All my life, I grew up in a vibrant Christian home and atmosphere, but I did not grasp my need for salvation until I was about 10 years old. While I was young and hardly understood any theology, I was nevertheless convinced that I needed a Savior to save and reconcile me to right standing with God in a way that I could never do for myself.
Since I was 10 years of age, I certainly identified myself with Christ, but I did not start taking my faith seriously until the 8th grade after a summer camp with my youth group. At that camp, the Holy Spirit started to make the truths of Scripture come alive in me spiritually in ways that my mere understanding of these truths intellectually never did. In fact, ever since that camp, my desires, values, and perspectives pivotally changed for Jesus and have not been the same.
Thus, it is difficult to say when exactly I received eternal life. I’m sure the seed of the gospel was implanted in my heart around the age of 10 years old, but it might not have started budding and taking root until the Holy Spirit watered it with an experience of the Lord at summer camp where the gospel really made sense to me and truly ‘clicked’ for the first time. When I was 10 years old, I had a mental acknowledgment of my need for salvation and the cross of Christ, but it was not until before 8th grade that the reality of the love of God behind these intellectual statements moved me in a powerful way. I have heard a renowned pastor once say, “it is not in your past experience that you find assurance for salvation as much as you find it in your present posture.” Indeed, while the seed of the gospel falls on different soils of the heart, the Harvester can discern the fruitful seed by observing the progress of its growth at the present. Similarly, my assurance of salvation does not rest as much upon a specific date where I walked the aisle or raised a hand as much as it rests upon a present walk with Jesus, hand-in-hand.
Like I mentioned earlier, the impact the gospel made in my life was primarily evidenced and experienced in the change of my motivations, perspectives, values, and desires. As someone who grew up in a moral, Christian home, my external behavior honestly did not really change all that much. But the internal motivations (the why) behind my external actions (the what) changed dramatically. For instance, before I was a Christian, the weightiest things in my life—like my significance, worth, identity, and more—all frighteningly rested on the thin ice of my performance for God. How well I was doing. How well I was keeping the rules. How well I was maintaining an impeccably admirable Christian appearance amongst my family and peers. Practically, I believed that my standing with God was solely based on my works, behavior, and ability to stay ‘in the right.’ Essentially, at the end of every day, I hoped that God graded on a bell curve and that I fell on favorable terms with Him. What I believed was that God will really love me, will really approve of me, will really bless me if I do X-Y-and-Z for Him. I wrongly believed that if I obeyed Him perfectly, He would accept me fully. This view about God actually ruined any and all motivations of love and joy for Him. At camp, the Spirit opened my eyes to the knowledge that I have complete approval before God in Jesus and what he has done for me: living the life I should have lived for God and dying the death I deserved to die for my sin in my place—taking all the justice for my sin in full, but giving me all his righteousness as a gift in love. Therefore, in light of that, I realized I no longer needed “to do” to gain love from God—rather, my “doing” flows from being loved—which is much more a powerful and long-lasting motivation anyways. I realized this key, life-changing truth: I no longer have to obey perfectly so that I get approved fully; rather, I obey gladly because I have been approved perfectly.
In terms of today, the same effect of the gospel continues to wrestle my tendencies towards a conditional relationship with God to the ground. Its when I began to live in light of God’s gracious unconditional-ness for me in Jesus that I begin to truly see God rightly, see myself rightly, see others rightly, and live rightly. I was—and still am often—a self-righteous kid who wallows in the valleys between the peaks of moral pride and moral despair, which is wrought about by works-determinism with God. Indeed, this makes me always uncertain of God’s love and always in fear of His wrath. But now, Jesus is continuing to lead me to the pleasant shores of his unfathomable, ever-expansive oceans of grace, which wash over me day by day—reminding me that it is His righteousness for me, salvation for me, love for me, and victory over me that makes me accepted; not my own. This means the pressure to love and follow God from the motivation of obligation and duty is severed at the root. Instead, in light of this incredible good news of what He has done for me, this means the pressure to obey is simply just an organic, natural overflow that gushes from my own heart. An encounter with the gospel helped transform my previous experience of a hollow, dry, and laborious Christianity into a radical, energetic, glad response to God. It wasn’t anything I did that led to this. It was just a greater understanding of what God did that made the biggest difference.
So that is a little bit about me, my Christian upbringing, the church, and how it has personally affected me. Do you have any similar type of experience like that, or do you come from a church-religious background like me? If so, what was your experience and how has it informed your life’s values, perspectives, and desires?
Do you have questions about Christianity in general? Is it something you like to learn more about? Is Jesus someone you would want to trust and follow? Why or why not? If you’re interested, let me lead you through some Scripture that more fully explains what the gospel is and what it does.
