As I mentioned last week, I have been pondering what it means to be a Christian, or more specifically what characteristics would one expect a Christian to exhibit. I noted that I would start with the exploration of the Christian walk through looking at reading the scriptures. I am going to do something different here and start this discussion by talking about where I am not going to begin. And hopefully this will make more sense as you read my post. For I do believe that that where we start in our following Christ can influence our understanding of God and our Christian walk.
An obvious path here would be to talk about the importance of daily communing with God through reading and meditating on God’s word, and obviously, that is very important. For how can we claim to truly know God without regularly seeking Him through His word? But I wonder that if we seek God primarily on the development of a personal relationship with God, that may lead to a primary focus on developing certain spiritual disciplines such as scripture reading, prayer or worship in the hope that our relationship with God will deepen. Do not get me wrong here, as I believe the spiritual disciplines are an important aspect of developing our relationship with God, so please do not think that I am trying to downplay this aspect of our Christian walk, because I do believe that the development of the spiritual disciplines are characteristics we should expect to see in someone who follows Christ. However, I think that we need to be careful when our primary focus and starting point is on our actions and behaviors.
And, if you read my post last week, it may appear that I might start with a focus on God’s love for us and how reading the scriptures would give us insight into developing a reciprocal relationship in loving God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and how to love our neighbors as ourselves. Certainly, understanding God’s love is an essential component of understanding why He would send his only son as a sacrifice for our sins (Romans 5:8, NIV, ” But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us), and why we should love our Heavenly Father. But again, I wonder if we start here and see God as strictly a loving God who forgives us of our sins, there is the possibility that we may live our lives under this umbrella and therefore live our lives in this world just like everyone else, with the primary difference being that we know that we are loved by God, and that we therefore should love Him back.
Additionally, and potentially even more dangerous, what if we then only see God as loving and we begin to judge God based on our human perceptions of love. For I often hear people question God or judge something to be right or wrong based on our perceptions of love or the narrow concept of God as love. For example, I often hear the comments “How could a loving God allow this to happen?” or “A loving God would not see this or that behavior as wrong”. But what right do we have to either speak for God or to question His authority (Romans 9:20 NIV, But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”)? I think that when we have a primary focus basing our Christian walk primarily on God’s love, there is a higher probability of creating God in our own image or based on our own needs or desires. Again, I do believe that understanding and experiencing God’s love is an important aspect of our Christian walk, and that we are called to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but that may not be the best place to begin.
Or maybe a good place to start is to recognize our sinfulness and our need for a savior from our sins. Certainly, an essential component of our Christian walk is to acknowledge that we are all sinful (Romans 3:23 NIV, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). As long as we are in our human bodies, we are sinners in need of a savior, and therefore we need to both repent for our sins and to develop a heart of repentance in this Christian walk. But again, there are risks in evaluating our Christian walk primarily through a focus on our sins, as we may then see that our way to heaven is through our efforts to be good or through our striving to help others. And yes, we should be good and help others, but that is not the purpose of our Christian walk, nor will we enter heaven based on our own merits.
Again, do not get me wrong here as I believe that loving God and our neighbors is essential, and that reading God’s word should be a primary daily focus, and that studying and incorporating spiritual disciplines in our daily walk has a profound impact on our lives, and that we need to repent and to have a repentant heart to receive God’s saving grace. Additionally, I have spoken of the importance of many of these things in previous posts, and there is a high likelihood I will come back to these issues as part of this focus on what it means to be a Christian. And if these statements seem somewhat judgmental related to your relationship with God, know that I have developed and re-evaluated my relationship with God based on all of these concepts, so if this seems judgmental, I am actually judging myself.
So, what do I believe is an excellent place to start in assessing our Christian walk – How do we see and worship the Lord our God in all His holiness. What does it mean to understand the truths of God’s holiness? And of course, starting with scripture is essential as that is where we are given glimpses of the holiness of God. Now if you have stuck with me to this point, some of you may not be surprised by my focus on God’s holiness. However, you may have expected a little more elaboration here. However, my plan for next week is to elaborate on why I think a primary focus on the holiness of God is essential to the Christian walk and how our life and world view is transformed through our understanding of God’s holiness.
Psalm 96 (NIV)
1 Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
13 Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.