A common topic that has come up in various ways lately is motivation. First, allow me to clearly define what I mean by “motivation”. According to dictionary.com, a motivation is “a reason or reasons one has to behave or act in a particular way.” If that is the case then the reality of motivation’s influence is inescapable since we have a reason behind everything that we do or don’t do. Typically, we aren’t just affected by one motivation but a flurry of them that may pull us in different directions simultaneously.
For example; depending on what day it is, you most likely got up and went to work or school this morning. Why? Need for income? Fear of losing your job? Desire to succeed? Love for what you do? It could be any of these, all of these, or more. However, there’s another set of motivations that work to pull us in the opposite trajectory, right? Physical tiredness, the comfort of the bed, dislike of work or to avoid the sudden cold weather that has gripped the North East, just to list a few. Every morning a war of motivations wages in us and to top it off, it’s almost entirely sub-conscious. As one of my youth groupers put it perfectly, “I usually don’t stop and think about why I do things, I just do them.” Well put,if I do say so.
Now, let’s apply that to a spiritual context by asking the question, “Why would one strive to live a ‘Christian’ life?” Let me start with the most common motivation, which I experienced in the beginning of my life as a Christian and which to be relevant in the lives of many whom I’ve spoken with. The dominant motivation, it would seem, is that most people place their faith in Jesus is because of fear: fear of punishment, fear of the consequences of their actions, fear of God Himself, or fear of man due to some variation of social pressure is the driving notion behind individual striving to be “Christian”. It may be that our understanding leads us to believe that the essence of the Christian life is to appease a holy God by doing good deeds in order to repay Him for all the bad things we’ve done. Or perhaps we might strive to live the Christian life because our parents or peers are, and we feel that we must fulfill some spiritual expectation in order to belong or prevent rejection. Those motivations are very real and powerful. However, as someone who spent the first 8 years of my Christian life primarily motivated by fear, it is not sustainable, nor is it the way the Christian life was designed to work.
The truth is that eventually we become desensitized to fear or the burden of that kind of pressure will drive us away. That’s why we typically start to more confidently rebel against our parents as teenagers because we no longer respect or fear the consequences of our actions as we had known them. Or eventually if we remain under a yoke of fear, over time we become relationally distant because we naturally work to avoid what terrifies us.
I want to conclude with the way God calls us to be motivated and what we miss out on in the Christian life when we live in fear. Paul makes it abundantly clear what the primary motivation of a follower of Christ can and should be in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15:
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this; that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
Paul is clearly stating that the love of Christ, manifested in His life, death and resurrection is the greatest motivation that a Christian can have. Notice that it is the love of Christ referred to in the past tense, implying that it is already possessed. It’s not that we live the Christian life in order to earn or maintain God’s love, but because we already are loved. “You Are Loved by Christ” is the banner Paul is running towards. That’s his inspiring meme that he would post on his Facebook page with a picture of the empty cross. He is proclaiming that not only is that what personally drives His life for Christ, but that it is the intended and most powerful motivator for every Christian.
That leads me to my final point. The main thing that a life driven by fear misses and what separates Christian obedience from any other religion…Joy. When our motivation is the love we already have been given by Christ, we are free to live not out of obligation but out of a mutual love. Following the commandments stops being just required rule-following and becomes a list of ways to express our love to God. It is not a laborious task that sucks the life out of us; it is a life-giving privilege. And that was God’s design, that we would experience joy in Him as we live for Him.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
~Jesus Christ (John 15:9-11)
