What Explains Your Life?

"The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus Christ, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you—your personality, your willpower, your gift, your talent, your money, your courage, your scholarship, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything—then although you may have the Christian life, you are not yet living it." Ian Thomas

I have to admit…I am speechless when it comes to this quote. 

The heart conviction that accosted me when reading this was intense. How often have I tried to explain my life in terms of what I’ve done?

This quote cuts straight through the noise of modern Christianity and asks an uncomfortable question. 

What really explains my life? Christ…or myself?

Often, we find ourselves telling our faith story by using familiar markers—our discipline, our intellect, our generosity, our resilience in temptation. None of these are bad things in themselves.

But Ian Thomas reminds us that when these become the main explanation for our Christian life, we’ve shifted the center away from Christ.

Christianity is not self-improvement with a spiritual gloss. It is not about becoming a better version of ourselves through religious effort. Scripture is blunt— “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The very core subject of Christianity is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That means our personality, talents, and resources are no longer the source—they are the instruments. As Paul says, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

This perspective is both humbling and freeing. 

Humbling— because it strips away our pride and the quiet, incorrect belief that we are holding everything together. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30)

Freeing—because it releases us from the exhausting pressure to perform, impress, or prove our worth to God or others. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). If Jesus Christ is truly the explanation of our life, then failure doesn’t disqualify us and success doesn’t define us. “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).

We are called to pick up the cross and follow Christ (Luke 9:23). We are called to deny ourselves—not our humanity, but our insistence on being our own source. We are invited into a new identity: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”(2 Corinthians 5:17). No longer self-defined, but Christ-defined. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

We must live the Christian life by shifting the source away from ourselves and anchoring it fully in Christ—“being rooted and built up in Him” (Colossians 2:6–7).

It’s all Christ and has always been.“Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).

Christ is our source.“In Him was life” (John 1:4).

Christ is who we are defined by. “For to me, to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).

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