God’s Big Work and Our Little Mission

By: American Decency Staff

Many people wrongly believe that Christianity is simply a new set of rules and guidelines for how to behave. More recently, due to the widespread emphasis on missional living, it’s the “missional to-do list” that now determines our personal righteousness. In both cases, people find themselves feeling more like spiritual slaves than gospel-freed children of God.

This is because we easily buy into worldly thinking that claims our identity comes from what we do instead of what God has done.

We have wrongly believed that we’re human doings instead of human beings.

In the beginning, when God created humanity, he created us in his image and likeness and declared we were very good. Adam and Eve could have lived lives trusting in and resting in the work and word of God about themselves.

However, the evil one came along and questioned God’s word and work and deceptively convinced them to put their trust in his word and their own works. This was the beginning of moving from faith-based righteousness (identity based upon faith in God’s word and work to define us) to works-based righteousness (identity based upon lies from the evil one and faith in our own works).

And Adam and Eve aren’t alone. We can all tend to do this. We move from humanbeings to human doings by giving into the lure of believing lies about God and ourselves and putting our hope in our own works to define us.

But the problem is we all fall short.

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