Obligatory Duty.

“He died for me why wouldn’t I live for him.” I hate this statement. Not only because it’s cliché but also because it is filled with bad Theology. But this mindset is a very difficult thing to get away from.

The mindset is this: To live in such a manner that is either 1) attempting at paying God back for saving one's soul or 2) attempting at making God love one more by doing or not doing a prescribed list. The affect of this is to kill the Christian, to choke out the newly forming plant because there is no air for it to be itself.

(We’ve this idea in our brains that all Christians should look exactly alike… I'm gonna go ahead and completely disagree. Will there be similarities, for sure, but will we all look just like each other, no, thank God. Because, quite frankly, I don’t want to be another Billy Graham or John Piper.)

The issue with the above (dumb) cliché is this: The Christian life is lived out of gratitude not duty. To hold to the above statement is to simply say that because someone did something for me now I’ll pay him or her back. Do you see the nonsense here? If there ever were a love for the one who redeemed one there would be an understanding of the great incapableness to even attempt at paying him back.

It must be understood to live for Christ is to do so gratefully as a since of love toward him, an overflow, if you will. To love him as a sense of duty would be like buying something for someone you love and telling them, “I got you this because I have to.”