The Christian Lifestyle

For too long, christians have been taught that just saying a prayer will keep them safe from Divine Judgement. When we read the Scriptures, however, a different picture emerges.

We are not saved by our good deeds, but we are saved for a life of good deeds. (See Ephesians 2:10). In other words, we are saved by faith in Jesus’s completed work on the cross, and nothing we can do will impress God. On the other hand, once we are saved, the Lord expects us to live a lifestyle marked by care for other, worship to God and discipline in our fleshly desires.

Back in the day, our culture was marked by norms that basically derived from hundreds of years of church teaching and reflection on the Bible. That is not to say that everybody was christian, but it was assumed that there was a certain expectation of the way people would live.

Since the 1960’s there has been a rapid shift away from this belief that christian values should define our culture. This is shown by church attendance. In 1901, the year of Federation in Australia, approximately 95% of the population described themselves as christians, and weekly church attendance was standard. Today, less than 20% of the population attend church even once a month.

The development of the contraceptive pill in the 1960’s gave women the freedom to be as sexually promiscuous as men, with the protection of knowing they would be spared the inconvenience of a pregnancy. Sexuality was separated from reproduction and therefore marriage. Within a couple of generations, this has morphed into the expectation of freedom to have sexual activity with anyone of any sex and any number as often as desired.

In parallel with this, atheist, humanist and materialistic philosophies became adopted by the general population. After all, with our new freedom we didn’t need a God or a church to be telling us how to live our lives.

So over a period of 60 or so years, the church has gone from being able to set the agenda for the culture to being seen as “out of touch” with modern society. Many christians seem to take up the cultural values as the norm, rather than allowing Scripture to transform their thinking (Romans 12:2).

In this series of articles I will talk about the ways in which God’s standards run counter to the standards of the Bible in areas such as sexuality, possessions, lifestyle and so on.
The first principle we will cover is that all people are in a sense “owned” by God and therefore have a responsibility to live up to His plans not their own desires.