I am a Christian. More than that, I love Jesus. Christian was a name given to early followers of Jesus which meant “little Christ.” They were imitators of Jesus. That’s what I want to be too. Let me start by explaining why I want to be an imitator of Jesus.
The Bible says that humanity is in a desperate state. We are all dead...spiritually speaking. We have offended a Holy God. We have sinned against Him. Listen to how it is explained in Genesis.
“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
Or how about Romans 3:10-18 and 23.
“There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips...”
Keep reading if you’d like. Verse 23 kind of sums it all up: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
One last verse (to really drive home how “good” we are), Ephesians 2:1 “And you were dead in your trespasses, and sins.”
I hate to break it to you, but if you think that humans are naturally good, you are wrong. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we have been cursed. We no longer do what we were created to do - glorify God (remember we were created in the image of God). So what does that mean? It means that every human deserves God’s wrath. He set the standard (because He’s God and He can do that), and we broke it. All humanity deserves the wrath of God.
So can we do our best to be good people to try to appease God’s wrath? Most religions teach this as the way back to God. Just do your best and hope that God will forgive you when you mess up. There really is no assurance whether or not you will go to heaven - only that which you create with the “I’m better than Hitler or Hussain” mentality. Unfortunately the Bible says that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law...” (Gal. 2:16a) and “we may be justified...not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified” (Gal. 2:16b). We are dead in our sins and our works do nothing towards justifying us in the sight of God. But there’s good news...
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved...” (Eph. 2:4-5).
How about that as a response from God? Pretty awesome huh? He is merciful, He is loving, He can raise the dead! Which is great news because we are dead!
Listen now to Galatians again (the parts that I intentionally left out above). “a man is not justified by the works of the Law BUT THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS...that we may be justified BY FAITH IN CHRIST and not by the works of the Law...” (Gal. 2:16).
What was impossible for man to accomplish, God did by sending Jesus to die on the cross. Listen to Romans 3 again, verses 22-25:
“even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.”
What does it mean that Jesus was a propitiation in His blood? It means that Jesus bore God’s wrath for sin upon Himself as He was forsaken by God and died on the cross. He is my wrath-bearer. Since I received this truth by faith, I can no longer be condemned by God because Jesus was condemned for me. It is righteous of God to forgive me only because Jesus has already paid the debt, absorbed the wrath, and became a curse for me. And Jesus rose from the dead three days later to prove God’s satisfaction of His sacrifice. Which means - “it is finished.” There is no other sacrifice for sins. There is no other way to be forgiven. That’s why Jesus can say, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6).
So I am a Christian because, as Ephesians 2 says, God made me alive.
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Now post-modern thinking will say, that is your truth - but there is more than one truth. It is not loving to say to others that what they believe is wrong, and what you believe is right. Your truth is fine for you as long as it doesn’t offend or disrespect another person.
I want to address that as simply as I can. I am going to use plain logic. This logic doesn’t just apply to “religious philosophies,” but to everything in life. It’s called the law of non-contradictions. It is a simple law that people are abandoning in this post-modern era. If I say Jesus is the only way to heaven and somebody else says Jesus is not the only way to heaven, we have two contradicting statements. They are opposite to one another. Simple logic states that both cannot be true at the same time, in the same context. Either both are wrong, or one of them is wrong. But they both cannot be true, at the same time. I don’t think that you need to be a Christian to believe this. It’s very simple. If we abandon this simple logic we are heading somewhere very scary. Take for example, a murderer. He kills 11 people and is caught red-handed. He stands before a jury and says “I didn’t do it”. And the jury says, “If that’s your truth, then you’re free to go.” The problem is - it is not the truth. There is a truth that exists. He did do it, that’s the truth. Another example; you see a kid punch your child on the playground. What right do you have to tell the other kid that what he did was wrong? You don’t want to impose your standards on him, do you? That would be disrespectful, wouldn’t it? Let’s not be so quick to throw out this simple reality of truth in order to preserve diversity. Diversity is a very good thing. God actually has created us with a lot of different qualities and gifts. But diversity does not mean we abandon truth.
Another problem with post-modern thinking is that it is self-contradicting. What I mean by this is that it makes an absolute claim that there is no absolute truth...it’s self-contradicting. It, in a sense, is just setting up another system of beliefs, that if you don’t agree, you are wrong - the very thing it is trying to prevent.
If you take post-modernism to its extreme, you can read these words and make them mean whatever you want. The truth is, I have written each one of these words to portray exactly what I want to say. And I hope, that as you read this, you will try to understand what I am writing, not whatever you want the words to mean. Think about it, if there is not one truth, you can literally take each one of these words and make them mean whatever you want. But the essence of truth is that each word does have a meaning and that you can understand what I am writing because each word has a meaning. Now you may say that a lot of words have several meanings, and that is true. But in context, you know exactly what my intention is for each word.
My main concern in this article is that we are abandoning reason. Can I truly believe something if I don’t disagree with the opposite? Please just think about that. Can I truly believe something if I don’t disagree with the opposite? I tell people about Jesus because I love them. I believe that faith in Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God. Since I REALLY believe that, how unloving would it be for me to NOT tell people and to just let them die without at least hearing about the hope in Jesus? Regardless of whether I am right or wrong, do you at least see the logic in it? I don’t disrespect people who are Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or animistic. I love them. And because I love them, I want to tell them the good news that I shared in the first half of this article. God has made a way for us to be reconciled to Him, and His name is Jesus.
Standing for truth,
Scott
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