So… Nothing Is Required of Us? Part Two

Bottom line upfront: Last week you told me what legalism did to you. This week I’m still at the beach and I have another question: practically speaking, what is required of a Christ follower? Your answers are going straight into the Spiritually Fit Today podcast.

About fifteen years ago while waiting to hear the keynote speaker at a conference, I was sitting in an auditorium next to the new president of Promise Keepers. He’d come out of prison ministry, so I asked him how the work was going. He told me: “The brothers are no longer becoming Christians while they’re in prison. They’re becoming Muslims. And you know the number one reason they give? Because in Christianity nothing is required of them.”

Just that short, ten minute conversation, left a deep impression I haven’t stopped thinking about since. It’s tragic that men in the most desperate season of their lives — hungry for structure and a way to become different men — looked at how we presented Christianity and concluded there was nothing to it. Just a decision. A prayer. So they chose a faith that demanded something of them.

Have we really communicated that following Jesus requires… nothing?

And then this January, the news broke that grieved so many of us. Philip Yancey — the author whose book What’s So Amazing About Grace? many of us read and genuinely loved — confessed publicly, at 76 and battling Parkinson’s, to an eight-year affair. He’s retired from ministry entirely. I take no pleasure in writing that. His wife’s statement broke my heart, and I pray for them both.

But I can’t stop thinking about the collision of those two words: amazing grace and eight years. Grace is real. Grace covers it — I believe that to my core. But whatever grace is, I don’t think it was ever meant to mean nothing is required of me. Even the man who taught a generation about grace says he disqualified himself. That tells me requirement and grace are not enemies. They never were.

Which brings me back to the beach, and to you.

Last week many of you wrote to me your legalism stories — the movies, the music, the hemlines, the shame. Thank you. I read them with a lump in my throat, because I lived so many of them. We agreed the Bible being the “book of no” was a distortion. But here’s the danger: when the pendulum swings from “everything is forbidden” to “nothing is required,” we don’t land on grace. We land on mush. And mush never made anybody spiritually fit.

So what is required of us? I love how simply and practically the Bible answers this question. “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” ( Micah 6:8, NIV)

Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. Those are daily, repeatable, trainable actions — it’s fitness language. Nobody calls a morning walk “legalism.” Nobody calls skipping the 33 donuts “works-based salvation.” It’s just what health requires.

So here is where I need you.

Email me at arnie.cole@bttb.org. At the top of your email, write: “Practically speaking, this is what’s required of me as a Christ follower.” Then give me your list.

A few things that will help me enormously:

• Mark each item as a daily or ongoing action — is this something you do every morning, or a posture you hold for a lifetime?

• Skip the old legalism stuff (we buried that last week).

• Keep it practical — things a real person can actually do on a Tuesday.

Thanks for your help. Like I said, your answers are going straight into the Spiritually Fit Today podcast and I will let you know when that happens.

Let’s win the day!

P.S.I hope you'll join me next week on Spiritually Fit Today. My good friend Cara Whitney joins me to tackle the tough reality of “church hurt.” We’ll talk about how we can overcome disappointment and reflect Jesus, even when others fall short.