This is the final of four short essays written to explain my journey in Christian faith. I wrote in such a way that the series might communicate easily with readers who do not have a history within the church, primarily by avoiding religious lingo and employing metaphors. I hope I have accomplished this goal.
I have mentioned “new life” a few times over the course of these papers. Let me explain a bit more. This is the life that the Christian experiences after engaging Christ’s solution for his sin problem. It is not a life-long attempt at behavior modification, nor a new-and-improved version of the same old thing. It is something altogether new. The Scriptures describe it as a dramatic exchange that God initiates and completes in the Christian: light for darkness, sight for blindness, life for death.
The automobile metaphor has served us well in the previous two papers. At this point, we will deviate from it to consider another one. The sin problem is also like a virus that invades an operating system. Through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the virus is dismantled. Once the virus is inactive, the operating system is restored to factory settings. In other words, God restores the Christian to his original design for humanity before the sin problem infected the system. There is another curiosity of God’s prescribed solution: this resetting is both something that happens instantaneously and over a long process. This restoration occurs immediately but takes time to complete.
It is as if the virus, the sin problem, has been dismantled and is no longer active; however, its remnants can be found in every nook and cranny of the operating system. These remnants continue to affect the operating system and mimic the fully-functioning virus. However, they are just breadcrumbs of the original problem and will be eliminated through the process of restoration. For many people, these remnants are things like old habits, bad tempers, wrong ways of thinking, or self-centeredness. For most Christians, some effects of the sin problem are immediately alleviated while others take longer to identify and eradicate. Upon becoming a Christian, I may find that I miraculously lose the desire to get drunk on the weekends but continue to be prideful and cocky at work. The restoration process is constantly running in the background and makes the Christian aware of its work at surprising, intermittent times.
This restoration is more than a virus solution. Imagine that, as the restoration process is eliminating the virus and restoring factory settings, it is also updating the operating system to the latest and greatest version of the software. The metaphor becomes a little confusing at this point because we are familiar with these steps as separate, self-contained actions. First, the virus is eradicated. Second, factory settings are restored. Third, the software is updated. In God’s restoration process for humanity, these happen concurrently and as an ongoing process.
I now want to address some very important realities of the restoration apart from our metaphors. These realities are so significant that I want to be careful that their truths are not misconstrued or diluted by figures of speech. When someone engages God’s solution for the sin problem through the person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live in her. The Christian finds herself both filled with and enveloped in the life of Christ. This new life is beautiful and purposeful. Scattered throughout it are moments of lucid realization when the Christian exclaims, “This is what life is meant to be!” However, it is no easy life. It still has many of the difficulties of life without Christ; these are common to all humans. In fact, this life actually invites a special subset of difficulties that non-Christians do not face. However, it is truly the life that God intended humanity to experience and it has the promise of a dramatic climax at some point later. It provides hope for today and hope for the future.
Thank you for reading my papers. I hope that I have been at least moderately successful at explaining theological concepts in accessible language. I invite your thoughts about these topics and any others that may have come to mind as you read.
