The God Who is There: Part 12 – The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People

Listen or read the following transcript from The Gospel Coalition as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology from Ephesians 2:1-18.

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Hello again. My name is Don Carson. Especially in the West, a great deal of our outlook is characterized by a certain rugged individualism. Clearly, such individualism can inspire raw courage and heroic leadership. Frankly, however, it can also stifle interest in others while fostering intense introspection. It regularly lacks candor and humility in its dealings with others while breeding condescending dismissal of others.

In this talk on The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People, I want to fill in a little of what the Bible says about the church. I am talking about God’s people, the church, not, of course, about church buildings. The Bible readily talks about God’s love for the church, about the church as an organism, a body, about how the church stands out as different from the world while bearing witness to the world and deeply concerned for it.

The church is the only human institution that goes into eternity. While many today speak of how their brand of spirituality really doesn’t need the church or any form of organized religion, the God who is there in the Bible presents a startlingly different view of the church for which his Son shed his life’s blood.

In one of his more recent books, the articulate and very interesting atheist and critic of Christianity, Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) argues the whole record of all religion is toward war and hatred and strife. Whether the Protestant Catholic strife of Belfast in recent decades or Beirut between historically Christian and historically Muslim heritage or Belgrade or Baghdad or Bombay, all around the world religion poisons everything.

It has to be said there is some truth to the charge. It’s not for nothing that centuries back the Thirty Years War was in very large measure in Europe a war of religion. The reason why there is some truth to the charge is because one of the things all religion does is transcendentalize issues. That is, it ups the ante by making the issues important.

Today the current round of dominant terrorists are from Islam, and undoubtedly, they would like to see Islamic culture in place and have a bigger share of financial and cultural pie and influence in the world and so on, but what transcendentalizes their beliefs is their conviction that they represent the mind of God himself.

Mind you, it has also been shown by Alister McGrath in his book on atheism that if you don’t have religion to transcendentalize things, you end up transcendentalizing something else. In other words, the transcendentalizing is not merely a function of religion; it’s a function of human desire to control.

In the twentieth century, for example, the great movements of Nazism and Stalinism were not religiously driven movements. Sometimes in Nazism, the parties claimed a certain kind of background in Christianity, but in point of fact, what drove the two movements.… On the one hand, it was the transcendentalizing of the state and on the other it was the transcendentalizing of race and ethnicity and intrinsic, Teutonic superiority.

It’s not as if religion poisons everything and everything else is good. The century of the greatest bloodshed, the twentieth century, was a century in which it was not religious movements that caused all of this. You don’t lose one-third of the population of Cambodia because of Christianity but because of communism. Where one sees that biblical Christianity is bound up with salvation by grace, however, it ought to change everything.

Tim Keller in New York writes, “Belief that you are accepted by God by sheer grace is profoundly humbling. The people who are fanatics, then, are not so because they are too committed to the gospel but because they’re not committed enough.” If you get just a certain kind of superficial quantity of Bible gospel Christian heritage and become convinced it’s the best and everybody else must have the best too, then it’s not going to be too long before you have some new Crusades in the name of Christianity.

On the other hand, if you really do drink deeply from what we have been seeing the Bible is about as we work through the entire text and see that, finally, our hope is in grace not because we’re stronger or better (we’re never more than poor beggars telling other poor beggars where there’s bread), it changes everything, which is why biblical Christianity has always had within its heritage the capacity to challenge and reform. That’s why, however ghastly and defenseless the Crusades were, it’s the Christian heritage in the West that has apologized for them countless times.

After all, Islam took over the Middle East first with equal bloodthirstiness, and there is no trace in the heritage of Islam of any apology for any of it. It’s what they expect because there is not built into the very structure of the heritage a similar understanding that at the end of the day we stand or fall by grace. Thus, the slavery that was enacted and developed in the West was also eventually destroyed by Christians who were trying to become more biblical and challenged everything.

Thomas Cole, himself by his own confession not a Christian, analyzes what takes place under Wilberforce and similar movements in Great Britain until, first, the slave trade across the Atlantic and then, eventually, slavery itself is abolished in the empire. He notes what drives it … what drives it … is simply a Christian concern to do what is right before God since we all stand under his wrath and are in need of his grace.

Do you know when slavery was finally abolished the British government undertook to pay all the great sugarcane farmers of Jamaica and elsewhere under the British Crown the price of the slaves to free them? The promise was for half the national GDP and they undertook it, not because it was going to save them money, but because of Christian influence regarding what was right or wrong.

That doesn’t justify all the wickedness that was done beforehand, but it does remind us that the Bible, superficially undertaken, can be used in all kinds of shameful ways, but when you come across what the gospel is genuinely about, it is humbling. It does not make people arrogant. It transforms them.

In the previous session we saw how the cross of Jesus is the ground of our reconciliation. God propitiates himself. He sets aside his own wrath because he’s the God of love and satisfies his sense of justice in the person of his own dear Son and in grace reconciles rebels to himself who come simply to him by appropriating this reconciliation, this justification by faith.

We saw this salvation is granted by grace alone; it is received by faith alone. This is true for Jews and Gentiles alike, but in another of Paul’s letters, Paul takes this argument in a slightly different direction. What I’m going to do in this session is not focus on one short paragraph and unpack it in detail; I’m going to read two or three passages at length and just offer some brief comments along the way so you can hear Paul’s argument now in a slightly different key.

This is not the next letter in the Canon, but it’s part of a string of Paul’s letters: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and now Ephesians. Ephesians, chapter 2. Paul is writing to believers now in the city of Ephesus, and he describes their conversion. He says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air …” That’s a way of alluding to Satan and Paul.

“… the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” So you still hear the same kinds of overtones that you see in Romans.

“But because of his great love for us …” Despite the fact we deserved the wrath. “… God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ …” That is Christ’s life is now ours. “… and seated us with him in the heavenly realms …” God views us as acceptable in his very presence in the heavenly realms as Christ himself is.

We are united to him. That’s the way God sees us. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” It all sounds very Romans-like, doesn’t it? And it gets stronger.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith …” That sounds like Romans 3. “… and this not from yourselves …” That is, not even the faith is from yourselves. “… it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” That sounds like Romans 3. Then we’re told, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

In other words, Paul is not concerned to have us legally acquitted alone. The guilt must be dealt with. The ground of God’s wrath must be set aside. God himself must be propitiated. The sin must be expiated, but that still leaves me functionally a sinner. We saw in an earlier session there are several things we need. We need to be reconciled to this God, but we ourselves must be changed.

We saw some glimpse of that in the new birth, did we not? Now you’re getting the same thing in a slightly different key in Paul. There must be transformation. This change, this new creation, this handiwork of God within us is precisely so we will do good works, not because the good works have secured our place in God but precisely because they are the inevitable outcome of it.

In fact, if you recall, Romans 3 talked about Jews and Gentiles both under wrath, both being saved by grace through faith. Paul now talks about Jews and Gentiles again. Listen to what he says as he goes on in this chapter. “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth …” I’m sure that’s most of us in this room. “… and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (which is done in the body by the human hands) …” That is, the Jews.

“… remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise …” That is, the covenant with Abraham and the covenant of Law with Moses. You were not part of that heritage. Formerly, that’s the way it was. “… excluded from citizenship in Israel, and thus, without hope and without God in the world. But now …” There’s that Pauline but now. Now with the coming of Christ, this has changed.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” The blood of Christ to which reference is made in Romans 3, by his death on our behalf. “For he himself [Christ Jesus] is our peace …” What does he mean? “… who has made the two one …” That is, Jew and Gentile, an antithesis, a dysfunction, an opposition, a resentment, a suspicion between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman Empire and today.

“But Christ himself is our peace who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.” That is, we are no longer under that Law covenant which was for the Israelites and, thus, distinguished them from others, but now there is something new.

“His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace …” A new locus of the people of God made up of Jew and Gentile, people drawn from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. A new humanity making peace. “… and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross …” That is, not only reconciling them to each other and, thus, making peace but reconciling them to God and, thus, making peace so his wrath does not rest on us. All of this the cross achieves.

“His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away …” That is, Gentiles. “… and peace to those who were near.” That is, Jews. “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

Now I could have introduced the theme of God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, much earlier in this series. One has to pick and choose when one flies through the Bible at this speed. Sometimes the Bible speaks of God sending his Spirit but also of the Spirit talking. The Spirit is regularly presented not merely as an abstract power but as somehow like the eternal Word, like the eternal Son, the very self-disclosure and self-manifestation of God himself.

Indeed, on the night he is betrayed and then is carted off to trial and then crucifixion, according to John’s gospel, chapters 14 through 16, he talks at great length of the Spirit whom he will send. He calls him the Holy Spirit, or he uses another word that is harder to translate. It’s parakletos in the original. We sometimes transliterate it Paraclete. It means someone who comes alongside and helps in a variety of ways.

He may help by giving us strength. In John’s gospel, he helps also by bringing conviction of sin to people who are otherwise self-righteous. He comes also to be the very presence and manifestation of God now that the Son is going to the cross and rising again and returning to his heavenly abode. It is the Spirit who is poured out upon us as the very presence of God himself amongst us. He is said to be the One who takes up residence in people’s lives transforming them, giving them power.

Indeed, in the apostle Paul the Holy Spirit is sometimes called (this is stunning) the down-payment of the promised inheritance, so that if the ultimate inheritance, the ultimate blessing we are to receive is a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, transformed resurrection bodies, a perfect world, the down-payment of that according to Paul is the Holy Spirit himself.

That’s why Christians speak of the Trinity. God, one God, but somehow complex. Three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) yet one God so united, so one in purpose and will, so all God that you cannot separate them and make three Gods; nevertheless, that is the set of categories in which the New Testament speaks, and it is the Holy Spirit now who has been poured out upon us Christians such that he is seen as the down-payment of the promised inheritance, the One who transforms us, the One who changes our hearts and minds, the One who gives us new birth.

We did see something of the work of the Spirit there, did we not? Born of water and Spirit? That is, cleaned up. That’s what born of water symbolizes in the prophecy of Ezekiel and born of Spirit. That is with God’s own life coming within us and changing us and transforming us. It’s a new birth characterized by being cleaned up and changed by God himself as his Spirit takes up residence within us.

Now Paul, when he talks about this new humanity that forms because of what Christ has done on the cross, all given by grace, and received by faith in order to bring peace and to do good works as we are strengthened by God himself. “We have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Now jump ahead in Ephesians to watch how this works out in a variety of ways. Jump ahead to 4:17.

After Paul has worked out some of the theology just a wee bit, run through this text rather quickly. “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” That is, the Gentiles in their pre-Christian days. “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” The hardening of their hearts? That sounds like Romans 1: “… suppressing the truth in unrighteousness …”

“Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. That ThatThat, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by the deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Did you hear that? Created? The power of God in creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is now being displayed again in a new creation, a new creation that is every bit as real as the first creation, not yet consummated in the transformation of the ultimate creation but already working out in the lives of believers.

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” This new humanity. “ ‘In your anger do not sin.’ Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Verse 30: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit …” That presupposes again the Holy Spirit is a person. You don’t grieve a power. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Sealed. Marked out as God’s because he is already within you. He has already come as the down-payment of the promised inheritance. You are set aside for him, so that if you live as none of this has happened, you grieve God as he has disclosed himself by his Spirit within you. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

You’re back to the cross again. Do you hear what is being said? Biblical Christianity does not come along with a whole lot of rules. We who are Christian pastors and preachers sometimes get this wrong ourselves. We see certain signs of decay in a culture, for example, or certain kinds of sliding morally in the church, and if we’re not careful, our very first instinct is to say, “No! That’s bad. Don’t do that. Do this instead.”

You will show how righteous you are, how good you are, how disciplined you are by imposing all these rules and orders in your life. After all, this text is talking about things we should do and shouldn’t do: getting rid of bitterness and malice and speaking the truth and all those kinds of things. Of course, there are some moral structures there. Yet, the motivation is not more rules. “Forgive each other as in Christ God has forgiven you.”

There is a powerful sense in which the way God’s Spirit transforms us is by bringing us back to the cross so all of our morality is first and foremost a function of gratitude. If you begin to see just how much you were forgiven by what Christ did on the cross, how on earth can you possibly nurture bitterness toward others?

If you see what is still in store in the future that you’ve already received in part by the down-payment of the Spirit who does strengthen your moral resolve and gives you vistas of a new heaven and a new earth, how can you possibly be locked into the agonizing, painful, limited concerns of the world that finally will pass away? You are destined for eternity with God Almighty. It changes everything.

When there is a moral slide in the church or in the broader world, what we must have more of is a right, thick, rich understanding of the gospel, for it transforms us, and by the Holy Spirit whom Jesus bequeathed, empowers us to live in a way that was different from the way we lived before. We are back at the language of the new birth. Do you recall?

Everyone who has this life in himself doesn’t live the way he or she used to live. Like the wind, where we might not understand the mechanism but you see the results, so it is with those who are born of God. So it is with those who have the Spirit. We read 5:1. “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us …”

Do you see this intermingling again of God’s love and Christ’s love? You cannot have one without the other. They are together, and because we have received so much from God in Christ Jesus, we are the objects of such love. How can we not also love? “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for the Lord’s people.”

That is, not simply improper because it’s against the Law, though that might be true, but improper because you’ve been bought with a price. You’re the Lord’s people. You’re dishonoring the Lord, the Lord who loved you even to the death of the cross. “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” It is thanksgiving that is the underlay of all Christian morality.

“For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Do you hear that? Greed is idolatry, because what you most want becomes your god. What you most urgently pursue becomes your god.

Idolatry does not require some little figurine made of stone or clay or pottery or some giant figure of a god carved somewhere out of a mountainside. Idolatry is anything and everything that displaces God, that makes me try to find my identity and place in the universe by something or someone other than God. Thus, greed itself establishes who our really gods finally are.

But for Christians who have been reconciled to God by the death of Christ and have been exposed to something of God’s spectacular glory and grandeur, not least in the cross … listen … “No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.”

That’s the change of heart. The change of heart has come so we want to please the Lord and we’re eager to find out what pleases him. Biblical, transformational Christianity gathers men and women together, called out, Jew or Gentile (it doesn’t matter), and under the lordship of Christ as we look back to the cross and look forward to what is still ahead, we want …

We want by the power of the Spirit. We want because of a change in our own lives. We want because of this new creation. We want to find out what pleases the Lord. God help us. We’re so inconsistent even in this. We’re not, finally, transformed yet, but Christians look back and see they’re not what they were.

The name John Newton might mean something to you if you saw the film on Wilberforce, Amazing Grace. John Newton was that old slave trader. He figured he had transported 20,000 slaves across the Atlantic, and in his nightmares he could still hear them scream. Then he was converted, genuinely converted, and his life changed.

Ultimately, he became a pastor, and he wrote at one point, “I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I want to be; I am not what I hope to be … but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.” That’s the testimony of Christians. Chapter 5, verse 8: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.”

One more passage with similar antithesis. This is in Galatians 5, one book back from Ephesians. A lot of the argument of Galatians is parallel to the argument in Romans again about what justification is, what the cross achieves, but, of course, as soon as you emphasize those things, you also must talk about how people need changing. It’s not just that we must stand acquitted before God and be reconciled to him. It’s not just that we now have peace with God in some legal sense, as important and foundational as all of that is. We must be transformed.

We read 5:13: “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” That is, called when you became Christians to be free. “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command …” It points in this direction. This is the direction in which it points. The direction is, “Love your neighbor as yourself …”

Verse 16: “So I say, walk by the Spirit …” The Spirit who has been poured out upon us because of what Christ has achieved. “… and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.”

You can identify the acts of the sinful nature. They’re listed for us in the next verses. “… sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like,” which pretty much covers it. “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Listen. Over against that stands the fruit of the Spirit, because God is the God who not only gathers his people into one community but transforms them. He gathers his people into one community, and he transforms them. Biblical Christianity is deeply concerned with reconciling guilty people to God, not only reconciling them but transforming them. In one old Christian hymn, we sing, “He breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free.”

That is, he does cancel sin through what Christ has done on the cross, but he pours out the Spirit, too, and then he breaks the power of cancelled sin. We read, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another.”

Indeed, there are a lot of ways the New Testament has for talking about this sort of thing. One of the most striking comes from the teaching of Jesus himself. He points out he himself goes to the cross, and then he says, “If you would be my disciples, you must take up your cross and follow me.” He says it several times.

We hear that expression today and it’s not powerful anymore. In fact, some of us have made jokes about it. “Oh, this horrible toothache. We all have our cross to bear,” and our cross becomes some minor irritation or a nasty in-law. “We all have our cross to bear.” In the first century, you never made jokes like that.

In the first century, crucifixion was so awful that handbooks were actually written on the responsibility of parents not to talk about crucifixion to their children, not to show crucifixion to their children. If there is a crucifixion site, they should take their children to some other place. There were no jokes about crucifixion in the ancient world. Not one has come down to us. You could no more joke about crucifixion in the ancient world than you could joke about Auschwitz today. It was unthinkable.

We talk about how we all have our cross to bear, and Jesus has the cheek to turn to his disciples and say, “Unless you take up your cross, you can’t be my disciple.” Taking up the cross in those circumstances did not mean taking up your particular little bit of suffering; it meant you take up the cross member out to the place of crucifixion where you will suffer and die. It meant death to self-interest.

Most of us are not going to be crucified in that literal sense, but we follow a Master who was, and Jesus says, “If I have been crucified, don’t you understand? If you are to be my disciple, you must be crucified, too.” Not in the same physical way for most of us, but a death to self-interest and a coming under his lordship as he himself obeyed his own heavenly Father perfectly.

That’s why Paul, in another of these short letters, can actually say, “It has been granted to you, you Christians, on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on his name …” There’s the faith. “… but also to suffer for his sake.” Do you realize that? It has been granted to you who are Christians here a gracious gift, a grant not only to believe (that’s a gift) but also to suffer for Jesus. You take up your cross.

In Christ’s way of looking at it, that’s a privilege. In the perspective of the earliest Christians, it was a privilege, such that when the apostles were first beaten up, it is said of them, “They rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer for the Name.” Amy Carmichael wrote the poem, Hast Thou No Scar?

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;

I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.

Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?

Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,

Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent

By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.

Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?

Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,

And pierced are the feet that follow Me.

But thine are whole; can he have followed far

Who hast no wound or scar?

In an atmosphere where there is no self-pity at all, it is merely the mark of a transformed life. I read in a journal not long ago a paragraph. I just have to read it to you. In April of 1942, Jacob DeShazer was a bombardier in the Doolittle Raid over Japan. That’s the Doolittle Raid that basically turned Tokyo into a furnace. With four other crewmen, he bailed out. Two of them were executed; the others spent the rest of the war (three years and four months) in prison camps.

They were beaten, tortured, and starved. At some point, DeShazer asked for a Bible. They brought him one allowing him to keep it for three weeks. He later wrote, “I eagerly began to read its pages. I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes and that when I looked at the enemy officers and guards who had starved and beaten my companions and me so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity.”

He survived and dedicated his life to missionary work in Japan. One of his converts was Mitsuo Fuchida, the lead pilot in the Pearl Harbor attack. Fuchida became an evangelist. Jacob DeShazer died in Salem, Oregon in 2008 at the age of 95. Rest in peace. Because, you see, this is a God who gathers and transforms his people.

I have to read you one more clip, and then I’m done, written by an atheist. It’s wonderful. Matthew Parris. “Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean.

I went to see this work. It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But traveling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too; one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now, a confirmed atheist, I’ve been convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects, and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa, Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding—as you can—the practical work of mission churches in Africa. ‘It’s a pity,’ I would say, ‘that salvation is part of the package,’ but Christians, black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be a better place without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then fine; but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. That is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing. First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village.

In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world—a directness in their dealings with others—that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, traveling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi. We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential toward strangers—in some ways less so—but more open.

This time [this trip before Christmas] in Malawi, it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. ‘Privately’ because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages.

But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service. It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence, and optimism in their work was unconnected with their personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the universe that Christianity had taught.”

He goes on. Listen. The God who is there, the God who has named himself supremely in Jesus gathers and transforms his people. Without this transformation, the Christianity so-called you perceive is no Christianity at all, for this God gathers and transforms his people.