Early Christian Encounters: Denominations, Dogma, and Ritual
In my early understanding, Christianity was often tied to denominations, dogmas, and rituals—each claiming the authentic way to approach God. I don’t doubt the sincerity of those founders and leaders, yet it reminds me of Paul’s concern with the Judaizers: genuine people who risked obscuring the new creation in Christ with external requirements. It’s easy to fall back on the familiar—the creeds, practices, and loyalties of our particular group, teacher, or movement.
But I’ve come to believe that these, while not inherently bad, can be distractions from the heart of Christianity. Though faith certainly involves responsibility to others, it’s not primarily about outward conformity or adherence to a specific identity. It’s something much deeper—a profound, existential relationship with God that shapes our very being.

Today, we’ll explore this authentic Christianity, drawing on Paul’s teachings and Karl Barth’s insights to understand what it means to live in Christ. We’ll see how God, in His very nature, is for us, with us, and in us (Colossians 1:15-20), inviting us into a life of genuine faith, love, and responsibility.

This isn’t just an abstract theological concept. In my own life, I’ve felt the push and pull of these competing loyalties—the pressure to conform to particular ways of being Christian, each claiming to be the authentic expression of faith. Yet, these often felt like distractions from the core message: the for us, with us, and in us reality of God’s love that calls us to a deeper loyalty—not to a ritual or practice, but to Christ Himself.

To illustrate this, I want to move beyond abstract concepts and share a few personal experiences—each highlighting a different facet of this tension from my own life. I want you to have the freedom to step into my journey, to see how these moments shaped my thinking and fueled my resistance to superficial expressions of faith.

Salvation Army Upbringing: Faith as Identity
I was raised in the Salvation Army, a formative experience I’ve often reflected on in my writings. I was taught that the Army was divinely ordained, and that obedience to its officers and adherence to its doctrines (established by the early Commissioners) was paramount.

Like everything I do, I embraced it fully. I learned the doctrines, steeped myself in its history (tracing its roots to Methodist theology and Wesley’s thought), and genuinely believed that being a good Christian meant being a good Salvation Army soldier, upholding its articles of war.

This became a core part of my identity—until I began to realize that there were other valid expressions of Christianity. What had once felt like a divinely ordained path, I began to see as a constraint, not a freedom.

This realization wasn’t a rejection of the genuine good I found in the Salvation Army, but a deeper understanding that true faith couldn’t be confined to a single expression or set of rules. It was a first glimpse into the for us, with us, and in us reality of God’s love—a love that transcends any particular denomination or set of rituals.

Toronto Blessing: Chaos vs. Authentic Spirit
This experience set the stage for other challenges to my understanding of authentic Christianity. I remember years ago, while serving as a minister in Tokoroa, New Zealand, encountering a phenomenon called the Toronto Blessing (originally started in the 1990s).

Promoted as a new freedom in God, it often felt like chaos.
People claimed divine power, exhibiting erratic behaviors—animalistic actions, collapsing, uncontrollable laughter—all attributed to the Holy Spirit. I witnessed this firsthand, and one incident remains vividly etched in my memory: a movement leader, claiming to heal a woman with cancer, kicked her so hard in the stomach that she was injured.
In those pre-internet days, such stories and videos circulated through cassette tapes, VHS recordings, and testimonies in Christian ministries. This phenomenon spread through word of mouth and limited media, creating a sense of excitement and spiritual fervor.

What troubled me most was the underlying philosophy: that genuine Christianity required these specific manifestations to be genuine or valid. This created a spiritual hierarchy in which outward manifestations—chaotic behaviors, emotional extremes, or ritualized displays—were treated as the measure of a genuine Spirit-led life.

In doing so, the deeper realities of mature, Christ-centered living were overshadowed, reducing the quality of spiritual formation rooted in the incarnate example of Jesus. Such practices risked turning authentic connection with Christ into a reliance on the body’s neurochemical responses—a kind of manipulated emotional reward system—rather than a relationship grounded in faith, love, and authentic responsive living.

Resisting this movement led to rejection from fellow ministers. One Orthodox minister even confronted me, insisting I was offending God by not embracing this “move of the Spirit.” It cost me deeply—my reputation, my sense of community. But I stood my ground, and I continue to reject such distortions of faith.

When Christianity reduces itself to being measured primarily by emotional displays, it ceases to be about Christ. It becomes focused on the emotive and easily manipulated aspects of human experience—a subtle but serious danger to spiritual maturity and personal authenticity.

Idolization of Scripture: King James-Only Communities
And it doesn’t end there. I’ve also encountered Christians who would dismiss or reject you if you didn’t adhere to their preferred Bible translation—often the King James Version. I recall a particular church in Tokoroa, staunchly King James-only, who believed that every other English translation was corrupted and evil. Engaging in meaningful discussion beyond the KJV was impossible.

What I witnessed wasn’t deep understanding of Scripture, but the idolization of a translation. Holding the KJV in such sacred authority had the same effect as those claiming spiritual encounters as validation of their identity in Christ. It was elitism and favoritism, where people found identity in claiming an exclusive practice.
This, again, isn’t reliance on Christ, but a ritual or creed that favors a particular group at the expense of genuine faith.

Paul on Being in Christ: Reconciliation and Identity
Paul’s writings offer a profound vision of what it means to live authentically in Christ, rooted in the high Christology that underpins his entire theology. At the heart of this is the understanding that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, in whom all things were created and through whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-20). This affirms that Christ is the divine foundation of everything—creator, sustainer, and the fullness of God’s presence among us.

Central to Paul’s message is the idea of reconciliation—peace restored through Christ’s atoning work on the cross. This reconciliation isn’t merely about ritual observance but about a deep, spiritual union that redefines our identity. It invites us into a relationship where we are no longer divided from God or each other but are united in Christ’s love.

In Ephesians, Paul speaks of believers being blessed in Christ—chosen, adopted, and sealed with the Holy Spirit. While the doctrine of predestination has often been misunderstood as limiting, its true meaning is that, in Christ, we inherit the relationship Christ has with the Father. When we come to Him and choose to follow, we inherit His predestined status—His identity as beloved children of God.

Living out this truth calls us to humility, love, and active service, as Paul exhorts in Philippians 2:1-4. Genuine Christianity is expressed in relational integrity—considering others as more significant and working for the common good—embodying Christ’s humility and self-giving love.

Finally, Paul assures us that nothing can separate us from God’s love towards us. Romans 8 powerfully affirms that His Spirit dwells within us, confirming our identity and empowering our walk in Christ. Authentic faith is a living relationship—characterized by divine support, love, and the Spirit’s ongoing work within us.

This is why in Galatians, Paul was so vehemently opposed to the Judaizers—those who insisted that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and adhere to Jewish rituals to truly belong to God’s people. The Judaizers sincerely believed they were doing right—bringing believers into line with God’s law through Jesus Christ. They saw it as a way of seamlessly uniting the old covenant with the new.

But Paul saw it differently. For him, this move was the complete reversal of the Cross, a rejection of grace, and a betrayal of the new covenant. To be circumcised, or to rely on external rituals and laws, was to deny the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. It was to lay aside the Cross and its liberating power, turning faith into a matter of human effort and ritual.

How This Means Authentic Living
Ultimately, to exist as a Christian is to live toward God through Jesus Christ—His life, His teachings, His ministry, and His self-giving. It is to answer the existential call to authentic agency, carrying responsibility alongside the privileges of our faith. We must be genuine before God, true to ourselves, because only in honest, heartfelt relationship can we fulfill our true obligations to Him. Anything less risks superficiality and inauthenticity, which fall short of the calling we have in Christ.
At the core of this calling is the understanding that our life involves both sharing in the burdens of others and carrying our own.

In this way, any movement that places trust in external practices over the life and presence of Jesus Christ—no matter how religious it appears—is ultimately idolatrous. True faith, Paul insists, is rooted in Christ alone, and the Cross alone is the foundation of our salvation.
In essence, Paul’s theology calls us to a life rooted in Christ’s sovereignty and love—where our identity, purpose, and hope are anchored in the high Christology that begins with our response to Jesus as Lord and Savior, and continues in the Spirit’s power to transform us into His likeness.

Barth on God: For Us, With Us, and In Us
Karl Barth, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, offers a powerful perspective that resonates deeply with Paul’s emphasis on Christ as the center of authentic faith. Barth insisted that our knowledge of God comes solely through God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, as witnessed in Scripture. For Barth, God is not a distant, abstract being, but one who actively reaches out to humanity in love.

As Barth eloquently puts it in Church Dogmatics: “[God] wills to be ours, and He wills that we should be His. He wills to belong to us and He wills that we should belong to Him. He does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him. He wills certainly to be God and He does not will that we should be God. But He does not will to be God for Himself nor as God to be alone with Himself. He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God. …He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in this relationship. His life, that is, His life in Himself, which is originally and properly the one and only life, leans towards this unity with our life. The blessings of His Godhead are so great that they overflow as blessings to us, who are not God. This is God’s conduct towards us in virtue of His revelation” (Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, §28, p. 274).

This quote captures Barth’s central claim: God’s very essence is relational. God is for us, with us, and in us. Barth emphasizes that this divine self-giving is not a limitation of God’s freedom but its very essence. As he writes elsewhere, “The freedom of God is not a divine caprice, but a freedom for fellowship with man.” God’s freedom is not arbitrary or capricious but defined by His loving commitment to humanity. This is beautifully reflected in John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

Barth’s theology, like Paul’s, calls us to a Christ-centered faith that transcends external rituals and legalistic constraints. It invites us to embrace the God who has revealed Himself fully in Jesus Christ and who empowers us to live authentically in His love.

Love, Baros, and Phortion: Living Authentically
Authentic Christianity is fundamentally rooted in our identity in Christ—centered on His work, His person, and His presence—rather than external rituals, dogmas, or emotional displays.

Our salvation and true relationship with God is made possible through God’s initiative in Christ, which we access by responding in faith and love. External practices, when they replace or obscure this core relationship, become idols that distort the Gospel and undermine the freedom and grace Christ has won for us.

At the heart of everything, after nearly 61 years of life and being a Christian since the age of 14, this is what I know to be true: Christianity, when confined to rigid dogmas and denominational loyalties, can come at the cost of the authentic self, hindering a genuine relationship with God.

Performative Christianity, in this sense, becomes nothing more than the herd expressing itself through the individual.
It reminds me so much of what I have learned—that ‘the crowd is untruth.’ When the crowd pressures you to conform in such a way that sacrifices your genuine self before God, at the expense of a sincere relationship with Christ.

Whenever you have to prove yourself, or when you enable others to prove through you that they are something exceptional, then something has gone terribly wrong.
Such a claim is no longer centered in Christ but rather in the performative and elite nature that humans can create in and through each other.

This isn’t just true in religion, but can be expressed in every possible way we are human.

Authentic faith, in contrast, calls us to resist the herd, to embrace our unique identity in Christ, and to cultivate a personal, transformative relationship with the God who is for us, with us, and in us.
For, as Paul reminds us in Galatians 5:6, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

It is not adherence to external markers or conformity to religious expectations that defines us, but the love that flows from a heart transformed by Christ. Love is our “towardsness”—our movement toward God, grounded in confidence in Jesus Christ, who moves among us, in us, and through us.

Love, therefore, has its rightful place. If we are motivated by love to express care, devotion, and faithfulness toward God, let it be genuine—rooted in trust in the person of Jesus Christ. In that freedom, we are released from the constraints of culture, rules, and ritual performance, and empowered to live a faith not merely professed, but embodied in love—a love that embraces others, seeks justice, and reveals the character of God through Christ.

As Paul reminds us in Galatians 6:2, “Carry each other’s burdens (baros), and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Baros refers to the heavy, overwhelming loads that threaten to crush us—those burdens we are called to bear alongside others in love.

But phortion—a word rooted in the imagery of a ship’s freight—reminds us that each of us has a specific cargo to carry. This cargo is not only our duties and responsibilities but also the unique set of gifts, experiences, and the authentic self that God has entrusted to us. Just as a ship’s freight is tailored to its voyage, our phortion is uniquely suited to our individual journey. It is the responsibility to own our particular way of existing in the world, embracing our burdens and imperfections as part of our authentic calling.

Bearing Burdens, Carrying Our Freight
This dual burden calls us to both stand alongside others in their struggles and to faithfully carry our own responsibilities—our phortion—with integrity and faithfulness. While we are called to stand alongside those carrying a heavy baros, offering support and encouragement, we are not called to take on their burden as our own.

Their baros remains their responsibility, their journey, and their opportunity for growth. Instead, we offer presence, encouragement, and shared strength while respecting their growth.

Similarly, our own phortion is ours to carry—we should not expect others to take on our responsibilities or to bear the weight of our authentic selves. Rather, we are called to support one another in carrying our respective burdens, offering encouragement and strength without blurring the lines of personal responsibility.

This distinction reflects Paul’s Christ-centered theology: our identity in Christ compels us to serve others and to remain true to ourselves, each carrying our own unique phortion with integrity and love.

In this way, our life in Christ becomes a journey of honest engagement—relational and personal—rooted in our response to Jesus as Lord and Savior, and continued through the Spirit’s work within us. It is a life marked by love, responsibility, and authenticity—an authentic Christianity that is lived out in the everyday realities of bearing burdens and carrying our freight, as we voyage toward the fullness of life in Christ, where faith expresses itself through love.