What does it mean to be a Christian?

Christians forgive others because they have been forgiven.

1) Being forgiven and forgiving others because you have been forgiven is an essential characteristic of the truly saved.

Christians live by faith.

1) It is the combination of truth with faith that makes the truth work and become effective in their lives. The righteous shall live by faith. It is another sign of a person who is truly saved. What is faith? A) Faith is not a mystical power. Some think of faith as a force, a mind-over-matter phenomenon whereby the actual act of believing something has the effect of making it come true. Believing something never, in itself, changes the facts. Faith is not a mystical power that makes things happen by the sheer force of belief. B) Faith is not a substitute for facts. In other words, a basic ingredient in the exercise of faith is a good imagination-a willingness to believe in things that cannot be substantiated. It is the reverse of this which is actually true. Faith is not an alternative native to facts, but faith is valid only when it is placed in God based on the facts. Faith must be placed in something. Faith does not exist in itself, but only as an attitude toward an object just as love is not just a feeling one gets in isolation, but an attitude toward someone (or something). To put your faith in something is to adopt an attitude of trust toward it. The problem is not a lack of faith, but the weakness of the object in which I place my faith. The Christian life is not something we live for God, but something God lives in us. From start to finish it is a life of faith in God's ability to work. To depend upon God is to rely on or be controlled by Him. C) The quantity of the disciples faith was a secondary issue to the object of their faith. If they were to place the little faith they did have in God, they would see God work. Faith includes depth as well as duration. Faith increases as our knowledge of the object of our faith increases. Exposure to the Word of God that Christ is revealed to us, and as Christ is revealed to us, we gain a greater understanding and confidence in Him and so are able to trust and exercise faith in Him more readily. 2) Faith is an attitude of trust toward something that enables that something to function in response. Faith is not primarily expressed in what we do, but in what we are trusting the object of our faith to do in response. Faith in God is an attitude of trust in God which enables Him to work. What are the two vital ingredients of faith? A) Obedience to what God says - our initial surrender must be followed by active obedience to the general instruction of Scripture and the particular direction of God over our personal lives. God's promises are effective only when the conditions for them are being fulfilled, and the fact that He has promised something does not detract from our responsibility to God. "Claiming the promises," and it is certainly right to believe them and to take them seriously, but the promises of God are almost always with conditions, and it is the meeting of the conditions that ensure the fulfillment of the promises. There had to be obedience to God, and there had to be trust in God. But if we are prepared to seek what is right and then do it, even though it may be against overwhelming odds, we will see God come into action and work miracles that leave us thrilled and humbled. When a man proves God in a big way and experiences God doing marvelous things, we love to hear about it, talk about it, and read about it, but are often not prepared to pay the price ourselves. Saul's down fall - He was given clear instructions by God, but he chose to edit those instructions and to disobey where he disagreed. In the light of his past and his great experiences of God, he began to become familiar with God to the extent that he felt free to pick and choose what he obeyed. We must be very much on guard against experience of God that does not leave us in an attitude of humility and dependence. When God's victories create a self-confidence in us they become dangerous. Many in the Bible and many in history have fizzled into oblivion after such great evidence of blessing, because they became self-sufficient and wrongly interpreted God's victories as their own. B) Trust in who God is - When a Christian will not let God be God in his own experience, he will always begin to dislike those who will. We will make heroes of men and women like this provided they are in history books or live a long way from us, but there is little the superficial Christian will like less than someone close whose godliness and activity exposes his or her own failure to take God really seriously and let Him be God.

Christians are having their minds renewed

1) One of the distinguishing remarks of a person who is saved is their perspective on sin, God and living according to the Scriptures. Those who have truly repented bring their minds in to conformity with God's word regardless of how they feel. How does God become operative within our lives? Repentance triggers God's activity within you. A) We must see our need - It is only as we see the glory of God in the life of Jesus Christ that we see our own need in its true perspective and recognize that we have fallen short of the glory of God. In other words, it was the sheer goodness and glory of Christ, the expression of godliness in His life that made Him so utterly attractive and drew Peter to Him. This is why we must preach Christ-His life, His character, and His activities-because only as people see Him do they see themselves in the true light and become aware of the real nature of their sin and need. People rarely become aware of their sin by hearing someone preach sin to them. They become aware of their sin by the preaching of Christ, in contrast with whom they recognize their sin. I have discovered that when you preach Christ and expose people to Him, to His life, to His work, and let them understand how He lived and why He lived as He did, it isn't long before some begin to say, "Do you know something? I think I am a dirty, filthy, stinking, miserable, rotten sinner." As we hold Christ up to people and we see the brilliance and beauty of His life, it is then that we become aware of our own grayness, if not blackness! When the Holy Spirit exposes us to our sin, it is in order that it be dealt with, rejected, and cleansed. But it is His job to "convict the world of guilt in regard to sin" (John 16:8). Our job is to preach Christ, to lay out the "steak" and to let people see Him. When the Holy Spirit does reveal sin, it is not in order to condemn us or to humiliate us or to make us grovel in our own dirt, but it is always as a prelude to cleaning us up and equipping us for a new quality of life. B) We must turn (repent) - First, we must repent for the right reasons. Some of us repent because we want something from God be it fulfillment, to fix our relationships, money. The attitude is what am I going to get out of this. Turn repentance stems from a heart that is desperate for God. I am not saying a person has to be totally desperate in order to be saved, but if they have sallow reasons for wanting God to come into their life they have not sincerely repented. True repentance is about changing my thinking about God and sin. Tears are not a reliable indication of repentance. Sin is very generous to the feelings. It can look good, sound good, and feel good. In fact, temptation is by definition attractive. If it were not attractive, it would not be temptation. The only reason I commit sin is because either I enjoy it or it presents to me a good way out of a situation at the time. It is true that in due course I may feel very sorry and sad about it, but every sin I commit, I commit because at the time I wanted to, because it looked good and felt good. A change of mind must lead to a change of behavior. If there is no change of behavior, it evidences there has been no change of mind. What we do reveals the truth of what we think. C) The specific application of repentance is the confessing of sin which involves identifying it, naming it and rejecting it. It also includes changed behavior patterns in their social lives, their business matters, and with money. Concerning Judgment Day, the Bible makes no mention of people being asked about their beliefs, but it speaks entirely of people being asked about their behavior, always their behavior toward other people and particularly toward those less privileged than themselves. We cannot escape that! Not that those good works have been the cause of salvation, but they are the effect of salvation, and the validity of our salvation is expressed in its effectiveness. We don't observe salvation we observe the effects of salvation. A change of mind must produce a change of behavior, or it can be denounced as false and will be among the "wood, hay or straw" (1 Cor. 3:12) to be burned on Judgment Day.

Christians Walk In Repentance and Faith

1) Our part in repentance. Changing/renewing my mind, growing in the knowledge of God; not just facts, but an intimate understanding of who God has revealed Himself to be and then living in accordance to that AND faith trusting God enough to do what He has asked me to do. 2) God's part is to provide the knowledge (we read God's word), desire (we bend our will to his), skills (we practice and study and trust him with the results) and opportunities (we pray for these, for the discernment to recognize them and the courage to live it out). This biblical concept was taken from Chapter 1 of Christ for Real. Being a Christian means walking by repentance and faith. (Hab. 2:4) See Steve Gallagher's Walk of Repentance for resources that help someone walk through what biblical repentance is.

Christians give control over their lives to God.

1) People will come to Christ for what they can get from Him, but when He demands their allegiance they will turn their backs. Jesus had few converts but many enemies at the end of His ministry, because the rock bottom issue the people eventually had to face was His Lordship. You have to face that issue. And so do I. Not just once, but continually. 2) Why are so many fearful of the lordship of Christ in their lives? People want to give themselves fully to God, but are afraid what He might ask of them. If I am afraid of Christ looking after the affairs of my life, it can only be because I either do not know Him well enough, or I do not want Him. When sharing the Gospel, we have to be sure to share the costs. That is how Jesus did it. People need to count the cost before making a decision to follow Jesus. We as Christians need to explain the cost clearly before calling for a decision. 3) The will of God is a promise to us, and our task is to fulfill the conditions that enable God to fulfill His promise. Those who are saved live each day presenting their lives to Jesus Christ as wholly available to Him. We see this as a positive and adventuresome way of living because we trust in Him. The opposite of this is to want to rule over and control our own lives and our relationship to God doesn't work like that, that mindset will only lead to frustration and eventually forsaking God. Those who are truly saved bend their hearts to His will and His ways. 4) These four statements are the specific things the New Testament says about the will of God for us. A) That we be holy - (Rom. 12:1-2). B) That we be thankful - (1 Thess. 5:18 - This says give thanks to God IN all circumstances not FOR all circumstances). C) That we are good - (1 Peter 2:13-15; Gen. 39:3-4). We must be prepared to live good lives. To overcome evil with good. To trust God when slandered or falsely accused. D) That we suffer well - We understand that we live in a fallen world and being a child of God does not exempt us from suffering in some instances it opens us up to suffering. Attacks of the enemy, being misunderstood and slandered.

Christians are being restored into the image of God

1) SIN Reveals My Need to be Restored - We the capacity for godliness and the capability for godliness (Rom. 7:15). What I want and what I do lie in conflict with each other. Herein lies the problem. My capacity for goodness, which deep down I believe in and long to fulfill, is frustrated by my capability for goodness, which lets me down again and again. The very capacity which motivates and inspires me to try to do and to be what is right, now condemns me by creating the consciousness of failure. 2) God is the standard - Sin falls short of the "glory of God." The glory of God is the character/image of God. That is the target by which we measure what is right and what is wrong. Goodness is not an arbitrary notion, so that each person has equal right to decide what is good and what is bad. Neither is good and bad determined by a consensus of society. Jesus declared what is good when a rich young man said to him, "`Good teacher ... what must I do to inherit eternal life?' `Why do you call me good?' Jesus answered. `No one is good-except God alone"' (Mark 10:17-18). Goodness is an absolute, and goodness is the character of God. Something is only good because it is consistent with what God is, and conversely, something is only bad because it conflicts with what God is. Because the target against which sin is measured is the glory of God, it is only as I discover how I can be what God created me to be that I can deal with sin. 3) The Goal is redemption of the image of God through me by grace through faith. "Glory" is that which we have sinned and come short of, and it is the restored presence of Christ within a person that is one's hope of being able to hit the target and fulfill the purpose of one's existence and to be a revelation of the character of God.

Christians by the HS are being made like Christ. There is a Holy Hunger.

1) The Christian life does not stop at the forgiveness of sin. The forgiveness of sin is the starting point of the Christian life. What follows next is a hunger for holiness. We are to reproduce the life of Christ in our lives by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. A Christian is not a Christian because sin is gone, but because the Holy Spirit has come and is restoring us to His likeness. How do you know the Holy Spirit is living in you? When people describe their experience of the moment when the HS indwelled them that in itself is not the evidence that the HS is in fact indwelling the person. The point of saying that is not to undermined peoples experience, but to caution against making the experience the evidence. The bible lays out the following evidences that a person has the HS is saved. A) Repentance and faith (Mt. 21:32; Romans 10:9-10; Romans 3:22) Orthodoxy is measured in terms of experiencing truth and not merely knowing it. B) Hunger to know Jesus Christ. The HS does not exalt or glorify Himself, but He does exalt and glorify Christ. It is the Spirit's task to reveal Christ (1 Cor. 12:3), to remind us of everything Christ has said (John 14:26), to testify about Christ (John 15:26), to bring glory to Christ (John 16:14), and to take of that which is Christ's and make it known to us (John 16:15). When there is not a hunger for Christ and a longing to know Him better and deeper, the Spirit of God is either absent or He is being quenched and grieved. Relationship not experience or feelings. Example of a couple falling in love; all they want to do is be around each other and get to know each other. C) Hunger to be like Jesus Christ. Changed attitude in character, towards people and our attitude about ourselves and our circumstances. Fruit of the Spirit Gal. 5 love expressed in kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. The appetite to be like Christ is the effect of the Holy Spirit's presence and working within us. Being like Jesus is not expressed in pious, smug feelings, but it is seeing people as more important than ourselves, and being prepared to get our hands dirty in their interests. Christians who have the HS interpret and respond to our circumstances differently. A Christian is not exempt from difficulties, as some would assume, but rather he is equipped to go into them and to thrive. Fruit of the Spirit are "joy," "peace," and "patience." Each of us is vulnerable to difficult circumstances that rob us of our joy, disturb our peace, and exhaust our patience. The Holy Spirit brings a whole new attitude and perspective to our problems. Joy - see beyond his hardships and was able to rejoice in the goodness of God and the working of God. Peace comes when we trust God in the midst of our problems. We trust God because He is sufficient. Romans 5:3 difficulties teach us patience. The Holy Spirit will enable us to control ourselves. There are many things that threaten to control us-our habits, greed, selfishness, and pride-but the Spirit enables us to have ourselves under control instead of doing what we are driven to do. D) Hunger to serve Jesus Christ - Spirit's presence is a hunger for God to flow through us in blessing and enrichment to others. The Holy Spirit's presence within your life will be evidenced by a desire to serve Him and a discovering of His enabling to do so.

Christians are submissive to the governing authority of Christ in their lives.

1) We live with Him as Lord. Our lives increasingly consist of setting ourselves apart to Him with the desire that His purposes, His plans, and His pleasure might be our concern. He is to be given exclusive rights as the authority in our lives, to the exclusion of everything else, even legitimate and good things. 2) The act of becoming a Christian is the act of surrendering to Him now. We do not embrace and live out the gospel because it works, but because it is true. There will be times in life where it doesn't seem to work, you have to believe it is true, it is always true. Salvation is free in the sense that we cannot purchase it, earn it or bargain for it based on our own goodness (Eph. 2:8-9) we must surrender to Jesus as Lord of our lives. People can express all the right sentiments about Jesus Christ, sing the right songs, go to the right church, and use the right vocabulary, but unless they are living on God's terms there is no reason for hope of salvation. The terms of Christian living are not up for debate or for negotiation. We live the Christian life on God's terms, or we do not live it at all. Therefore, our business is to find out God's conditions and be very careful to meet them. 3) We must take seriously the cost of following Jesus. we must understand it and count it, and only on the basis of paying the cost will we have the right to call ourselves "Christian" and be equipped to enjoy a relationship with God that will actually work. But the rich young ruler had a problem. He already had a master, a god, a factor that motivated his activities, inspired his decisions, and determined his values. The Lord did not negotiate a lower standard with him or make him an exception to the rule, but He sent him away lovingly, firmly, and with no confusion in the mind of the man about his eternal state. Jesus said, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). That does not mean that Jesus will take everything away, but that everything I have will now function under His authority and be conducive to His purposes. Apart from that, I cannot be a disciple. Do not, as I have sometimes heard done, distinguish between being a Christian and being a disciple with the idea that discipleship is on a deeper level. The word Christian began only as a nickname for disciples. "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch" (Acts 11:26). It is as a disciple that one earns the right to be called a Christian, and therefore if I am not a disciple, fulfilling the demands of discipleship, I am not a Christian.

Christians are filled with the Spirit.

1) Why God fills us with His Holy Spirit - To enable God's purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. Being filled with the spirit is a daily present continues experience. It is an evidence of salvation. To be filled with the spirit is to allow the Spirit to dominate their personality and determine their behavior. How do we know someone is filled with the Spirit? A) The way they walk - Walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16). To walk by the Spirit is to walk in love, to walk in the light.People are eating from your fruit. B) The way they talk - (Matt. 15:18). If you want to know what is filling someone's heart, stay around long enough to listen to what comes out of their mouth. C) The way they smell - (2 Cor. 2:14-16). It is always a wonderful experience to meet someone you do not know to be a Christian, but discern it long before they tell you, simply by a quality observable in their lives. They have a Christ centered aroma about them. How to be filled with the Spirit? A) Repentance and faith - is a prerequisite to receiving the Holy Spirit, and to living in the fullness of the Spirit. Willful, deliberate sin cannot coexist with being filled with the Spirit, so true, honest repentance must be an accompanying feature of the process. (Acts 2:38, Gal. 3:2). B) Ask to be filled (Luke 11:13) The fullness of the Spirit is not linked to a good feeling we have about ourselves, and may not always be accompanied by some supernatural phenomenon. It is most evident in a quality of life in which others see the character of Christ being formed in us. C) Allow the word to renew and transform your mind. (John 17:17 and Romans 12:1-2)

For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. ( Phil 2:13 NLT)

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:11 ESV).