There are two things I know for sure: 1) life is simple, and 2) life is definitely not simple. The one statement is as fundamentally true as the other. Let me explain.
Physical life is sustained in the following way: you get up in the morning, perform your necessary ablutions, have a good breakfast, and head off into the day. It helps to keep good posture and get some exercise—basic things your mother told you as a child. Generally speaking, a healthy lifestyle is a relatively simple matter for the average individual to pursue.
But what is actually happening in your body as you get out of bed and head to the breakfast table? The most brilliant biochemists stand agape at the intricacies of the chemical reactions occurring in the cell. The human body is composed of hundreds of trillions of cells. Each cell contains an average of 13 trillion bits of information—enough to fill 500,000 pages in a library. These cells are highly specialized, providing us with such services as the ability to see, smell, and taste our food, the muscular movement of our hands, jaws, heart and diaphragm, and the wonders of our immune system, the blood clotting mechanism and digestion. In order to accomplish even one step in any of these actions, a whole series of events must take place in the right order at the right time. Protein, for example, when utilized in a cell, travels only about one ten-thousandths of an inch from the cytoplasm where it is synthesized to the lysosome where it will conclude its task, yet it requires dozens of other proteins to make this journey successfully. These mind-boggling processes occur in our bodies billions of times every day. And as long as the machinery of life works as God designed it, we rarely—if ever—think about it.
In a similar way, the world around us carries on. Neither I nor the scientists who study light really understand it. Is light comprised of waves or particles? Sometimes it acts like one, sometimes like the other. Yet I do not need to understand light or photosynthesis to enjoy their benefits. I use a simple ON-OFF switch to illuminate my life. And, just as surely, munching on lettuce unlocks the energy of the sun in my body.
I have heard many messages preached on Romans 6–8 and often wonder if even the preacher understands “how it all works,” let alone his hearers. And while I am even more curious about how justification and sanctification work than I am about life at work in my body, the complexities of the doctrines should not keep me from enjoying the Christian life any more than struggling with how polysaccharides store energy should keep me from enjoying the first peach of summer.
When I have engaged my mind to its limits in seeking to understand how the Christian life “works” and still fail to understand these ministries of the Spirit described in such marvellous detail in the Word of God, it comes down to this: my soul needs hygiene (we are sanctified and cleansed “with the washing of water by the Word,” Eph. 5:26) and food (“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life,” Jn. 6:27, nkjv), exercise (“For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things,” 1 Tim. 4:8) and good posture (see Rom. 5:2; 1 Cor. 2:5; Gal. 5:1) as much as my body does. How can I expect to be healthy in spirit if I neglect these daily essentials?
But the Christian life is simpler yet. Paul writes: “I fear, lest…your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). We need a return to first principles, first love, first works. If Christ is first in my day, thoughts, plans, and desires, I will have found the uncomplicated secret of the simple side of life: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:24-25). Christianity is not rules and regulations, formulas or equations. “The truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21). Christianity is Christ, a loving relationship with the One who is Life itself.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr