As we look upon the vast Christian profession and consider its claims, its pretension and its activities, we might well ask: What is a Christian? Men speak of Christian nations, though there is no such things recognised in the Holy Scriptures, for what are called Christian nations are simply nations in which a great number of professing Christians are found. To find an answer to our question we must look into the Scriptures, for God has told us in His word what Christians are.
The Disciples Called Christians
In Acts 11 we read of Barnabas seeking and finding Saul of Tarsus, and bringing him to Antioch, “And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:25-26). The name Christian seems to have been given to the disciples of the Lord by those found in Antioch, and has been accepted by the Holy Spirit as a proper designation of those who are followers of the rejected Christ of God. Those who were called Christians were true disciples of the Lord, those who formed the church of God in Antioch.
The name was evidently widely used, for king Agrippa, when replying to the Apostle Paul said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28). It was probably given as a name of reproach, for those who bare it were subjected to the reproaches of the Jew and the heathen, and suffered much for their faith in the Lord Jesus. When reproached and persecuted at the beginning, Peter and his fellow disciples rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name” (Acts 5:41), and in his 1st Epistle Peter wrote, “If any suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf” (1 Peter 5:16). It was an honour to suffer for Christ’s sake, as having His Name upon them. The world might think it a reproach to give the name Christian, but the disciple of the Lord counted it an honour to bear the Name of Him who had died for him, and taken his sins away.
Christ In You
From Romans 8 we learn what a real Christian is, where it is written, “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (verse 9). Here it is not a matter of profession, but of possession of the Spirit of Christ. When the Lord Jesus rose from among the dead, and was sending out His disciples, “He breathed on them, and says to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). The Lord Jesus was communicating to His disciples His own Spirit, that which marked them as belonging to Him, the Head of a new race, for it was as the Last Adam, risen from the dead, the Lord became the Head of a race. What the disciples received that day, every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has received on being sealed with the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is received when one truly believes in the Son of God, accepting His death as that which takes all his sins away, believing that He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). This is the Gospel by which we are saved (1 Cor. 15:1–4), and it is when one believes the word of truth, “the Gospel of your salvation” that we are claimed by God, and by Christ, by His seal being put upon us, even “that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph. 1:13-14).
When we are claimed by God with the seal of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit indwells us as believers in God’s Son, and becomes for us, as we have seen in Ephesians 1, the earnest of the inheritance that we shall share with Christ, as joint-heirs with Him. God’s Spirit within us is also the earnest of every promise that God has given to us as His own (2 Cor. 1:20–22), and the earnest of the body of glory we soon shall have when Christ comes to take us to be for ever with Himself (2 Cor. 5:5). In verse 21 of 2 Corinthians 1, as in other Scriptures, we see that the Holy Spirit has also anointed those whom God has sealed. Like the leper who was cleansed, we are anointed to take our place among the saints of God, and like the priests of old we have been anointed by the Spirit to serve God as holy priests and royal priests (1 Peter 1:2; 2:5, 9).
Among the different things that come to us by the possession of the Holy Spirit, as taught in Romans 8 is that having the Spirit of Christ we belong to Him, and that Christ is in us. What a very blessed thing is this that Christ is in us as having His Spirit (verse 10). This surely is what a true Christian is, one in whom Christ is. Then we read, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” We are privileged to view our bodies as dead so far as the service of sin is concerned, but we have the Spirit within us as life so that we might in righteousness serve God. The life that the Spirit brings to us is the life of Christ, and only true Christians have the life of Christ. Often men are exhorted to live the life of Christ, but it is impossible to live the life of Christ without possessing that life, and it is only possessed by those who have the Spirit of Christ.
In Christ Jesus
A true Christian has not only the Spirit of Christ by which Christ is in him, but he is also in Christ Jesus, and “There is there now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). There are different aspects of “in Christ,” but here it is our standing before God as having believed the Gospel of our salvation. Of this, the Apostle Paul says of himself, that I may “be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil.3:8-9).
A true Christian is one who realises that he has no righteousness of his own in which to appear before God, but that God has a righteousness for him, which He provides, and which is procured by faith in Christ. One who professes to have his own righteous that makes him presentable for the eye of God is not a true Christian. He is like the man in Matthew 22 who had not on a wedding garment, and who was cast out into outer darkness (verses 11–14), and like the Jews who, “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3).
The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ stands before God in Christ as the prodigal stood before his father, clothed in the best robe. All in which the prodigal appeared to make him meet for his father’s house was provided by the Father. At infinite cost to God, and to His Son, God has provided a righteousness for us in which to stand before Him, “For He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). True Christians are God’s righteousness in Christ, as having realised that they are unworthy sinners, and utterly unfit in themselves to be in God’s presence, and that Christ has done everything for them as having died for them.
Baptized . . . put on Christ
So called Christian communities were formed in early days by conquerors baptizing their captives at the point of the sword. This was altogether foreign to true Christianity, for in the beginning only those who believed the Gospel were baptized. It was a dangerous thing, normally, to be baptized, for it meant being the object of the malice and persecution of those opposed to Christ. For a Jew to be baptized meant, and still means, that he was cut off from his family and friends and treated as if he had died. The same thing is still true of many of the heathen who trust in the Lord Jesus.
Yet, even in the early days of the church, there were such as Simon the sorcerer who, though not true believers, were baptized. It is a privilege to be baptized, to be associated with the risen Christ who died for us, for “so many of us as were baptized into the ranks of Christianity, into the place of those who had died in the faith, many at the hands of those who hated them and their Master. It is the same in some heathen lands today. For anyone turning from heathenism to Christianity, and being baptized often means taking their lives in their hands, putting themselves in the front line of battle in the conflict of good against evil and making themselves a target for the enemies of Christ.
Although baptism is a blessed privilege, it does not confer spiritual blessing on the one baptized: it makes them Christians by profession, for “as many as have been baptized unto Christ, have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). By faith we are found in Christ (Phil. 3:9), having God’s righteousness in Him; by possession of Christ’s Spirit we have Christ in us, and by baptism we have Christ on us. Not everyone who wears a soldier’s uniform is a true soldier, and not everyone who is baptized is a true Christian.
There is the false teaching of Christendom that Christening or baptism makes one a child of God, as if a few drops of water, or an ocean of water, can communicate the divine nature to a babe or a grown up person. The divine nature, which makes one a child of God, is a divine work in the world, wrought by the Holy Spirit through the word of God (John 3:3–8; 1 Peter 1:23). This is a sovereign work of God (John 1:12-13), though God may use a human instrument in sowing the word in the heart.
Most true Christians are readily recognised by other true believers, for the Lord said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16), but in these last days, with a great religious profession, sometimes there is difficulty, but “The Lord knows them that are His” (2 Tim. 2:19). Some who have not the Spirit of Christ are well versed in the terms of Christianity, and lead very moral and upright lives, while some who are true believers are marked by the spirit of the world. If a true believer is living for Christ there will be no difficulty in recognising the fruit of God’s work.
We see what a Christian is in 2 Corinthians 4:18, one who is looking “at the things which are not seen,” the eternal things, the things that centre in Christ glorified at God’s right hand. Among the many features that mark true Christians are those of which Paul writes to the saints at Philippi, “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have not confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3). Every true Christian has the knowledge of God, and therefore walks in the light of the revelation of God, and bears the divine traits that were seen in their fulness and perfection in Jesus when He was here.
R. 3.2.70