Here are a few of my stated beliefs:

God in Christ alone is my salvation.
God has made Christ to be my righteousness, my worth, and my significance.
God has adopted me through Jesus Christ.

These are beliefs that I am quick to state and explain if provided an opportunity. I am quick to affirm that there is no salvation for me apart from that which God has accomplished in the Jesus. He alone is my righteousness, worth, and significance. It is only in the Messiah that I am accepted in God’s sight. Only in him am I a beloved child in the family of God.

I could go on and on with statements like these, but I have learned that stated beliefs are often just that—stated. Those beliefs listed above are too often not functional in my life, that is, too often my thinking, desiring, and living do not flow out of them. Living daily in the truth of the Gospel is not easy. So, I have learned to ask myself questions like these:

Whom or what am I actually trusting in any given moment?
Where am I actually locating my righteousness, my worth, or my significance right now as I navigate through each day?
What am I thinking I must have right now in order to feel truly alive?

Questions like these force me to move beyond thinking merely in terms of beliefs that I affirm intellectually. They help me discern what my heart is currently believing regarding where my salvation, righteousness, and worth are found. Too often I find myself seeking “salvation” in how people think of me or in how successful I am at this or that. Though my stated belief is that Christ is my significance, I often catch myself locating my significance in my performance as a husband or father or as an orphan care advocate.

Fortunately (understatement), the gospel frees me to admit these struggles and face them head on. Jesus once said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick…I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). Seeking my salvation, righteousness, worth, or significance in anything other than God are symptoms of the sickness of which Jesus speaks here. They are symptoms of a fractured and corrupted humanity.

My default mode as a fallen human being is to seek my salvation in something other than in God’s Son, to seek my worth and significance in my vocational performance rather than in Jesus. But here’s the good news: Jesus came to seek someone like me, to call someone like me. Jesus came to seek and to save those who are looking for salvation, worth, and significance in all the wrong places. He came to restore in me that which was lost at the fall, namely, a humanity that is joyfully centered upon God.

So, because of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection, I am free to confess my sin of wayward seeking and to rejoice afresh in what God has made Jesus to be for me. Amazingly, as I do this, my stated beliefs more and more become my functional beliefs.