Re: This might help....
Submitted by Chris on 2002-09-20 01:26:01, Friday
In reply to what is a christian? (open question to all) submitted by Drifter on 2002-09-19 10:52:39, Thursday
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Hi Drifter, I love your questions and your honest desire to find answers to them. Although I am not any kind of a Bible expert, I can say that in my own case, when I honestly look for an answer where God is concerned, I always get an answer from Him...usually in what I read from His Word or from other folks who read His Word. I think I might have something from His Word for you....and something from me as well. There was this man named Nicodemus who lived durring the time that Jesus walked the earth. In fact, he even knew Jesus. And he asked Him that very same kind of question. I'll take it right out of the Bible for you...it's in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verses 1 through 21. "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling coucil. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him. In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again." (Now..to me, that reply that Jesus gave him sounds like maybe he wasn't really listening to what Nicodemus just said to him. But nothing could be further from the truth. You see, He knew what the man was really after. Nicodemus was searching for the truth about who Jesus really was. And he wanted to hear Jesus say it Himself, that He was the Son of God. Jesus also knew that Nicodemus was sincerely interested in the truth behind all that He was teaching His desciples. So Jesus gave him a great answer to the real questions in his heart. I believe he was just like all of us, and you too, because we have all asked, "How do I follow Jesus", or "How do I become a Christian?") (Jesus goes on to explain about being "born again" after that...) "Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." (So this is what Jesus was telling him: We must die to what we are in this life on earth....non-spiritual, i.e. "born of water". Church people call it baptism, and they symbolise it by dunking each other in water. What it means is that when a person goes under the water, he is dying. Dying to everything it means to be a human being living in this world. We live our lives on this earth completely oblivious to anything even remotely spiritual, mainly because we cannot see, feel, smell, hear or taste the spiritual, and anything we cannot deal with on a purely physical level we tend to either ignore it or disbelieve in it. So what Jesus was telling him was to actually stop putting his trust and faith in what he could see, feel, etc., and begin to put it in that which he could not. In other words, "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit". In fact, what Jesus had/has in mind is that we actually become a very different kind of 'creature' entirely.....) ...."If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life FOR ME will save it." (taken from Luke 9:23 and 24.) We like to call it being "born again" because that is exactly what it is. You see, Drifter, we do not have what it actually takes to be Children of God in our physical selves. God knows this and He gave us a way to overcome this about ourselves and "follow Him" instead. Jesus gave us a prime example to follow because quite literally everything He did was on a deeply spiritual level. He was living proof that a man could be "spirit" instead of "flesh". In fact, I would have to say that, believe it or not, Mankinds greatest sin is that he turned his back on the "Spirit" in favor of the "flesh", which is to say that he no longer trusts in an unseen creator who is God because he likes His creation better. Mna likes that which he can grasp easily instead of that which he was originaly created to "grasp", which is unseen and takes faith to do it. That is why Jesus was so hip on self-denial, or denying one's "self". Every time a person acts and reacts to the physical world around him, he is only interested in the things of THAT world, not the things of God's world. And the only way to quit being that way is to become something else entirely. You know, Jesus didn't come here to set us up with just another religion. Mankind has enough of those. Too many of them, in fact. He came to us to give us something much, much greater than that. He gave us that which we were meant to have from the beginning; our real selves. He gives us the one thing absolutely nothing in the world can ever give, a new self and a brand new life. He loves us that much, because we could never even know enough about the real nature of things to be able to know that we need this new life. To really know what life is all about. Let alone worry about earning it....which we can never do....so it HAS to be a free gift from Him to us. But in order to get the gift, we must understand what we will have to give up. We have to give up a whole "world" of literal garbage. We have to give up being a slave to death in order to become Children of life....the only REAL life, which is God's life. Death is when we love darkness more than light. Darkness is all about "living" for one's own self (which is an awful way to live...lonely and ultimately depressing and futile), while "light" is about living for God, and for the rest of the people here on earth, who are really our brothers and sisters. Love is the way God wants us to live, and the only way to do that is to become His child. My very favorite Apostle of all time was Paul, and he gives us a great "picture" of who and what God is, and thus who and what WE are as His children. It is in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-13. It talks about Love, but when you read it, put the word "God" in place of the word "Love". And also, a Christian can feel quite free to put his own name in place of the word "Love" to give himself a picture of that which God has made him by giving him a new birth through Jesus Christ. Check it out... "Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking., it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes (perfection=love..), the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a chiled, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." My friend, THAT is what it really means to be a Christian...to know that those words are the greatest truth, in fact the only truth, in your life! God bless you greatly!!! Love in Jesus Christ, Chris |
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