One of the most powerful criticisms of Christians in the West today is that we seem no different to anyone else living in society. Our values, lifestyle, choices are pretty much the same as those who have no faith or a different faith. ‘You’re no better than the rest of us,’ is a common refrain. Is it true? Take a few seconds to think about that before reading on.

If we followed Jesus and his teachings then surely it would not be the case. Our lives would be radically different. One of the problems in the Western church for so many centuries is that we have been too focussed on what we believe about Jesus the person – and especially his death – and let his lifestyle and teaching be marginalised. In an effort to defend him as the true saviour, we have allowed his ethics to become quite fuzzy.

And yet Jesus was a teacher as well as a saviour. In fact this is an emphasis that Matthew wants us to grasp right from the start of his account of the Sermon on the Mount. ‘He opened his mouth and began to teach them,’ Matthew tells us. And for the next three chapters the author of the first Gospel lists the ethical demands that Jesus makes of his followers. It is teaching about how to live, what choices to make, and what lifestyle to adopt. It is teaching to be put into practice in the everyday. And if we followed it then we surely would live radically different lives.

For my own part I know how much emphasis I have put on belief compared to lifestyle, on orthodoxy compared to orthopraxis. In an attempt to avoid the label ‘not healthy in the faith’, ethics took a back seat. How about you?