institution can recognize those achievements.

But Christ formed within a person reaches deeper than institutional usefulness.

Galatians 2:20 describes a change at the center of living. Paul lives, yet Christ lives in him. The person remains, but his existence is no longer presented as an independent enterprise originating in himself.

First Corinthians 6:17 speaks of being joined to the Lord as one spirit. Second Peter 1:4 speaks of participating in the divine nature.

This is the reality I mean when I speak of sharing God’s life and nature, not His Godhead.

We receive from Him. We live through Him. His life becomes our inward supply.

That is far beyond religious competence.

A person may become less impressive to Christianity while becoming more available to Christ. He may lose his appetite for a platform. He may stop needing everyone to recognize the depth of his understanding.

He may become able to hear a member he once dismissed.

He may discover that the Lord gains more through the surrender of his importance than through years of trying to establish it.

None of that fits comfortably into the measurements of religious success.

But something living has happened.

Christ has gained expression where the self previously demanded room.

The Christian faith gives us an identity to maintain.

God’s purpose is a Son to express.

We have settled for belonging to Christianity when we have been called into participation in the living Christ.

That substitution must end.

Abandon the Christian Faith. Come to Christ.

I am not calling for a better version of the Christian faith.

I am calling for its abandonment.

Abandon the religious substitute for the living life of God. Abandon the confidence that your teaching, your history, your group, and your usefulness establish that you are living by Christ.

Let the substitute fall.

Come to the Son.

We have spent enough time explaining why the things that displace Him deserve to remain. We have spent enough years protecting arrangements that consume our attention while leaving our inward life untouched.

The Lord does not need us to preserve His replacement.

He calls us to Himself.

Jeremiah 2:13 describes a people who forsook the fountain of living waters and made broken cisterns for themselves. That is the picture before us.

We have become experts in cisterns.

We study their construction. We debate their design. We defend the one into which we were born. We build new ones when the old ones disappoint us.

Then we wonder why we remain thirsty.

The answer is not a superior container.

Return to the fountain.

Hebrews 13:13 calls believers to go to Jesus outside the camp, bearing His reproach. The direction is toward Him, beyond the security of the accepted religious arrangement.

There is a cost in that movement.

We may lose the approval that once assured us we were safe. We may no longer be useful to the system in the way we were before. We may have to surrender the identity that gave us a recognized place.

Let it go.

What is that place worth if keeping it requires us to remain satisfied with less than Christ?

Do not turn this call into another movement. Do not build a new religious identity around being free from religion. Do not collect followers around the announcement that no one should collect followers.

The self would gladly survive in that form.

Bring that self to the cross as well.

Bring the ambition to be the person who sees. Bring the pleasure of being right. Bring the need to correct everyone. Bring the secret hope that leaving Christianity will finally make you spiritually important.

None of it is the life of God.

Christ is not waiting to make our religious self more successful. He is calling us out of its government.

Cross the river.

Leave the accumulated claims on the bank: the claim that your training qualifies you, that your service secures you, that your group defines you, that your preferred teacher can live your dependence for you.

Leave the religious project of becoming impressive before God.

Come empty enough to receive.

Open the Scriptures and let their witness bring you to Him. Stop using their light merely to expose other people. Let the Lord reach the inward place from which your words and actions proceed.

Turn toward Him in the ordinary moment. Yield when His light touches your pride. Receive from Him when you have nothing to display. Let His life reach the person beside you.

Allow fellowship to arise from that life rather than forcing life to serve another religious arrangement.

You do not need another identity.

You need Christ.

You do not need a more sophisticated account of the fountain.

You need to drink.

Abandon the Christian faith—the religious substitute we have placed where the living Son belongs.

Come to Him.

Remain in Him.

Let His life become your living.

The destination is Christ Himself.

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