Baby! Baby! Baby!
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry with joy when
I heard that Justin Bieber wanted to live like Jesus. The Canadian darling who
banged on drums as a boy, then gang-banged on the stage as a troubled teen, then
went drag-racing and smoking pot as a young adult, the same one who said “wait
and marry before having sex” -- wanted
something more out of life.
No kidding.
The sex, drugs, rock and roll all gets old. “I would
do anything for love” comes in a close second as the best thing that man can
find, and money can’t buy. Yet this love has to be more than man can give, even
Mom and Dad.
Normally, I get as political as they get on this
website. I take on nasty comments from left-wig trolls. Sometimes conservatives
get mad at me because I share views not quite in line with their world view.
Today, I am getting spiritual, writing about more
than Bieber’s wanting to believe in Something greater. I also want to shout out
at the pastors, the preachers, and the Internet teachers, especially those who
see Christ and Christianity as a hard slog of self-effort, in which God saves
man initially, but from that point on, you and I are on our own.
Born-again Believer (not a Belieber, I am sure) and
Pastor Michael
Brown made some interest remarks in his “Open Letter to
Justin” , but I feel compelled to add something, and with all due respect,
correct some things.
Brown’s main point started with “I'm just wondering, though, if you
understand what it really means to live like Jesus.”
This statement
reveals the frustration in the Body of Christ today, the misunderstanding about
“give one’s life to Christ”, or “live for Jesus”, entails.
Let me clear: none of
us can live like Christ, or be like Jesus. He needs to live in us!
In the Beginning, God
warned the first man and woman: “Don’t eat from that tree (the knowledge of
Good and Evil), lest ye die”. When they ate from the tree, they died, cut off
from God.
Throughout the four
Gospels, all of which detail Jesus’ earthly ministry, Jesus is trying to
explain to man – particularly the Israelites – the impossible standard of
living for God. How can we live for Him when we are dead? Passages in the
Gospel of Matthew talk about renewed wineskins. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus relates
the Parable of the Prodigal Son. At the end of the parable, the Father rejoices,
because “My son was dead, and is now alive.”
In the Gospel of
John, the account explicitly written to the entire world, Jesus emphasizes who He
is: Life. We also find the heart of the Father fully revealed, and the
necessity of understanding how much God loves – yes, present tense! – loves us.
The New Testament is
predicated on what God has done for us through His Son: everything. When we
understand how great God loves us, then we in turn can love others:
“We love him, because he first loved us.” (1
John 4: 19)
Justin Bieber (Joe Bielawa) |
In the original
Greek, “him” is not there. We love anyone, because He first (and foremost)
loved us.
The previous before
grant a more resplendent revelation, which many American pastors seem
indifferent or uncomfortable with sharing:
“Herein is our love
made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he
is, so are we in this world.”
Brown is right that
we receive a new life: “The old Justin Bieber dies and a new Justin Bieber
lives” However, that explanation does not go far enough. We are taken out of
ourselves, and brought into Christ.
We receive a new
life and a new identity. God is no longer some loving being who sent His Son to
die for us and as us. God our Creator becomes our Father. This fatherhood of
God, or more accurately Daddy! God, is so desperately missing in our churches.
For that reason, I believe that many young people who want life, who want love,
who recognize that they have nothing but wants and nothing meets their needs,
also find that they find neither what they want or need in churches.
Include me in that
list. When I heard what the Gospel of Grace is all about (read Galatians 1: 6
if you doubt that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about grace), I felt
betrayed. To this day, I have not set foot in a church where Jesus is not
preached, alive and well and welling up within us as the Living Water (John 7:
37-39).
Bieber wants to
live like Jesus. Jesus invited us to receive something way better: “I want you
to have life, and that more abundantly (John 10: 10). Notice that Jesus did not
say: “I have come to make your life better, or be an example on how to live.”
Paul the Apostle
uttered this deep revelation very directly: “Yet I live, yet not I, but the
life I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.”
Jesus gives us Himself,
and He lives in us! Moreover, we become sons of God, and become more like Him
as we see more of Him in the Word (2 Corinthians 3: 18)
To Justin Bieber, I
write that you are seeking Life. The Good News is that Life sought us, and
seeks to bless us richly, if we will only receive Him.
Don’t take my word
for it. Jesus Himself said:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
So what is our
part, then?
“Jesus answered and
said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath
sent.” (John 6: 29)
I would say to
Justin Bieber: believe in Jesus, and let Him live in you!
I hope he sees this and understands what you are saying.
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