Who Moved the Goalpost? by Dan Bouchelle

This is a Guest Post from my friend Dan Bouchelle. Dan serves as the President of Missions Resource Network in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX.  For more info, please visit his blog at Walking in the Reign. (Dan originally published this post on his blog.  It can be found here.)

I’m not sure when it happened. It’s been this way a long time. I’m not sure who did it or how they got away with it. I’m amazed we didn’t seem to notice for so long. But, someone slipped in under the cover of night and moved the goalpost.

From looking at scripture, it is clear God’s purpose is to restore his image in us through the work of Christ. We distorted our divine image badly through rebellion and we became sub-human. Jesus came as the restored version, the completed version humanity was intended to be, the new Adam, the prototype of God’s finished work in us. God came in human form to show us what we could be, should be, and, if we accept his work in us, will be when God’s work in us in done.

When we accept Jesus as Lord and submit to him, as everything in the heavens submits to him, we begin the process of being transformed by the Spirit into the image of Jesus who came to make us beings suitable to live in the coming renewed new heaven and earth when all rebellion to God’s reign is ended. Put simply, the goal of a Christian is to become like Jesus.

Yet, somehow, the goal of becoming fully formed in Christ got reduced to “going to heaven.” The only real issue that mattered was on which which side of the line we stood at judgment. This greatly reduced goal meant that being Christ-like wasn’t all that important, nice and all, but not really the issue. The primary issue was what we have to do to make sure we achieve the goal of “going to heaven” after we die or when the judgment day comes. We developed long lists in each church fellowship of “salvation issues” about which we had to be right to “go to heaven.” Then we argued with each other endlessly and treated each other in very un-Christ-like ways over the diverse items on our lists of what you can’t get wrong to “go to heaven.”

All this happened despite the fact that the language of “salvation issue” and “go to heaven” does not even appear in scripture. These matters are never the concern of Jesus or the apostles. Jesus was concerned about God reigning on earth as in heaven, or to put it another way, the Kingdom of God. Jesus invited people to follow him in a total submission to God’s will as the way to true life.

Paul and the other apostles called us to imitate Christ with them because in Christ was everything that mattered and everything that would last. Luke shows us in Acts that the church is simply the people of God continuing the story of Jesus in the world. We continue what he did and taught as Luke described in his Gospel (Acts 1:1). We are called to become the living proof of God’s love for the world and activity in the world by giving the world a preview of the coming feature attraction when God comes back in Christ to set all things right. Being formed into the image of Christ is about the fulfillment of who we were created to be, essential to our being able to fulfilled God’s mission to draw people into this alternative way of life, and preparation for participation in a world where the curse of sin has been lifted and the entire creation is liberated from it’s bondage to decay to participate in the glorious freedom of the unveiled children of God.

Here are just a few of the problems that developed from moving the goal:

• The need for God’s grace was less obvious. Becoming like Jesus is clearly a work of God upon us. Getting a limited number of salvation issues right enough to go to heaven seemed doable on our own.
• “Truth,” at least on the list of “salvation issues” became more important than love, despite what Jesus and Paul said about love being the greatest matter. Therefore it seemed justifiable to be unloving in the service of “truth.”
• The abuse of power seemed acceptable in the service of “truth” if it helped get people into heaven, even if it was clearly not a loving way to behave, despite Jesus telling us “it shall not be thus among you.”
• The growth of the believer into the fullness of Jesus, or discipleship, became optional. Christians felt they were safe if they just attached themselves to a church that was right on the “salvation issues” and did what was required to “go to heaven.” Once that was in place, people were free to live the rest of their lives as they pleased, provided they didn’t transgress a “salvation issue.”
• Legalism was almost unavoidable because the focus was on what we do and being right instead of on God’s work in us and through us.
• Pride or despair were both predictable character flaws logically flowing from a performance based religion depending on how we believed we were doing on the list of what was required of us.
• Christians began to strain out gnats such as  variations in church structure or worship practices while swallowing camels like racism, injustice, and greed.
• Life was compartmentalized into the sacred and secular areas. You had to get the former correct while the latter was largely outside God’s concern provided you didn’t violate any matter of personal morality that was a “salvation issue.”
• Churches became obsessed with institutional forms, rituals, and growth rather than advancing the reign of God in the world and forming people in Christ.
• Heaven became a remote location greatly separated from any earthly existence and lost most of its appeal. Escaping Hell become more important than experiencing heaven. Heaven, or the restoration of heaven and earth, lacked sufficient power to capture the imaginations or shape the lives of believers.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that getting the goalpost put back in the right place would fix most of what is wrong with Christianity in the world. This is where it makes perfect sense to talk about Bible things in Bible words. If we used the vocabulary of scripture to describe and evaluate our faith and the church, we should find we just naturally correct our course.

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