Hi my friends,
I have just published this on Facebook. Because there are so many "Let's find x million Christians".
Please tell me what you guys think. This is it:
"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?" (Paul to Corinthians)
Since there are so many lists and groups like "I bet there are x million Christians on Facebook", "I am a Christian", "I love Jesus", etc, I thought I should write this. I have been thinking about this for a long while.
We gladly start these lists and sign them, but the problem is, how many of the signers are really Christians?
And to a certain extent, I think they are "counterproductive", if I can say so, because it can give us a false perception of security. We can easily think we are Christians when in fact we are not.
I think we should rather ask ourselves "why exactly am I a Christian!?"
Yes, we repented and believed, but isn't there some evidence that can (and should) validate our faith? Jesus never said "you can't judge a book by its cover". In fact, he said. "You shall know them by their fruit".
This is no salvation by works, neither adding something to salvation. Salvation is by faith alone, and if we truly repent and believe, Jesus will save us. But there are several things that must happen that certify that our faith is genuine:
- Not only will we have a new relationship with God, but we will have a new relationship with sin. We are supposed to hate sin. We have a God who is "holy, holy, holy"
- We will want to grow in knowledge: reading the Bible, hear it being preached. Even when we talk among ourselves, we should want to talk about our faith (don't we, as Christians, so often talk about everything under the sun, except about Jesus?)
- We will want to be among other believers (the Church). It's impossible to read the New Testament and not notice that Church is inseparable from Christianity
- Not only did we repent back then, but we also repent every day, because we sin every day. And we are growing in repentance (as we mature in our faith, we will notice eve more things that are wrong with us as Christians, things we didn't see when we were babies in Christ). Christianity is not a flue shot, like "I did what had to be done back then and that's it".
- There was always in the history of the Church a major concern in regards to separating from the world, which seems to be almost lost now. I believe if we don't have room for worldliness (in fact against it) in our theology, there's something wrong.
None of these will be perfect from the first day. In fact believing and repenting might be feeble in the beginning. But if we are not going in this direction (the items above) as the years go by, I think there is something wrong with our Christianity.
There was a time in my life when I thought I was a Christian, but I wasn't.
All the feedback (and we are always looking for it) I got from the Christians around me was similar to these "Let's find x millions Christians". I was "one of them", and thus, a Christian.
I looked, talked, and to a certain extent, behaved like one, but I wasn't one.
I wish someone told me back then something like "If you are a Christian, let's look for evidence in your life"
But no-one did.
Thx a lot for your feed-back
Cristian
I have just published this on Facebook. Because there are so many "Let's find x million Christians".
Please tell me what you guys think. This is it:
"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?" (Paul to Corinthians)
Since there are so many lists and groups like "I bet there are x million Christians on Facebook", "I am a Christian", "I love Jesus", etc, I thought I should write this. I have been thinking about this for a long while.
We gladly start these lists and sign them, but the problem is, how many of the signers are really Christians?
And to a certain extent, I think they are "counterproductive", if I can say so, because it can give us a false perception of security. We can easily think we are Christians when in fact we are not.
I think we should rather ask ourselves "why exactly am I a Christian!?"
Yes, we repented and believed, but isn't there some evidence that can (and should) validate our faith? Jesus never said "you can't judge a book by its cover". In fact, he said. "You shall know them by their fruit".
This is no salvation by works, neither adding something to salvation. Salvation is by faith alone, and if we truly repent and believe, Jesus will save us. But there are several things that must happen that certify that our faith is genuine:
- Not only will we have a new relationship with God, but we will have a new relationship with sin. We are supposed to hate sin. We have a God who is "holy, holy, holy"
- We will want to grow in knowledge: reading the Bible, hear it being preached. Even when we talk among ourselves, we should want to talk about our faith (don't we, as Christians, so often talk about everything under the sun, except about Jesus?)
- We will want to be among other believers (the Church). It's impossible to read the New Testament and not notice that Church is inseparable from Christianity
- Not only did we repent back then, but we also repent every day, because we sin every day. And we are growing in repentance (as we mature in our faith, we will notice eve more things that are wrong with us as Christians, things we didn't see when we were babies in Christ). Christianity is not a flue shot, like "I did what had to be done back then and that's it".
- There was always in the history of the Church a major concern in regards to separating from the world, which seems to be almost lost now. I believe if we don't have room for worldliness (in fact against it) in our theology, there's something wrong.
None of these will be perfect from the first day. In fact believing and repenting might be feeble in the beginning. But if we are not going in this direction (the items above) as the years go by, I think there is something wrong with our Christianity.
There was a time in my life when I thought I was a Christian, but I wasn't.
All the feedback (and we are always looking for it) I got from the Christians around me was similar to these "Let's find x millions Christians". I was "one of them", and thus, a Christian.
I looked, talked, and to a certain extent, behaved like one, but I wasn't one.
I wish someone told me back then something like "If you are a Christian, let's look for evidence in your life"
But no-one did.
Thx a lot for your feed-back
Cristian
