The Invitation: Chapter 1, Part 2

People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it – or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all.

Especially living in the Bible belt, you really see this a lot. There are those that self-identify as Christians, but with no real influence on the way they live. Religion has really done a disservice to Jesus. He will change your life – if you let him. Sometimes the hardest people to reach are the ones sitting in the pews.

God’s desire for us is that we should live in him.

This might be the best summary of the Divine Conspiracy in a single sentence. God wants us to live in Him. He wants us to enter the eternal kind of life now. Store this thought away, we will discuss it at length in chapters to come.

The “gospels” that predominate where he is most frequently invoked speak only of preparing to die or else correcting social practices and conditions.

Willard will devote a whole chapter to this, so I’ll just briefly comment here. The theological “right” tends to make getting into heaven the primary focus, while the theological “left” tends to make fighting social injustices the main thing.

Our usual “gospels” are, in their effects – dare we say it – nothing less than a standing invitation to omit God from the course of our daily existence.

The problem with these being the focus is that we omit God from our everyday existence. We are not living for Him, let alone in Him.

But just think how unlikely it would be that this great world-historical force, Jesus called “Christ,” could have left the depths of moment-to-moment human existence untouched while accomplishing what he has! More likely, we currently do not understand who he is and what he brings.

Willard notes the shear magnitude of the “footprint” that Christ has left on history. It doesn’t seem logical that someone of that kind of influence, who paid the price He paid, wouldn’t care about impacting our everyday lives. The conclusion is that we don’t understand Jesus like we should, nor do we comprehend the significance of the invitation He gives.

In other words, if he were to come today he could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family, surroundings, and time. None of this would be the least hindrance to the eternal kind of life that was his by nature and becomes available to us through him. Our human life, it turns out, is not destroyed by God’s life but is fulfilled in it and in it alone.

Willard makes an interesting note about Jesus. We often make excuses for our circumstances when we think of making a real impact on the world. The reality is that Jesus just have easily could have lived in my exact environment without thwarting His ability to change the world. The kind of life God wants to give enables us to live a fulfilled life, not hinders our happiness.

But they [the crowds who responded to Jesus] were only responding to the striking availability of God to meet present human need through the actions of Jesus. He simply was the good news about the kingdom. He still is.

Jesus is the gospel. His invitation to enter into his kingdom remains.

Now God’s own “kingdom,” or “rule,” is the range of his effective will, where what he wants done is done. The person of God himself and the action of his will are the organizing principles of his kingdom, but everything that obeys those principles, whether by nature or by choice, is within his kingdom.

This is a great explanation of the kingdom of God – a term that has been widely misunderstood. We enter the kingdom when God becomes the King of our lives.

If we attend to what he actually said, it becomes clear that his gospel concerned only the new accessibility of the kingdom to humanity through itself.

With our new understanding of what kingdom is, much confusion is cleared up as to when it will come. It’s always been, but with Jesus there is a new availability to enter it that was not present before.

The power [electricity to the rural community] that could make their lives far better was right near them where, by making relatively simple arrangements, they could utilize it. Strangely, a few did not accept it. They did not “enter the kingdom of electricity.” Some just didn’t want to change. Others could not afford it, or so they thought.

Dallas grew up in a rural community where electricity did not become available until he was a teenager. He draws an excellent illustration from his experience to explain the availability of the Kingdom of God.

We need not fly upside down. There is a right-side up, and we can find it. – But we don’t have to. We are free. For now.

We have to believe there is a right way to live and that we can discover what it is. This is the gospel – we can enter into the eternal kind of life with Jesus right now.