How to Belong to Jesus

This is a series of brief devotional articles on The Orthodox Catechism (“OC”), a Particular Baptist document written by Baptist pastor Hercules Collins in 1680. Read Part 1.

If the only comfort we have in this life is that we belong—both body and soul, in life and death—to our most faithful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Q1), then …

Question 2: What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

Answer 2: Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are;¹ second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;² third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.³

Relationship with Christ is the most important thing in your life. Everything we accomplish or hold onto as an anchor will fade away in time. James A. Baker III was a hugely important figure in American political life, but how many today even know who he is, let alone that he helped negotiate an end to the Cold War?⁴ Solomon wrote: “No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them” (Ecc 1:11).

But the comfort from the Lord that you belong to him will never change. James Baker was one of former President George H.W. Bush’s best friends. The very day he died, Bush told Baker that he was looking forward to going to heaven.⁵ After everything he’d accomplished in life—a decorated World War II pilot, politician, Director of the CIA, chair of the Republican National Committee, two-term Vice-President, one-term President—it all narrowed to one great longing: to go to heaven.

But how do get this comfort? How do we make it our own? Scripture teaches that we must realize and own three things:

1. First, that we’re in very great trouble.

We’re not righteous, which is a churchy way of saying we’re not “right” with God. We’re criminals in his eyes (“sin is lawlessness,” 1 Jn 3:4), and that’s a problem. We’re all “under the power of sin” (Rom 3:9), which means criminality infects us to the core, like so many rotten apples. This doesn’t mean we’re all cartoon serial killers, but it does mean that we’re all “criminal” in that we don’t naturally love God and so we don’t follow his law. The apostle John explained: “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:10).

So, there’s that.

2. Second, we must realize that God has provided the way out.

We can’t solve the sin problem, because we’re all products of “the system.” The apostle Paul depicts sin as a malevolent force that rules over us and this world. We can’t break out. So, there must be somebody from outside, somebody who isn’t captured and infected by this world, to blaze a trail and take us out of here (Rom 6:16-18). That person is Jesus. More on that later.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus told his heavenly father that “eternal life” meant: “that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). To “know,” in this context, means a personal relationship or friendship.⁶ We must enter into relationship with God the Father, through Christ the Son, by means of the Holy Spirit. We do that by responding to the good news he has brought to the world (Mk 1:15). “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

3. Third, we must be thankful to God for our liberation.

This means that, if God has truly rescued us from our great sin and misery, it’ll show up in our lives. There will be fruit. We show God we’re thankful by living for him (Rom 12:1-2). Our light shines in the world, so people know we belong to Christ (Mt 5:16). The apostle Paul wrote: “offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace,” (Rom 6:13-14). If God has brought us from spiritual darkness and “into the light,” then we ought to live like children of the light (Eph 5:8-10)!

The apostle Peter tells us that God has chosen his people for salvation. He made us to be royal priests who represent him to the world. He’s taken believers from the four corners of the earth and given us a spiritual citizenship that eclipses our earthly passports into deep shadow. Together, we’re God’s special possession, and our job is to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet 2:9).

If all this is true, then we prove it by the way we think and live. We have spiritual fruit. This is the concrete expression of thankfulness, and it all stems from grateful love— “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19).

The catechism goes on to explain each of these three things in more detail. But, know this—(a) you must know you’re in terrible trouble, (b) you must enter into a personal relationship with the Father, through the Son, by means of the Spirit, and (c) true faith is proven by a life of thankfulness to God.