Christ Is Our Life: Beyond Christianity as a Religious Lifestyle
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. — Colossians 3:4
It is possible to have a Christian lifestyle without having Christ as your life. The lifestyle has church on Sunday, prayer in the morning, a Bible on the shelf and a set of standards. It can be maintained for decades. And it can be maintained, tragically, with very little of Christ Himself — the way a house can be kept immaculate for an owner who never comes home.
Paul does not call Christ the centre of your life, or the priority of your life, or even the Lord of your life, though He is all of those. He calls Christ your life. Not a part. The whole.
The difference between a source and a subject
Religion makes Christ the subject of our activity: we study Him, sing about Him, work for Him. The Gospel makes Christ the source of our activity: we live by Him. Galatians 2:20 puts it in the starkest terms. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
Read the verbs. Crucified. Lives. Live by faith. There is a death, an indwelling, and a dependence. The old "I" — self-sourced, self-sustained, self-improving — was crucified. The life that remains is Christ’s life, lived out through Paul’s personality, hands and days.
What this does to the ordinary
- Bible reading becomes meeting a Person, not completing a plan.
- Prayer becomes breathing, not performance.
- Obedience becomes the outflow of a life, not the price of one.
- Failure sends you to Him, not away from Him, because He is the only life you have.
The invitation
If you have been practising Christianity and feeling hollow, the answer is not more practice. It is to stop and ask who has been living your life. The Christ who died for you did not die to give you a religion to keep. He died to give you Himself, and then to live His life in you.
That is what we mean at WordHouse when we say Christocentric. Not that Christ is the theme of our meetings, but that He is the life of the people in them.