With a difficult year coming to a close and the Christmas season upon us, Amy shares with you the answer to life, the universe, and everything...and it's not the number 42.
With a difficult year coming to a close and the Christmas season upon us, Amy shares with you the answer to life, the universe, and everything...and it's not the number 42.
Hello, friends. This is Amy Mantravadi coming to you with a special bonus episode of the (A)Millennial podcast. Normally, a bonus anything tends to be a kind of afterthought, like when those infomercials promise they will throw in a bonus mini spatula with the ten regular ones you’re already buying for the price of five. This is not that kind of bonus.
We in the U.S. have just endured another election year in which we were constantly promised that it was “the most important election of our lifetimes.” I am old enough to remember that the same thing was said four years ago, and probably every other presidential election before that. Talk is cheap and overstatement is common, but I truly believe that I am not overstating when I say that what I am about to tell you is the most important thing you will hear in your entire life. Why? Because it concerns not only your whole life in this universe, but everything that lies beyond death.
The reason we speak of each election as “the most important in our lifetimes” is that we know there is something wrong with this world. We see the corruption in our institutions. We witness and are even subjected to acts of violence and injustices of all kinds. We see how human hearts are drawn to evil, tainted by pride and conceit. We see these things very clearly in others, even if we are hesitant to acknowledge them in ourselves.
As a species, human beings long for comfort. We long for the ending of these injustices. We want a harmonious society without pandemics, the destruction of nature, and war. We long to love and be loved, and to have the people we love with us always. In the words of the song that is featured in every episode of this podcast, each one of us is crying out, “I need to know there is justice—that it will roll in abundance.”
Now, allow me to read to you something that was written back in the 16th century by a group of Christians.
“Q. What is your only comfort
in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own,
but belong—
body and soul,
in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.”
Allow me to break this passage down a bit. It acknowledges that there is a problem with our present state on planet earth: We are longing for comfort, not only due to the uncertainties of this life, but also in light of the ultimate uncertainty of death. Yes, we are a dying people. No matter how much comfort we enjoy during our days on earth, all of us in the end will have that comfort stripped from us. Not only our possessions and our loved ones, but our very life will be taken.
Our culture does not want to acknowledge the reality and finality of death. Whereas in past ages it was common to witness death, it has now become less common for a variety of reasons. We live longer and often die in hospitals or assisted living centers rather than at home. In most parts of the world, it is uncommon for young people to die in war, and in general we are less troubled by deadly infectious disease. The current coronavirus pandemic has provided a stark reminder of the reality of death, but most of those who have died have done so in hospital, and few have attended their funerals. This has served to protect many of us from having to deal with our own mortality.
Another way our culture has avoided the reality of death is by trying to present it as natural or even good. Instead of funerals, we now have celebrations of life. Instead of burying our dead, we cremate them and allow them to “become one with nature.” I say this not to demonize these practices, as there are often good motivations behind them, but many in our culture want to shoo away the reality of death with a simple declaration of, “Oh well. It’s just a part of life,” or perhaps they will go the route of The Lion King and speak of the “circle of life.”
In fact, I think we all know that death and decay is terrible. I cannot think of anything more heartless than standing beside the grave of a loved one and saying, “Oh well. It’s just a part of life.” No! We grieve for our loved ones who have passed on, as well we should. We invest huge amounts of money in developing cures for deadly conditions precisely because we know that physical death is awful. Whereas some philosophies deny this fact, Christianity has always acknowledged it.
The holy Scripture of Christianity, the Bible, teaches that, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a truth with profound implications. It means that you and I are not the product of random, unfeeling chance. History is not just a chaotic rhythm of pain and suffering, and your individual life has a purpose. You have a Creator, and thus you have hope. You have hope that in the end, there is meaning in this universe. Without meaning, there is no hope, and without hope, life is hardly worth living.
But the Bible also teaches that while God created human beings to live without death and suffering, they rebelled against him. They chose to listen to the voice of evil rather than following the good. As a result, their relationships with God and each other broke down. They descended into murder, rape, lies, and theft. They engaged in all sorts of corruption, and the entirety of creation fell under a curse.
God told the first humans how to live in comfort. He told them His design for them and how they could live eternally and joyfully. Even as the person who builds a car knows how to keep the car working properly, the Creator of human beings knew how they could flourish. But they chose to turn their backs on that design, which meant turning their backs on him as Creator. Instead of accepting that they belonged to God and He knew what was best for them, they boldly declared, “I am my own. I know what is best.”
Now think back to that passage I read, which comes from the Heidelberg Catechism. It begins by asking, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” This is an acknowledgement that our world has gone off track. Not only are our lives filled with trouble, but we are subject to the curse of death. We are without comfort in this world and beyond. The answer to this predicament, the catechism declares, is to acknowledge that, “I am not my own but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The idea of belonging to someone else naturally sets us on edge because we know about the terrible history of slavery. Even today, huge numbers of people are literally possessed by others. We know how horrific it is to belong to someone else in this manner, but think instead of when a person says to their lover, “I belong to you.” This we see not as tyrannical control, but the result of love. That love has created a devotion in which the person is no longer afraid to belong to another, because they know that person has their best interests at heart. They feel safe entrusting themselves to that person.
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ was not only a man who was born on a certain date in the city of Bethlehem, but also the eternal God of the universe. The Apostle John spoke of Christ poetically as “the Word” and wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.”
Most people have heard about Jesus, and in line with the community of historians, most believe he was a real person who taught in the region of Palestine in the first century A.D. Where people begin to disagree is regarding two claims Jesus Christ made about Himself: that He was God and that He was the Savior of the world.
Remember, the catechism calls Jesus Christ a “faithful Savior” and says we belong to Him. That is an acknowledgment of the fact that He is God the Creator and came to save humanity from sin and its curse. Accepting Jesus as these two things means accepting both that He is God (and we therefore owe Him our obedience) and also that He is our Savior (and we therefore need Him to save us).
Neither of these things are easy for sinful humans to acknowledge. We often think the problem with the world is not ourselves, but everyone else. We do not want to admit that, like our first human parents, we have rebelled against God and disobeyed Him. We have rejected His plan for human flourishing. We have turned not only against Him, but each other. The word “sin” is not very popular. In many cases, it has become cheapened, as when we speak of delicious chocolate being sinful. This ignores the truth about sin: that it is the deadly enemy of all humanity.
Sin brought death into the world. Sin is the reason we have earthquakes, famines, and pandemics. Sin has broken our relationship with our Creator and our fellow human beings. It has robbed us of a blissful eternity. Every horrible thing that happens to us is ultimately caused by sin. And that sin is not just something that lives in other people. It is inside all of us. Apart from the work of a Savior, all of us naturally tend to follow the same rebellious path against our Creator.
Scripture explains that the penalty for committing sin is death: not only the death of our physical bodies, but an eternal death of the soul. Instead of enjoying the favor of God, sin places us under His wrath. Why? Because in addition to being perfectly loving, God is also perfectly just. That is why He is the only one who can deliver perfect justice to this world, but it is also the reason why He stands as our perfect Judge. Unlike us, God is entirely consistent. He will always call a sin a sin. He is the Judge we need, but not always the Judge we want.
God commanded our first parents to live perfectly righteous lives and shun evil, because He knew this was the only way for them to experience full and glorious life for all eternity. He told them exactly what the consequences would be for each choice, but they chose sin instead of righteousness. This is where I have good news: God in His mercy chose not to immediately punish us as we deserve but to provide a Savior who could take away our sins and credit us with His righteousness.
As the catechism tells us, Christ “has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.” He did this by being subjected to the penalty of death in our place. He came into this world to teach us the ways of righteousness and point us to the hope we have in God. He offered Himself up to death when He alone was perfectly innocent of sin, and God the Father accepted this action as part of a great exchange. The Bible says, “He [that is God the Father] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
When the Roman authorities crucified Christ on a cross, as the historical record testifies, He bore not only His own weight but the weight of our sin. He bore it and He paid for it. As a result, we have the opportunity for our sins to be fully forgiven. There is no need for us to repay them, and in truth we couldn’t possibly do so. Christ has already taken it all upon Himself, and because He lived a perfectly righteous life, He can offer that righteousness to us.
All of this happens through something called union with Christ. When we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ as the eternal God and our Savior, we are united to Him in a way that goes beyond any merely human relation. We belong to Him body and soul, and through that union our sin is exchanged for His righteousness. This accomplishes multiple things: It frees us from the power of sin and allows us to live righteously in this life, an existence that is infinitely superior to one rutted in evil. It allows us to once again enjoy communion with God unhindered by sin. It also gains us entrance eternally into the presence of God to live with Him forever.
Being united to Christ means belonging to Him in the greatest sense anyone can ever belong. The catechism tells us, “Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.” To live for Christ is to live as God always intended, according to His plan for human flourishing. It is to avoid the harmful consequences of sin and enjoy real reconciliation with others. Belonging to Jesus is the fullness of life, joy, and love.
However, it does not come without a price. Christ told His disciples that, “If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” That is the part we hate! We are prideful people and don’t like to be denied anything. We don’t want to admit our wrongdoing.
In order to live for Christ, we must die to ourselves. This does not mean that our personhood is erased, but rather than it is made anew through Christ, becoming what it was always meant to be. However, truth be told, we like running our own lives. We like the comforts we enjoy, even though those temporary comforts pale in comparison to the eternal comforts of God. Many of us are unwilling to suffer. We are unwilling to place God in control because we are under the illusion that He is not already in control. We do not trust Him. We are like the lover who cannot bring him or herself to say, “I belong to you,” because we do not trust the other person.
We do not trust God because we have been lied to. Scripture tells us that the evil one, Satan, the very being who tempted our first parents to sin, is the Father of Lies, and he spreads them throughout the earth. It was Satan who first told us the lie that if we turn our backs on God and live for ourselves, we can have joy. Now everything is subject to deception. We all know that we cannot take everything we hear at face value because the world is full of lies. We are inherently untrusting. This is the sad effect of the work of the Father of Lies in this world. Not only do we accept his lies, but we lie to each other, until the bright truth of God is clouded behind the darkness of deception.
This bonus podcast is my attempt to break through that cloud to you. If you are not united to Jesus Christ and do not know what it is to be loved by Him, let me tell you, you can trust Him. You can trust Him because He is not like all the other people claiming they can save you, whether they are politicians, self-help gurus, or friends. Unlike them, He is perfectly just. Unlike them, He acknowledges, validates, and redeems your suffering. Unlike them, He gave up His own life for you. He is the only one who cuts through the problem of sins’ effects to the problem of sin itself. Yes, we must fight against the terrible consequences of sin, but without a Savior to take away sin itself, those efforts will ultimately be insufficient.
When Jesus Christ laid down His life for you and had His authority confirmed by being raised from the dead, He proved that He is trustworthy. I do not know what you have been through in your life, but I can guarantee that there have been people who have broken faith with you at one point or another. Perhaps they have even abused or oppressed you. They have lied to you and proven themselves insufficient protectors and saviors. Christ alone has been faithful to the end, and that is why you can trust Him with your very soul for all eternity.
So if you do not know Jesus Christ and are still stuck in your sins, I implore you to acknowledge that you are a sinner and throw yourself upon the mercy of a God who is eager to show you mercy. Stop living for yourself and live for Him. Stop trying to find your own way to flourish and follow the instruction manual provided by your Creator. If you do this, you will be saved in every sense of the word. You will experience lasting comfort in this life and the next, because Christ has the power to raise you from the dead, both physically and spiritually.
People say that money can’t buy happiness. I actually believe this to be false. Money has indeed bought me happiness at times, if we understand happiness to be a temporary feeling of pleasure, but money has never bought me joy. There is nothing you can do to buy or seize joy. It must be given to you by God Himself, for all joy comes from Him.
In his book Surprised by Joy, the Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote about his notion of the term. He said,
“I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.”
Perhaps you have come to realize that joy must be received. You have pursued many things in your life, all without arriving at that final place of contentment. You have felt a holy longing deep in your bones for something beyond this world: a purpose, a hope. You have longed for justice and reconciliation. That, my friends, is nothing other than the desire for your Creator and the plan He intended for this world. It is a plan that has been put on hold due to our sin, but it will be realized in the future when Christ returns and all is made right. Therefore, the most important question I could ever ask you is simply, “Do you belong to Christ?”
Thanks so much for listening. If anything I have said is of interest to you and you would like to know more, feel free to email me at theamillennialpodcast@gmail.com. I would be happy to point you to resources that can help you learn more about Jesus Christ and the hope He offers to you.
As always, the music for today’s podcast is provided by Jon Guerra from his album Keeper of Days. This season of the (A)Millennial podcast was written, edited, and produced by yours truly. I received assistance and support from Coleen Sharp and my husband. My guests Rachel Joy Welcher, Matthew Lee Anderson, Samuel Renihan, Danielle Hitchen, and Jessica Blanchard were all highly generous with their time and a joy to work with.
I will send you off with the Apostle Paul’s closing words to the church in Ephesus.
“Peace be to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.” Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
Have an awesome week and keep a lookout for the next season of (A)Millennial!