Four Requirements for Living as Witnesses to Jesus

Our greatest honor is to live as witnesses to Jesus Christ.

Witnessing to Jesus, however, is hard to do. Olympianity is the world’s oldest and still most popular religion. Devotion to the six Olympian gods of politics, war, technology, sex, money, and consumption is deeply rooted in our culture and, because of that, in our Olympian personalities.

To live as witnesses to Jesus requires his grace, a different way of thinking, personal commitment, and the support of others.

1. Grace. We cannot possibly witness to Jesus Christ without grace. Grace is Christ's unmerited love. Jesus shares this love with us by speaking words of truth to us and by sending the Holy Spirit to burn brightly within us. Our Olympian personality devotes itself wholly to the six Olympian gods of power. It is the Holy Spirit alone that gives our Christian personality the wisdom, strength, courage, and good cheer we need each day to hear and live the words of truth that Jesus speaks to us.

2. Different way of thinking. Witnessing to Jesus requires a different way of thinking. Our society teaches us to think in a very Olympian way. Jesus teaches us to think in a distinctively Christian way: a way which sees the differences between his truth and Olympian falsehood, his freedom and the Olympian obsession with power, his love and Olympian indifference, and his vitality and Olympian despair, destruction, and death.

3. Personal commitment. Witnessing to Jesus requires personal commitment renewed daily. It takes a lively sense of purpose, clarity of intention, focus, attention, concentration. Renewed daily. When we stop being purposeful about witnessing to Jesus, we immediately become witnesses to the Olympian gods.

4. Mutual support. Finally, witnessing to Jesus requires the support of others. We witness to Jesus through love. Love isn’t something we can do by ourselves. We live in an intensely Olympian society. We cannot possibly witness to the truth, freedom, love, and vitality of Jesus without the support of like-minded companions. We also need meaningfully accountability to them. That's why our participation in the Church, the Body of Christ, is crucial.

Copyright © 2013 by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.