Salt and Light: Why Did He Die? 

By Brent Davis, Campus Ministry Coordinator 

As we enter Holy Week, most Christians can answer why Jesus died: “to save us from our sins.”
But what if that answer is incomplete? 

Paul wrote,  

9So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. 

11We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, 12always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. (Colossians 1: 9-14, NLT) 

 

Salvation is not only rescue—it is relocation into a new way of life under Christ’s rule. Yes, Jesus purchased our freedom at the cross, but that was so we could be transferred into His kingdom. In other words, He did not simply give you a “Get out of hell, free!” card, but also naturalization papers. 

Now, when my wife was naturalized, she swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. When we accept Christ, we are also giving Him our allegiance, not just taking our “Get out of hell, free!” card and making an offhand promise to drop by church on Easter and Christmas. Put another way, we become disciples, and disciples do all that stuff Paul was praying for the disciples in Colossae: learning to know God better and growing, wisely living in a way that pleases God with strength and patience—filled with joy! Doesn’t that sound better than just a “Get out of hell” card? 

So ask yourself: 

• Am I growing in knowing God?  

• Am I living in a way that pleases Him?  

• Am I marked by joy? 

If the answer was ‘no,’ you are missing out on all or some of the benefits of being in the Kingdom of God. Paul again states the goal of being a disciple in Colossians 1: 28 (ESV): “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” What is Paul’s wise teaching that leads us to being mature in Christ? If you want to reach a goal, you must know the goal. For the disciple, one must know Christ as the example of maturity. Next, Paul notes what does not work to develop maturity, asceticism (2: 18). Instead, we are to hold on to Christ because we receive nourishment from Him. Specifically, asceticism does not help us stop indulging ourselves (2: 23). Paul is implying we need a relationship not just a rule. This is striking! 

Paul continues, set your minds on things above (focus)! Noted psychologist Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus notes that:  

Our focus continually fights distractions, both inner and outer. The question is, What are our distractors costing us? An executive at a financial firm tells me, “When I notice that my mind has been somewhere else during a meeting, I wonder what opportunities I’ve been missing right here.” Patients are telling a physician I know that they are “self-medicating” with drugs for attention deficit disorder or narcolepsy to keep up with their work. A lawyer tells him, “If I didn’t take this, I couldn’t read contracts.” Once patients needed a diagnosis for such prescriptions; now for many those medications have become routine performance enhancers. Growing numbers of teenagers are faking symptoms of attention deficit to get prescriptions for stimulants, a chemical route to attentiveness. And Tony Schwartz, a consultant who coaches leaders on how to best manage their energy, tells me, “We get people to become more aware of how they use attention—which is always poorly. Attention is now the number-one issue on the minds of our clients.”

Did you just lose focus?

So, should we become digital ascetics? No, Paul already said the answer is relationships not rules. We do, however, need to put off vices and put on virtues (3: 5-14). Pray, soak up God’s word, and then do everything in the name of Jesus, or as Dallas Willard put it:

My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself. If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live. We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities he engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities he himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of his Father. What activities did Jesus practice? Such things as solitude and silence, prayer, simple and sacrificial living, intense study and meditation upon God’s Word and God’s ways, and service to others. Some of these will certainly be even more necessary to us than they were to him, because of our greater or different need. But in a balanced life of such activities, we will be constantly enlivened by “The Kingdom Not of This World”—the Kingdom of Truth as seen in John 18:36–37. (The Spirit of the Disciplines, loc. 93)

Live connected to God.
Live wisely.
Live joyfully.

Grow into maturity in Christ—
not just rescued, but fully alive in His Kingdom.

… and—get out of hell, free!