What is a Christian?
A little boy returned home after attending his Sunday School class. He eagerly approached his church-going father with an important question. What he wanted was a definition of a Christian.
His dad gladly elaborated, in some detail, all the attributes a true Christian should manifest by word and deed. When the father was through, the attentive boy had one more question: “Have I ever seen one”?
It is strange and sad that many people are able to define a Christian in word, but cannot demonstrate what that definition entails by their own example!
A Christian is not just a person who attends church activities with regularity, who gives generously of one’s financial resources to support congregational activities and world missions, who participates enthusiastically in many spiritual exercises, or who is able to quote Scripture accurately and profusely! All these things are good and beneficial, but the practice of such factors cannot be equated with the doer being necessarily a Christian.
J. Hudson Taylor was a pioneer missionary in the inland parts of China in the 19th century. That position he held for many, many years! In that setting, he spoke the Chinese language well, dressed himself like the Chinese people of that time and region, manipulated the chopsticks very effectively as he ate the same food Chinese people ate, occupied a domicile like those the Chinese inhabited. And even though he did all that consistently for a long, long time, those activities never made him into a Chinese man; he remained an Englishman till the end of his life!
In like fashion, many people may act like a Christian, may speak and live like a Christian, may have all appearances of being a Christian, and still be devoid of what being a true Christian represents. Unless he or she is “born from above” (John 3), truly regenerated by the Spirit of God, having embraced Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord through repentance and faith, such individual is not a Christian.
Conversion is not a change of labels but a thorough alteration of mindset and conduct. One becomes a child of God not by what such one does and achieves, but by receiving what has already been accomplished by Christ, through His substitutionary death and glorious resurrection.
It is true that “by their fruits you shall know them.” It is equally valid that “they shall know that we are Christians by our love.” Yet, caricatures are possible, though always invalid, and not long lasting!
