“Watch over the eternal life that has been planted in your soul, as a gardener tends seeds in the earth. For your faith is like a seed, charged with the flame of eternal life.”—The Didache (“The Teaching”)

“We have been given new life from above, as a sign of our eternal life that is to come.”—Athenagoras

“I knew nothing of real life—the new life that is offered to us from above…Presently, I was aware of the Spirit—the very breath of the Father—coming into me from beyond this world.
And in that moment I was made a new man.”—Cyprian

“We receive strength and new life within ourselves—life that is not of ourselves—from the One who is perfect and before all creation.”—Irenaeus

“Open your soul to Him now who is your Father and Creator. Be ready to receive and be filled with this new life…which is God himself.”—Cyprian

I lowered the book onto my lap. “Isn’t this amazing? It shows that the true message of the New Testament was still being passed down in the first two centuries after its writing. Don’t you see a parallel between this and what we found earlier about God himself being the life?”

Abby shrugged. “But…this is just the traditional message of Christianity.”

“It’s not the one you’ve been communicating.”

Abby had a shocked look on her face. “It certainly is.”

“No, it isn’t. You keep saying that God sent his Son to die for our sins so we could be forgiven and live forever with God.”

“That’s what the Bible says.”

“Right, I know. But that’s only part of the message. The way you present it, God forgives people, then basically leaves it up to them to try to live good, Christian lives.”

“He doesn’t leave it entirely up to us. God helps us too…”

I shook my head. “But that’s not what the Hebrew prophets indicated the new arrangement would be, or what Jesus said, or how he claimed to live, or what Paul of Tarsus taught—”

“How would you know, Creighton?” She left the couch and began walking around the room. “All you’ve done is a little reading, and suddenly you think that you can lecture me on what my own faith teaches? You don’t even believe any of this!”

“I just think that your understanding of Christianity is too limited. From what I’ve read, it seems that the full message of the Christian faith is that God himself comes to live inside you, that he joins himself to your human spirit, and that he actually lives his life through you. He doesn’t help anyone live the Christian life. He lives it himself. He is the life. What you’ve been teaching people and living by is a kind of Christian self-help system—”

She stopped and glared at me.