We wrapped up the Seminary 101 series last month, and, in its place, we are starting a series called “ways of walking” or an investigation of how we follow Jesus in our daily lives.1 One of my favorite verses in all of the Bible is in 1 John.
Whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.
Most of us don’t walk in the literal places of the earth where Jesus walked. Most of us aren’t walking the earth as Jews. Half (or more) of the time, we don’t walk at all; we ride in cars and fly through the air and zip around on trains. Even though Jesus did actually walk the earth, this is a call to a different kind of walking. We aren’t being asked to move to the Middle East and retrace Jesus’ physical steps. Rather we should focus on John’s main theme in this letter which is love. We are to love God and, from that love, love others. Matter of fact, John seems to find the two loves so intertwined that we cannot pull them apart. They do not exist without the other.
Love is not a thought. Love is not just words. Love is action and initiation and response. Love is willing and working good for others. It might sometimes come with fuzzy feelings that we enjoy, but often it doesn’t. Love is embodied and well-formed. Love takes our heart, souls, minds, and bodies. Sometimes loving Jesus is presented as work of the mind; we take classes and take tests and argue about ideas. That is only one small aspect of loving Jesus. Following Jesus is embodied work. Love is embodied work. We are not brains trapped in bodies. We are humans: body, soul, and spirit, and Christ lays claim to all of us.
Love is not the only “concept” we misunderstand (noting that, of course, love is not a concept, or an abstract idea). We also like to disembody faith. But following Jesus is an embodied experience. Do we think faith is “belief” which we typically understand as agreement or assent? Are we signing off on a checklist of doctrine? Or do we think faith is “allegiance,” which means that we recognize Jesus as King and rearrange our lives to fit in His kingdom?2
Matthew Bates has a whole book about understanding faith as allegiance. It’s worth your time to read, but essentially he argues that, over time, Jesus’s enthronement after the ascension has been deemphasized and therefore the gospel can be characterized as “trust” in Jesus’ righteousness to save our souls rather than “allegiance” to Jesus as King of our lives. A quick google search told me that the use of the word “allegiance” has been steadily declining and it would not surprise me if most people only know it in context of the American pledge to the flag.
“Following Christ” has become my preferred term over “believing in Jesus.” It’s not that I think the second isn’t true, just that it’s used a lot and misunderstood. We are not just agreeing with our words that Jesus redeems us from our sins and is our Savior. We are living those truths with our lives. If Jesus redeems me from my sin, I have to leave that sin behind me. If Jesus is King, He is the one who instructs me in how to be human and therefore how I live. It seems like a small distinction in words, but it is a large difference in practice. Is Jesus going to rescue me at the end of time and in the meantime I pass the time or does He get everything now?
We are not mentally assenting to who God is; God doesn’t need us to validate Him. We are living out of His claim on us. This means that all of our lives play a role in understanding and showing the gospel. Jesus makes a claim on our marriages, how we parent, how we live as a single person, how we treat the elderly, how we care for creation, where we live, what we do with our money, on and on and on to every last detail you can think of.
This series is going to help us take a slower look at how we live and why it matters. Viewing our faith as “allegiance” and not just “trust” reminds us that Jesus makes a claim to our lives. We aren’t simply agreeing to a statement so that when we die we go to heaven, but in the meantime, we can do as we want.3 Following Jesus means learning a new way to live. We’re going to walk as He walked.
The Thursday posts will have a different seminary series which will not be about going to seminary, but will contain small chunks of learning from seminary. You can take that and use it without having to go to seminary yourself!
Of course there is plenty of room for doctrine in faith as allegiance as well, but there’s a difference between living it as truth or signing off on a piece of paper.
Or, on the flip side, following a regimented list of rules so that we can keep God’s approval and still be on His good side when we die.