WHO IS A REAL CHRISTIAN?

It was a sober moment when my eyes fell upon the following words, written by Winfred Garrison in The College of the Bible Quarterly:

It is not so easy to be equally certain that we are actually and essentially Christian. We cannot take it for granted quite as casually as we do our basic humanity. It requires some self-examination. Since I have already discounted the possibility of defining essential Christianity, I am not going to be lured into stating specific tests by which one can tell whether or not one has it. “Let each man examine himself.”

It is true that there are various texts that seem pertinent to this inquiry. They give helpful hints, but probably none of them was designed to be the complete and final answer to the question. They combine to give me the impression that the crucial issues are: What do you love? What is the object of your most earnest concern? What do you most deeply desire?

Who is a real Christian? As I read these words from Prof. Garrison I was moved to a moment of self-scrutiny: Am I truly Christian? I recalled the book by C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, in which he attempted to state the essence of Christianity apart from theology and creedalism. One statement in that book that I recall underscoring is: “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.” Lewis may help to answer Garrison’s question, for surely a Christian, among other things, is one who realizes his own sinfulness. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Rom. 7:25)

The value of the point raised by Garrison is that it helps to re-complexify a question that we have answered too simply. It is both easy and proper for us to refer to the many scriptures on faith, repentance and baptism in identifying the Christian. Certainly there is a vital connection between believing in the Christ and being baptized into Him and becoming a Christian. But does this really tell us who is a Christian?

There are certain external signs to which we point, including baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which we believe to be relevant to the question of who is a Christian, and yet we realize that Christianity is more a matter of the heart than it is externals. We all agree that one is hardly a Christian just because he has been baptized. He might take the Lord’s Supper and otherwise live a life that is full of church activity and yet not be a real Christian.

Is this partly a semantic problem? You will notice that I am using terms like “real Christian” as distinct from “Christian.” Is it correct to say that all those who profess Christianity are Christians, though many of them, maybe even most of them, are bad Christians or lukewarm Christians? This would make our question ‘Who is a real Christian” different from the question “Who is a Christian?” For instance, it seems more proper to refer to a worldly church member as a “bad Christian” than as a “non-Christian.”

This is to say, in contradiction to Garrison, that there are “specific tests” in determining who is a Christian. Take Alexander Campbell’s definition of a Christian:

But who is a Christian? I answer, Everyone that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will.

Surely one must believe in the Christ and make some profession to follow His teaching if he is to be called a Christian. If we accept Moslems, Buddhists, and the lovely people of the world as Christians because of their benevolence, then the term “Christian” loses its meaning. It would be like what happened to the word gentleman, which originally referred to one who had a coat of arms and landed property. Then it was more generally applied to any man who showed the qualities of the genteel class, whether he was or not. And now the word is almost meaningless, suggesting little more than a man.

You will notice that Garrison says “actually and essentially Christian,” which must mean more than a nominal Christian. This is the “real Christian” that we are asking about in this article.

The questions set forth by Garrison are very much to the point, and I should like to comment on each of the three.

What do you love?

Garrison is right; this question does call for self-examination. We can be most unlike Christ by the things we love. The Bible speaks of those who are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:4). It warns us against the love of money, pointing out that “it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.” (1 Tim. 6:10) It also tells us: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).

These are the rivals against God for our heart: pleasure, money, the world. These stand for all the false values of life that lead us from God. The Christian is constantly tempted to compromise with the world, to yield spiritual values for worldly pleasure. But there can be no compromise; neither can there be neutrality. A man either loves the world or he loves God. He cannot serve two masters. If he truly loves God, he will be different from the world. It is here that each of us needs to search his heart with the question as to whether he is attracted to worldly standards of success.

“The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7) How difficult it is to be different! The person who loves God rather than the world will be different. Worldly ambition is the bridgehead for sin. “Because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold” (Matt. 24:12)

Love is probably more a thing of the will than of the emotions. The love we are to have for God, which is rather difficult to cultivate in terms of feeling, is a matter of willing God’s way for our lives. To pray — and to mean it! — “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is to love God. To the one who says he has trouble loving God (that is, feeling the right way about Him), it is good advice to tell him to act as if he did love God. How will one behave in this world who truly loves God? Act that way!

That love is a matter of willing and acting more than some emotional response is evident from a number of scriptures: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Rom. 13:10) ; “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8); “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:17) ; “Love is patient and kind . . . Love does not insist on its own way” (1 Cor. 13); “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

What do I love? If love is the measure of my Christianity, then I must be cautious in making my claims. We must remember, however, that love is not our own work, but is rather the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). As I yield my life to Him who gave Himself for me, He will give to me the Spirit of God, and through this “renewing of the Holy Spirit” I will love God with my whole personality, which Jesus says is the greatest commandment of all (Mk. 12:30).

What is the object of your most earnest concern?

This question implies that the Christian is one who cares. Indifference to the injustices of this world is so unlike Christ. There is surely a call for “the fellowship of the concerned ones.” Ours is a terribly troubled world, and amidst it all the Christian is the one who should care most of all. Most of us hardly get outside the small circle of our own selfish lives.

Jesus wept. These tender words should motivate us to weep for a world so full of conflict. Compassion and forbearance are listed among the virtues that are most like Christ (Col. 3:12-13). “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 5:31). Some poet has said, “Lord, forgive us for looking at the world with a dry eye.” The Christian not only feels for the world, but he is a fellow worker with God in alleviating human misery.

No modern Christian has been more concerned for social justice than Archbishop William Temple. He sees the Christian called by God to make a reasoned defense of the faith and to conform the social order more to the will of God. Temple says it is a betrayal of the gospel for the Christian to be indifferent to building a better world. “Self-contentment is the death of vital religion; self-complacency and perdition are inseparable if not indistinguishable,” he once wrote. He believed that the child of God can work creatively with his Lord in the enhancement of society.

What concerns us most? Financial security? Retirement? the New York Yankees? a weekend at the beach? Automobiles? Houses? Or are we concerned most of all about the souls of men and women? the illiteracy in the world, the poverty, the hate? Broken hearts and broken homes, widows and orphans, the outcasts that nobody loves? How concerned are we for human decency?

The question of concern is surely related to the question of who is a real Christian. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

What do you most deeply desire?

A number of philosophers and psychologists that I have read contend that man is by nature a creature of self-interest. Everything man does is motivated by his own selfish desires, however philanthropic the act may appear to be. A good case can be made for this point of view. Each of us is forced to concede, the more we scrutinize our innermost self, that so much of what we do is very selfish. Few of our deeds stem from perfectly pure motives. All this is the natural man, of whom Paul speaks in 1 Cor. 2:14: “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” It is only by the Spirit of God that man is able to rise above the fleshly lusts and the materialistic desires of the unspiritual man.

The deepest desire of some men is sexual escapades; with others it is business success or high position. With others it is a proud victory over their competitors. With others it is property, education, wealth or fame. Some would think the grandest thing on earth for them would be to become the president or a king, or to head a great corporation. It is the desire for power over others that motivates so many of us.

These desires are not all necessarily wrong, of course. It depends on the emphasis given to them in our lives. But it helps us to get at that very pertinent question: what will the

Christian desire most deeply?

“May he grant you your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your plans! (Psa. 20:4). But what are our plans and desires? Paul could write: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Rom. 10:1). He explains in Eph. 2:3 that we become “children of wrath like the rest of mankind” whenever we “live in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind.” The desires of the mind in this passage probably refers to our own will, our own designs and purposes instead of the will of God. It could refer to intellectual pride.

The Bible speaks of those “who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:12), and we may assume that the number with such a desire are few. And we are told to “earnestly desire the higher gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31).

More than anything else the Christian desires God and desires to be conformed to the likeness of God through Christ.

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God.” (Psa. 42:2).

“My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” (Psa. 84:2)

“My soul yearns for thee in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee.” (Isa. 26:9)

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.” (Psa. 73:25)

“As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Col. 2:6)

Such passages give us some indication of the mind of a child of God. It is not amiss to say that the real Christian is this kind of person. — the Editor