“I Am A Christian”

We all know by experience that it is easy to say, “I am a Christian”, but it is an entirely different thing to openly, consistently, and courageously live in the manner that Jesus calls us to live in this world every day, in every circumstance. The best way to tell whether someone loves God is to watch how they love and treat others, their family, their neighbors, those whom they do not even know, those who are rejected and forgotten by society. To put it another way, words are easy, but to live as a Christian with one’s whole personhood has real-world consequences.

We are told in Matthew’s Gospel: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven will enter…” (Mt. 7:21-23). It is not in the saying of the words, no matter how convincingly or eloquently the words are spoken, that makes one a Christian; it is the way that one lives one’s life, openly and humbly with and for others. We believe that God’s heart speaks to our hearts, but do our hearts speak to the hearts of others in the same manner?

Every word in the Scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, speaks to us about how we are to live our lives with God and others. Our faith is not made real merely by what we say. Our religion is not just a private act. If it is real and true, it comes alive, and is made known by how we live in the world, how we live with, accept, and treat others. In the Book of Deuteronomy, we read: “When you are harvesting in your fields, and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands” (Deut. 24:19). Right from the beginning we are told that it is not just about us and God, but about us, God, and others…all others, especially those who are poor, forgotten, or who are different from us.

We are to see the Mind of God at work in these words. God’s concern is always for each of us, but especially for those who are in need in any way. The needy, that is, the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien among us, reveal to us the truth that all of us are in some way like them. We all suffer some form of poverty. We are all sojourners wandering in a strange land, homeless and in need of the care and concern of God and others.

The Apostle James tells us: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27). With these words, we are given a clear picture of the challenge before us all the time…The world. We are called to make Jesus known to a skeptical world, a cynical world, and often enough openly rebellious to the Word of God. We are to do this by living our own lives in the way, the truth, and the life that Jesus modeled for us. We are to imitate Christ willingly, joyfully, without fear of the potential consequences for doing so in a world that is ruled by prideful and selfish concerns, a world that thinks us foolish, even absurd.

Clearly, to live the Christian life at the individual level is demanding enough, but to live it in the context of the family, or in the more public realms of society, requires action, not just words. The Word of God becomes a living word first in and through our actions within our homes and then beyond. Our religion, our faith, comes alive, leaps off the pages of Scripture, and walks in the world through each of us in and through our deeds that are born out of our faith.

What does it mean when a nation, or a political movement, claims to be Christian? Would that claim be enough to make it so? Jesus told us very clearly in Matthew’s account, sometimes called “The Judgment of the Nations” (Matt. 25:35-40), “When I was hungry, you fed me, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, naked you clothed me, imprisoned or sick you visited me and cared for me…Whenever you did (or did not) do this for the least of my brothers or sisters, you did (or did not) do it for me.” Given the words of God seen in both of the Bible’s testaments here, can any nation (or any individual) that treats the poor, those who are in need in any way, as problems to be ignored, mistreated, ridiculed, judged, or gotten rid of, rather than as fellow human beings, possessing infinite dignity, legitimately call itself a “Christian” nation? It is not a political label, after all. To make it so is, at best, illegitimate.

There can be nothing greater to desire than to be a Christian alive and charged with the virtues and the love that Jesus commanded us to live. It is a noble desire on the part of the individual Christian or of a nation to pursue. Still, neither can legitimately claim that title unless it is openly, actively, humbly, and faithfully trying to live the Christian life daily in thought, word, and deed. Lord, increase in each of us the desire to faithfully and enduringly keep trying to live in accord with your will, to love one another, all others, as you have loved us. Amen.