More or Less

 October 21, 2023

Which Vacation Bible School it was, I can’t remember. What I do remember is the memory verse: “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30). It was John the Baptist’s response to the news that people were jumping ship, following Jesus instead of him. John showed a level of maturity that most don’t possess. We live in a zero-sum world: winners and losers. If you are succeeding, it takes something away from me, so we end up in competition instead of cooperation, even (and perhaps especially) in church life.

In church circles, we call it “sheep-stealing.” People leave your church and come to mine for a variety of reasons, most of which are excuses for an unwillingness to deal with their own issues. Soon enough, they’ll leave my church for another. It’s a sad commentary on American church life when most of our growth comes from swapping members instead of genuine evangelism.

John’s statement however, has a more personal element to it. It sounds good to say Jesus must increase and we must decrease, but how exactly, does this happen? The state of the American church suggests that we haven’t a clue. I’d like to provide a couple tonight.

Psalm 34:3 reads, “O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.” Magnifying something doesn’t make it any bigger; it makes it look bigger. In the same way, magnifying the Lord doesn’t make him bigger than he is; that’s impossible. But it is possible, and necessary, that we see him bigger, that we see him in all his magnificence. That happens when we worship together. Notice the call here to come together: “with me,” “let us,” “together.” None of this happens in isolation from other believers. If Jesus is going to increase, it happens in part as we worship together; as I learn how he is at work in you, and you learn how he is at work in me.

Eph. 4:22-24 says “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires…and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

When I was a little boy, on more than one occasion my mother had to remind me to take off my dirty underwear before putting on clean clothes. It’s the same with our life in Christ. If we want him to increase in us, we have to deliberately decrease the old self. Paul says, “Crucify it!” Distracting and detrimental habits must be abandoned to make room for new habits of self-discipline, the reading of Scripture, prayer, fasting, worship, witness…the list goes on. Put off so we can put on, because if we are to follow Christ in any meaningful way, “He must increase; I must decrease.”