“Being Christian”
“BEING CHRISTIAN”
Facing the Issues
Luke 11:33-36
People have honest doubts, and I have spent many years in meeting those doubts, perhaps too many years, for I now see that the problem is usually deeper. Not always, but usually.
For instance, a young man came puzzled about the Trinity. I replied that the emphasis in Christianity was not upon the Trinity but upon the Incarnation. The doctrine of the Trinity was rather overheard than heard in the New Testament, but still I could see why the Trinity is reasonable.
Victorious Living
(Week 4, Friday)
Victorious Living and Temptation
Psalm 74:17; Mark 9:43-47; 14:37-38; 1 Peter 1:6-7
We have just been studying the fact that victorious living means to say “yes” to something—the will of God—but that implies that we are to say “no” to something—temptation. Christianity is not a prohibition; it is a privilege, but it does have a prohibition in it.
Victorious Living
(Week 41, Sunday)
The Four Steps in Helping Others to Christ
Mark 13:11; John 1:43-49; 4:6-42
In presenting the Christian way to people, you will have to answer [these] four questions [(1) What is it? (2) What will it do (for you)? (3) Who says so? (4) How can you get it?]. First: What is it? Perhaps you will have to tell the person what it is not, in order to clear away misconceptions. It is not a mere set of beliefs to be believed, an organization to be joined, a rite or ceremony to be undergone. It may and does involve these, but it is much more than these things. It is a personal relationship with God, which involves a change, gradual or sudden, from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God through the grace and power of Christ. The basis of life is shifted from self to God: you live in a state, not of self-reference, but of God-reference. God’s will becomes supreme in your life. That will is interpreted to us in Christ. To be a Christian is to be a Christian—to be committed, with all you have, to Christ in surrender and obedience.
Abundant Living
(Week 47, Tuesday)
The Five Steps in Following Christ
Joshua 24:15; Psalm 55:17; Matthew 6:22; John 6:67-69
(1) Make up your mind: “All who want to come after me.” . . .
(2) Give up yourself: “say no to themselves.” . . .
(3) Take up your cross: “Take up their cross!” . . .
(4) Keep up your cultivation: “daily.” . . .
(5) Gather up your loyalties: . . . “follow me” (Luke 9:23 CEB).
Abundant Living
(Week 47, Thursday)
The Attitude and Its Outcome or Reward
Numbers 12:3-15; 2 Corinthians 10:1; Philippians 4:13;
Colossians 3:12-17; Titus 3:1-7
The earth belongs to the meek because it won’t respond to the proud, the boasting. The earth is made in its inner constitution to work in the Christian way, and hence none but the Christian meek can inherit it.
Abundant Living
(Week 48, Tuesday)
The Aim of the Christian Discipline
2 Timothy 1:7-8; 2:1-5; 4:2, 5
The “Christian discipline”: The Christian way is a discipline and not merely a doctrine. The doctrine gives direction and content to the discipline. Doctrine that does not discipline is dead. Christianity is therefore not merely something that you believe, but something that you believe in enough to act upon. Your deed is your creed, the thing you believe in enough to put into practice. You do not believe in what you do not practice. Theory and practice are one. Your theory is your practice.
Abundant Living
(Week 50, Sunday)
My Will and God’s Will—Alien?
Psalms 119:37, 103, 130
The Christian way is the way that conforms to nature, real nature. Anything else is doomed.
The Way
(Week 5, Thursday)
Psalm 51:7-12
This passage may well sum up our week’s study of the naturalness of the Christian way: “All things have been created by him and for him” (Col 1:16 Moffatt ). Note: We are made not only “by” him but also “for” him. That is, life works in Christ’s way and in no other way. Look at everything in your life—every organ, every relationship—and you can see, if you have eyes to see, this written in everything, “Made for him.”
The Way
(Week 5, Saturday)
The God of Life and the God of Religion
John 1:4; 10:10; 12:50
To be a Christian you may have to give up some things, but not to be a Christian you have to give up everything, everything worthwhile. In giving up things for Christ, I gave up nothing but what subtracted from me, and when I got him, I got everything that added to me.
The Way
(Week 6, Monday)
The Two Pillars of Our Peace
John 14:1-3
The Christian peace is based not only on what Christ does for us but also on what we do for him.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 44, Saturday)
The Tongue and the Heart Coordinated
Acts 13:2-3
The Christian way teaches, not withdrawal, but witnessing as the way to poise and power. If we do not create, we cut across our own nature and are frustrated.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 45, Thursday)
On Opening the Door to Victory
Acts 16:28-34
I have a Christian stomach. I’m eating everything.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 48, Friday)
Acts 2:46-47
We are looking at the necessity of being transformed from gloom to gladness. It is a sin against God to be gloomy. It says to the world that God is a gloomy God and produces gloomy followers. A complete reversal of the facts! For there is more joy to the square inch in being a Christian than there is to the square mile outside [of being a Christian]. . . .
There are two great reasons for not being happy, radiant Christians. One is a halfwayness about the whole business of being Christian. We are only tentatively Christian. . . . A lot of Christians have lives that are squeaky and noisy, and they can’t hold happiness and joy for long—they leak. Why? Turned only halfway on! Many Christians have just enough religion to set up a conflict, but not enough to set up a concord. A half-Christianity is a problem instead of a power.
The second reason for gloomy Christianity is not realizing our resources. . . . Many of us [take from] current pessimisms and fears instead of [taking from] the green fields of God’s grace and power. We should realize our resources and possess our possessions.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 43, Friday)
They Believed in His Beliefs
1 Corinthians 15:54-57
The Christian faith is the only faith that lights up that dark area of life—death. And it lights it up, not with word, but with a Word made flesh.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 44, Wednesday)
The Eternal Cry Is “More”
Colossians 2:20-23; 3:1-8
The definition of a Christian grows the more you see of Christ, who is the standard of what a Christian is.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 50, Thursday)
Jesus, the Perfect but Unfolding Revelation
Matthew 5:17; Romans 10:3-4; Galatians 6:14
The Old Testament, which [tells of] the period of preparation for Christianity, is not Christianity. It is pre-Christian. . . . Christianity is Christ. Christians are people who believe in God and humanity and life through Jesus Christ.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Tuesday)
Acts 9:2; 19:23; 22:22
The Christian Way is the natural way to live. I am convinced that sin and evil and every other way are unnatural ways to live. Iniquity is literally “missing the mark.” The “mark” is the kingdom, the way. So all living against that way is a living against yourself. For the kingdom is the “mark” within us, the way we are made to live. To live against yourself is impossible, not only foolish but impossible. So sin and evil break down the self. The self disintegrates under it; “perish” is the word Jesus uses (see John 10:28).
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Wednesday)
The Christian Way Works
John 3:5-36; 5:22-24
The Christian way . . . will work to the degree that we work it. I know of no other way that does work. All alternatives to the Christian way turn out to be alternative ways to ruin. There are many wrong ways; there is only one right way. And Jesus always turns out to be that way, always. Life to me is one long corroboration of that fact.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Saturday)
If We Walk in the Light
Acts 19:18-20
You do not have to be always right. We are all only Christians in the making. We blunder and stumble. But when we stumble, we stumble forward. When we fall, we fall on our knees.
Mastery
(Week 50, Friday)
Responsible for All We Know and All We Might Know
Romans 8:1-8
A Christian is one who is responding to all the meanings found in Jesus; walking in all the light to be found in him. The moment we refuse to walk in the light as seen in Jesus, then the light ceases. We begin to walk in darkness. Only the person who is living up to the light that he or she has is getting more light.
Mastery
(Week 50, Saturday)
I Endorse This with All My Heart
John 7:37-39
Most Christians are canceled out, not because they don’t give, but because they don’t give all. They give, but they don’t give up. Yet how gladly we should offer our all in exchange for God’s all!
Mastery
(Week 51, Tuesday)
Their Problems Turned to Possibilities
John 16:7-11
Mastery began with the Christians themselves; they were mastered by the Master. And that was the right place; it all began within them and then moved out in concentric circles to the total life.
Mastery
(Week 52, Tuesday)
Bodily Health and Healing
Daniel 8:27:10:8
The first thing in Christianity is reconciliation with God; God is the center. When you are reconciled to God you become reconciled to yourself and hence reconciled to your body. The healing of that reconciliation with God is passed on to the body.
Christian Maturity
(Week 47, Sunday)
Maturity Open to “All”
Acts 10:42-45
We are to be adjusted to nothing this side of the highest—the highest in heaven and earth—Jesus Christ. In Christianity sin is amartia (literally, “missing the mark”). Applied, it means that sin is missing the mark—Jesus Christ. All departure from his mind and spirit is sin. That is not a legal definition of sin but a life definition.
Christian Maturity
(Week 50, Tuesday)
With Unveiled Face
Proverbs 28:12-13
Just what does “with unveiled face” mean? If it means anything, it means that we must be completely honest with God, with ourselves, with others, with life. We must come clear, absolutely clear. . . . Christianity begins at . . . : confession, sin- and self-surrender, acceptance of the grace of God, and transformation. [It begins] with confession, the “unveiled face.”
Christian Maturity
(Week 51, Tuesday)
The eternal cry of the Christian is, “More.” The Christian’s attitude is, “I’ve seen so much, I want to see more”; “I’ve tasted so much I want to taste more”; “I’ve become so much I want to become more.” This “more and more” will stretch beyond the grave and forever, for the finite will forever approach the infinite, but will never arrive. That growth will be our eternal joy, and there is no joy greater than the joy of creative growth. There is room for infinite growth in Christ.
In Christ
(Week 52, Monday)
Place for Ambitious Person in Christ
Christianity demands self-surrender. The ego, trying to be God, must be renounced and surrendered. Once that surrender is made, however, there is a place in Christianity for the ambitious. The ambition now has a new motive and goal—we are ambitious to serve.
In Christ
(Week 43, Thursday)
Divine and Human Self-Surrender
Luke 9:23-25
At the very center of the conception of the Word become flesh is the fact of the divine self-surrender. The Christian faith demands of us as its deepest demand, self-surrender. And the Word become flesh shows God doing the same thing, the divine self-surrender.
This is an essential difference between the Christian faith and other faiths: in the Christian faith the divine practices everything God asks us to practice, especially in regard to self-surrender. A prominent Hindu philosopher said to me, “Self-surrender is everything.” But in saying this he departed from his Vedantism, for in it Brahma is impersonal. You cannot surrender to an It.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 47, Sunday)
Colossians 1:12-14
Goodness is natural. The truly Christian person is the truly natural person. That person is not living against the grain of the universe, but with it. Christians do not hit their shins on the system of things. They know their way about in a universe of this kind; they know how to live. I know exactly how I feel when I sin: I am orphaned, estranged, and everything within me cries, “This is not the way.” I also know exactly how I feel when I live the Christian way: I am universalized, at home. Everything within me cries, “This is the way!” Christ’s way is my way.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 49, Tuesday)
I Felt I Was Holding in My Hand a Key
1 John 4:13-15
Someone has said that “Christians are very ordinary people making very extraordinary claims.” Not about themselves, but about their Redeemer. They know they are very imperfect followers of a very perfect Lord. So they say, “Glance at me, but gaze at Christ. Don’t follow me, follow him. “We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.”
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 50, Monday)