American Christians are More American than Christian
I have said it for years, and I think it is truer than ever: American Christians are more American than Christian. The Church in America, in the main, liberal and conservative, is focused on trivialities rather than the gospel. They are more comfortable pursuing the American dream with a Christian veneer of spirituality than they are in pursuing a “cross-bought, cross-shaped” lifestyle measured by the gospel and the model of our Savior.
Let me flesh out what I mean by that last phrase.
To be “cross-bought” in our lifestyle is to recognize that it was through a bloody cross that we were rescued from sin, adopted into the family of God (Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5), seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6), and destined to reign with Him in glory (2 Tim. 2:12). To live that out in a lifestyle means that we are always preaching the gospel to ourselves and reminding ourselves of the great sacrifice that was made to make us His. The Apostle Paul put it this way:
“You are not your own,
for you were bought with a price.
So glorify God in your body.”
(1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
I am not my own. If you are in Christ, you are not your own. Your body, as well as your soul, is owned, bought by the blood of Christ. You don’t have the right to decide what your Christian life will be shaped like. Jesus does. And your job, because you are owned by him, is to wake up each morning and get your marching orders from Him.
But there is also to be a “cross-shape” to how we live in the world. What does this mean?
Simply this. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
In other words, we come to understand the love of God and fall in love with God because we see the love of God expressed to us in Christ. And we see the love of God expressed to us through the cross. To put it another way, the love of God comes to us, impinges upon our spirits in the shape of the cross. “When we survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died” everything changes for us. Divine love is communicated to us through the sacrifice of the cross. The cross teaches us that love is sacrificial. “God demonstrated His love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God, out of love, sacrificed for us.
In a similar way, if we want the world to see the love of God through us, then we have to accept the fact that our love will sound and look like the love of God when there is a cost associated with the delivery of the gospel. When the unbelieving world sees that we are willing to suffer and sacrifice for them, that we are willing to live for a wholly different set of values than the rest of the world around us in order to better organize our lives around the principle of the cross, then, and only then, will our gospel begin to be believable.
Let’s make becoming like Jesus more than a phrase. Let’s actually become like Jesus, in His suffering and His willingness to endure ill treatment for those with whom we would share the precious promises of the gospel.
© Marty Schoenleber, Jr. 2026.
