I'm Not Too Bad and I'm Not Too Good!

Many books have been written about "abiding in Christ". If you're eternally in union with Christ, why would you have to be told to "abide" there?
Because, terrible but true, there can be a great difference between where God has placed us and how we act about it. It's as if a bride was standing at the altar being married to a really wonderful man, and as soon as the ceremony was over, she turned, yawned, sat down on the floor and read a newspaper.
Don't say, as many are apt to, "Well, this gung-ho attitude in caring for others around me is just more than I can handle. I'm not this type of person." NONE OF US IS – IN OURSELVES! "All we like sheep have gone astray." Non-Christians and Christians alike. Somehow we seem to get comfort from the fact that others are just as bad as we are. We like to think, "I'm not too good, and I'm not too bad. I'm human!"
But in that attitude you miss the very blessing, the very glory of the Christian life. You live like that and you'll settle for a half-life, and incomplete life.
"Not I, but Christ…" in Galatians 2:20 is the whole secret of abiding in Him. "He must become greater," said John the Baptist; "I must become less" (John 3:30).
Get it straight: You are either centered in Christ, abiding in Him, or you're centered in man. There is no alternative. Either Christ is the center of your universe and you are adjusting everything to Him, or you yourself have become the center, and you're struggling to make everything orbit around you and for you – and you either are miserable now, or you will be!
Some people are spiritual gypsies. They alternate between spiritual spurts and spiritual lethargy. For them there's no calm persistence in getting to know Christ within better each day. Some just "visit" Christ; they generally like Him, but they don't hang around too much. For some He's only a "shelter in the time of storm." For others He's an eternal home.
When we probe for ways of calm persistence, of course we must mention church going, prayer, Bible study, and so on. But Christians can have these things in their lives for years and yet never begin to abide in Christ.
Nevertheless, you can't abide in Him without prayer (John 15:7). To abide means to keep the fellowship and the worship lines open. It means opening ourselves up to every possible exposure of Him, every possible "means of grace".
George Fox, the founder of Quakerism in the mid-1600s, was a man with a passion to know God and to abide in Him; to know, not merely religion, but God in Christ Himself. He went everywhere inquiring of ministers of priests or laymen, anyone who could possibly tell him how he might really know God.
His relatives said, "What you need, George, is to get married." A priest advised him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms. Another minister got angry and wouldn't even answer because George had stepped in his flower bed! A doctor told him that what he needed was a good blood-letting.
George Fox eventually came to know the Lord Himself and came to write this:
"Unless you know God in Christ, every day communing with Him, rejoicing in Him, exulting in Him, opening your life in joyful obedience toward Him, and feeling Him speaking to you and guiding you into ever fuller obedience to Him – you aren't fit to be a minister."
Or we could apply this more broadly and say you're not even fit to be a Christian.
A man once visited his friend, a music teacher. The visitor said, "Well, what's the good news today?" (A modern greeting might be, "Well, what's up?") The teacher went over to a tuning fork, struck it, and said, "That, my friend, is A. It was A all day yesterday. It will be A all day today, tomorrow, next week, and for a thousand years. The soprano upstairs warbles off-key. The tenor next door flats out on the high notes. The piano across the hall is often out of tune. But that" - striking the tuning fork again – "that is A. And that's the good news today!"
Christian friends, the truth and the good news today is that Christ is "A"! He's where it's at! Terrible grammar but magnificent truth. Christ lives in you and you live in Christ, and the position of both of you is immovable.
In your new birth, God has given you natural talents and abilities. The Bible calls these "spiritual gifts". In this age of narcissism some Christians are pouncing on spiritual gifts in an over-emphasis on self-analyses and testings and comparisons. But no matter how you analyze what you have, you must not count them like treasures to be gloated over, but spend them immediately and remain "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3). Our talents become stagnant without an outflow and a replenishment in Christ.
There is a problem passage about the Vine and the branch in John 15:6. It says,
"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
By the new birth, Christians are forever united to Christ. He will never leave them or forsake them. There is no condemnation, only correction. But in this verse, here's a Christian who once drew strength from Christ, but now he doesn't. He's no longer abiding. If we want to interpret this scripture correctly, we must interpret it in the light of the great stream of the teaching of the Word of God. And that says, when you're a believer, God keeps you. That truth isn't just a thread through scripture, it's a thick rope – a life-saving rope.
So the branch, or the child of God, isn't to be lost. But it can be that he falls away from fruitbearing and usefulness, even though he doesn't fall away from salvation.
A key to this scripture may be the word-picture that comes out of Ezekiel 15:2-4, which says that the vine has two functions: one more noble, to bear fruit; the other, less noble, to serve as kindling wood. In John 15:6 the men gather the dead branches and throw them into a fire.
Christian, if you're not abiding, if you're not bearing fruit, God gives you over to less noble usefulness. He says, "All right, if that's all you want to be, so be it. If you simply want to be an accountant, then all you'll be is an accountant; that's it. Or you'll be just a housewife; that's all. Or if you're determined just to be a student, then study, study, study. That's all you'll be!"
People will use you. There's nothing wrong with that – you won't be a "zero", but neither will you be bearing fruit for God for eternity and glory for Him. There will be nothing supernatural, nothing really great, only momentary and lesser activities going on in your life.
In 1 Corinthians 3:15 Paul writes of the same thing: "If [a man's work] is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."
Jesus gives yet another illustration of greater and lesser usefulness in the Sermon on the Mount. "You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" (Matthew 5:13). Let me paraphrase the rest of the verse, if I may. It's no longer good for its highest intended use – salt for the table – but only to keep the ice off the ground in cold weather, to be thrown out and trampled down by men. That is a type of usefulness – to keep from slipping and falling down. But that's certainly a far lesser use.
Yes, bearing fruit beats burning for kindling wood. Yes, flavoring a good meal beats being thrown out on the ice.
And you're never to be static. John 15 talks about "fruit", "more fruit", "much fruit", and "fruit that will last". You, as a believer, are in the process of becoming and becoming and becoming.
Christians must not get locked into yesterday. You're either becoming or you're degenerating. Of course, it's hard to have the patience to develop this quality of life. We want success quickly. On television every mystery is solved in an hour; every laundry problem is taken care of in 30 seconds. But "becoming" in Christ takes time.
But let me tell you something wonderful. God began a process at your new birth which is IRREVERSIBLE. Like it or not, kick and scream if you will at times, if you have a new birth as a Christian, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).
If you saw a tadpole when he's half frog, you wouldn't say he's a hypocrite, you'd say he's in the process of becoming a frog. And so with you and me. We're on our way from earthly to totally heavenly!
Kids progress, don't they? They're one thing when they're two years old and another when they're eight or fifteen or thirty or seventy (like me!).
Just be sure of this: just as genes dictate that a tadpole will someday be a frog, and that a baby will grow to be an adult human, so God's DNA in us dictates that we will someday be totally like Christ.
So, in conclusion, it is always a false premise when a Christian says that he is not too bad and not too good. We are not mediocre people. We used to have a totally sinful nature. But now by our new birth, we have a TOTALLY DIVINE NATURE because Jesus Christ came to indwell us. It is only as we understand and apply this knowledge that we can be fruit-bearing branches of the Divine Vine rather than be much less functional as kindling wood. It is only as we recognize who we are in union with Christ that we can be flavoring salt for the table rather than less functional salt to be thrown out on the ice.
The whole purpose of our life on earth is to grow by trial and error, by God's love and correction in our lives, to the understanding that "not too bad and not too good" has no real application in a Christian's life. As unbelievers we were "naturally" bad and anything we did which appeared good still had selfish motives.
As believers containing the indwelling Christ, we are now "naturally" good because the Father sees the righteousness of Christ within us. Any "badness" or sinful action we do now is a slipup of weakness in our own power. We "miss the mark" as the Hebrew root of the word "sin" indicates.
Sin in an unbeliever is serious AND fatal. "The wages of sin is death…" (Romans 6:23a). Without the work of Jesus on the Cross, ALL would earn death for their sin.
Sin in a believing Christian child of God is serious BUT non-fatal! "…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23b).
A true Christian HAS eternal life in Christ right now. He will never leave us or forsake us. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Jesus has applied the death sentence for our sin upon Himself by the Cross and all anyone must do is accept Him as Savior and Lord.
This is no mediocre "not too bad" or "not too good" situation. It is an either/or situation.
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Either you are "bad" living independent from God – or you are "good" living in union with God through the indwelling Jesus Christ.

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