How to Recognize a
Christian
I’d like to break,
brothers and sisters, this morning from the normal study in Romans
and we would get back to it next Sunday. And so I’d just like to
share something that Jesus told me I should share this morning. You
know that we’ve been talking about what a real Christian is and
that a real Christian is not one who simply believes that God is the
Creator of the world and that Jesus died for our sins because you
remember, that in James it says that even the demons believe and
shudder.
So obviously, a
Christian is not just a believer and that’s where we go astray when
we lay the emphasis so much on intellectual belief in Jesus alone
because there are many people who stand up in church Sunday after
Sunday and repeat the apostles’ creed and they really believe it.
They really believe it with all of their heart, with all of their
mind and emotions. And some of them can become very emotional about
their beliefs but they’re not Christians because all they do is
believe and even the demons believe and shudder.
And being a
Christian is not just believing. It is not just holding the right
intellectual tenants about Jesus and about God. And being a
Christian is not just being a moral person. It seems clear to us
that there are many moral people who are not Christian. There are
very good people who live very unselfish lives and they aren’t
Christian at all nor would they even dream of saying that they were
interested in Christianity. So being a Christian is not just being a
moral person. And we know clearly, I think without any difficulty,
that being a Christian is not simply going to church, or being
baptized, or being a member of a church.
But being a
Christian is receiving. It is receiving the Spirit of Jesus inside
you. And you remember, Jesus really states that through his servant
in John there if you look at it for a moment. John 1:12 is a verse
that many of us know by heart. It reads like this, “But to all who
received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become
children of God.” To all who received him and becoming a Christian
is receiving the Spirit of Jesus inside you. It’s a miraculous
work that God does in your spirit at a level deeper than your mind,
and emotions, and will. It’s a work that God does inside you and
makes you alive inside so that there was a time when maybe you didn’t
appreciate old Bach and then you came into an understanding of Bach
and you could sit at concerts and enjoy him completely.
So it is, God brings
a piece of you alive that had never been alive before and you see
things that you never saw before, and you come into a spiritual world
that we’re all trying to hit at when we attempt to raise psychic
experience to the nth degree through heroine, or when we try to
experience some transcendence over this present pedestrian world in
which we live. But it’s that spiritual world that God miraculously
brings you into life in through his Holy Spirit and that’s what it
is to be a Christian.
And it’s easy, you
know, God does that when you’re willing to do what the man who
owned the inn in Bethlehem was not willing to do. Jesus can only
come in if you make room, if you say there’s no room he doesn’t
come in. And that’s why very few people really are Christians.
There are many Christian believers. There are many who hold a
Christian consensus worldview but there are relatively few Christians
who actually are prepared to get out of their lives what prevents
Jesus coming in. And there are many of us that have a great deal of
intellectual pride and we’re not willing to die to that pride to
let Jesus come in so actually, we never experience Jesus.
We experience an
intellectual kind of concept of Jesus but we never experience Jesus.
Many of us are holding so much onto our jobs and our futures that we
will not get that out of our room and Jesus will not come into our
room to be a prisoner so we’re actually saying to him, “There is
no room at the inn.” It’s just that we’re more subtle being
western sophisticates, we’re nicer about it. We say, “Oh yeah,
come in, come in.” But he knows that we’re only letting him into
the porch and so he doesn’t come in at all and we just hold him in
that position and we keep calling ourselves Christians.
Now how do you tell
a real Christian from a pseudo Christian, or a Christian receiver
from a Christian believer? How do you tell one who has been born of
the Spirit from one who simply goes to church and agrees with
Christianity because he lives in America? Well, 1 John 3:9, you
remember, makes it very clear. It’s a miserable verse but it does
make it clear. 1 John 3:9, “No one born of God commits sin; for
God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of
God.” And I demythologized that verse out when I was at seminary.
I went to liberal seminary and so I have no trouble demythologizing
that bit out.
I hadn’t very good
intellectual reason for it but had good moral reason so I
demythologized it anyway. And then I found that it was getting hard
going because the fella had repeated it again in verse 6, “No one
who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known
him.” So I demythologized that verse out and said it was sort of
exceptional exaggeration in the fact of Gnosticism. The boy kept
repeating it. In verse 7 he hit it again, “Little children, let no
one deceive you. He who does right is righteous, as he is
righteous.” And I argued, “Well now, it’s alright to commit an
odd sin,” and then he came right in in verse 8, “He who commits
sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the
devil.” And slowly it dawned on me that it might be true that one
who is born of God does not commit sin and I decided it would be
better to agree with him and try to find out what he meant than to
try demythologizing the whole of John.
And then it gets
hard work because you have to go onto the rest of the Bible because
Jesus keeps telling those silly little stories about the man who
builds his house in sand and the man who builds his house on rocks
and says, the people who build their house on sand are people who
hear his word and do not do it. And so it is true brothers and
sisters, that when the Spirit of Jesus comes into us and we’re born
of him, then he remains himself inside us. He does not change and he
does not begin to crucify his Father just because he’s inside us.
He still obeys his Father. In fact, he does not sin and we do not
sin.
Not that we don’t
make any mistakes. Of course, we make mistakes. Not, we conform
absolutely to some ideal form of perfection. No, but we do not sin
in the sense that James 4:17 says, “Sin is anybody who knows what
is right and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” In that sense, we
do not sin. We walk in perfect obedience, we don’ walk in sinless
perfection. We often make mistakes, we often will find our emotions
unbalanced and the old temper will go, we didn’t really mean to but
it will go. But when we know what is right to do we’ll always be
able to do it and that’s what a Christian is. A Christian is just
one who is in control of himself through the Spirit of Jesus. And he
may make many mistakes, he may often fall and slip but when he knows
what is right to do for him, it is a sin if he doesn’t do that.
And so a Christian is one who is in control, you see and who can obey
God.
That’s what it
means a Christian doesn’t sin. A Christian obeys God. He offers
God conscious obedience. There may be many things that he does wrong
that he doesn’t know about but that isn’t sin. Sin is whoever
knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Sin
is known conscious disobedience of God and a Christian is one who
doesn’t involve himself in that.
Now, that’s where
most of us come into our problems you see, because most of us, after
we’ve received the Spirit of Jesus into us, find we have troubles
in two areas of our lives. Now here’s one of the areas if you’d
like to look at a verse in Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4:25, “Therefore,
putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his
neighbor.” And we miss an assignment, and we have to face the
professor, and we know that we’ve to put away falsehood and we’ve
to speak the truth. And after a mighty struggle, we speak the truth.
Or, we miss an appointment with a friend and we really don’t like
them to think that we just forgot the appointment and so there’s a
real struggle inside, but we do speak the truth.
But there’s a
struggle. There seems to be something inside us that doesn’t want
to speak the truth in spite of the fact that the Spirit of Jesus
inside us does want to speak the truth. And so even though often we
walk in outward obedience, yet often inside we have a spirit that is
vying against that desire to obey God and that we can’t deal with.
And often it brings real strain into our lives. I mean, we may be
walking in obedience to God, but boy we are walking with a heavy
weight on our backs. There seems to be a spirit striving inside us
against the Spirit of Jesus that came into us when we were born of
God. So many of us have that problem, we walk in obedience but we
have inside another force that is trying to pull us out of God’s
way.
We have another
problem. If you look at it, it is in Hebrews 12:1. Hebrews 12:1,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings
so closely.” And you remember the King James Version is the
besetting sins, or a besetting sin. And many of us have this trouble
in our Christian lives. We can obey on number one area, two area,
three area, four area, and five area but sixth area there is a
besetting sin that we just cannot overcome. And so we have trouble
at times obeying. But we manage to obey, yet there is a strain
inside us. But on this besetting sin we cannot obey. And we find
every time we come up to this particular sin we just cannot do it.
And we fought it and fought it and we’ve confessed and repented a
thousand times until we’re tired of it. And we have no doubt in
our minds that God will forgive us until 70 times seven as long as
our heart is penitent and soft enough to repent, God will forgive us
obviously.
But the tragedy is
we have begun to see inside ourselves a tendency to rationalize the
sin so that our hearts are becoming harder about it and we find now
that we don’t feel such a desire to repent of it. We’ve almost
come to a place where we say, “Ah, no this is part of my particular
human shortcoming. I’m an artistic, poetic type of person this is
just kind the way my chemistry works.” And we begin gradually to
rationalize and justify this besetting sin.
Now brothers and
sisters, that’s where the danger is because it’s there in Hebrews
if you look at it. Hebrews 6:4-6, “For it is impossible to restore
again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have
tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy
Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the
powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they
crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to
contempt.” Now, it is not impossible for God to forgive us but do
you see what the Bibles said, “It is impossible to restore again to
repentance.” And many of us have found in our own lives a growing
tendency to rationalize and justify these besetting sins.
Now that’s the
danger point dear ones. See, that’s where it becomes dangerous.
The danger actually is not in falling and picking yourself up every
day, and confessing the sin to God and really repenting of it. God
will forgive you as often as you can do that in honesty. But the
danger is when you stop picking yourself up and you stop repenting
and you say, “No, no, it used to be a sin for me but now it’s
just part of my personality. I just have to walk with this on my
back throughout my life. I’m just a critical kind of person, I’m
just a lustful kind of person, I’m just a person that has a mind
that wanders and it can’t be clean. That’s my type of person.
I’m just that. God I know accepts me as I am.”
Now loved ones, do
you see that is an impenitent attitude and that is the attitude that
cannot be renewed again to repentance. And so really the first thing
this morning if you’re in that position is to get away from it.
Say the thing is a sin. Stop arguing with God. Step back from it
and say, “No, I am not like this because my pet dog rebuffed me
when I was a child.” Or, “I am not like this because my mother
was very domineering and she just made me paranoid and I just have to
criticize everybody else to avoid my paranoia.” No, don’t excuse
it you see, get away from the rationalization. Say, “Okay, it is a
sin I grant you that. Now, what’s the answer?”
Brothers and sisters
do you see that what God forgives you when you first come to him is
your sins? He forgives you the things that you’ve done against
him, the words that you’ve spoken against him, the thoughts that
you’ve thought against him. But do you see that those sins in the
plural come from an attitude inside and there is a clear distinction
in Romans between the word sins for which Jesus shed is blood, in
fact, Jesus died so that God could remain just and forgive us for our
sins. But those sins come from another word that you find in Romans
that has no s on the end and it’s the word sin. And sin is the
attitude or the disease that produces the symptoms.
Now the problem with
those of us who are walking in the way that I’ve described is that
we allowed God to deal with our sins but we never allowed him to
touch the sin inside us. And inside us, even though the Spirit of
Jesus is there, there is still an attitude of s-i-n. There is still
an attitude of I and I still feel I am god of my own life and I have
a right to my own way, and I ought to insist on my own rights, and
people ought not to walk over me. It’s that attitude that produces
the defeat and the strain in our Christian lives and God dealt with
that attitude you see.
Some of us like to
say, “Oh yeah, you mean that’s the old nature fighting against
the new nature.” No loved ones, if you say, “He has a lovely
nature.” He either has a lovely nature or he hasn’t. If you say
he’s of a generous nature, he’s a generation nature or he’s a
miserly nature but it’s one or the other, you can’t have two
natures inside you. The Bible never talks about us as if there are
two natures inside us. The Bible only says, “This is what the
nature of Satan does and this is what the nature of God does.” And
do you see our problem is we’ve never really allowed God to deal
with that old nature?
We’ve never really
allowed him to deal with that in a way that is once for all. Now,
God dealt with it in Jesus. See, when Jesus died, God took that
attitude of yours and put it into Jesus and destroyed it. That’s
it. It’s a miracle, but that’s what God did. If you say: “Well,
pastor if it’s gone, if it’s dead, if God crucified it in Jesus
why do I have such trouble with it here in my own life?” Well, I
ask you about your sins. Did you have trouble with your sins?
Didn’t you have trouble with the guilt of your sins until you let
go of them? In spite of the fact that you knew it was a historical
fact that Jesus has born your sins on Calvary, yet you had no release
from them or from their guilt until you let go of them yourself from
your own life.
Now, do you see it’s
the same with this old self? God destroyed it on Calvary but you can
have no freedom from it unless you’re willing to let it go yourself
and that’s the way into victory brothers and that’s the way into
victory brothers and sisters. Not to just struggle with this old
attitude inside, not to keep striving against it but to admit, “Look,
this has been crucified with Christ. This old self of mine has been
crucified with Christ.” This Connie has been crucified with
Christ. This John has been crucified with Christ. This Ernest has
been crucified with Christ. This Dan has been crucified with Christ.
We were destroyed with Jesus in Calvary. That means our futures
were destroyed, our own rights were destroyed, our possessions are no
longer our own possessions. We’ve been destroyed with Christ on
Calvary. And then a willingness to let the Holy Spirit run our lives
once we’ve stopped running them ourselves. And that’s the way
into victory.
It’s just
accepting that your old self, that old attitude inside that strains
and strives against God was crucified with Jesus. Don’t argue
about it you see. If you look at Romans 6:6, it says it plainly so
you shouldn’t try any masochism, or any monasticism. A lot of
people try to drive it out of them, you know, as if it’s a kind of
demon. If you beat your body hard enough you’ll drive him out.
It’s not that you see. Romans 6:6, “We know that our old self was
crucified with him.” So that’s a fact.
The old attitude
inside that causes you so much trouble was destroyed by God. Now,
you should begin to thank God for that. You should begin to say,
“Father, I thank you that this old self that produces this anger in
my life was crucified by you on Calvary. I thank you that it died
there with Jesus.” And then look to the Holy Spirit and say, “Holy
Spirit, will you show me any way in which I am not willing to let it
go out of my life.” And the Holy Spirit will probably come down to
you and say, “Well now, anger. You get angry because things are
getting out of your control. Now, would you be willing to let things
get so out of control as much as the Holy Spirit wants them to be out
of control and would you allow him to call it when he wants to?”
And you’d have to face that you see.
If you’re a father
or mother with children, or if you’re a brother or sister with a
roommate that really gets under your skin, slams the door every time
she goes out, just doesn’t know how to close it quietly then the
Holy Spirit will say to you, “Will you be willing to have that door
slammed for a thousand years until the Holy Spirit wants to stop it
being slammed?” In other words, the Holy Spirit will start to
apply to you what would be the consequences of your death with
Christ, you see. And usually that means if you’re dead you
wouldn’t control your own life, isn’t that right? You wouldn’t
control your own future. You wouldn’t be able to stop people when
they were hurting you. You wouldn’t be able to get people to do
just what you wanted when you wanted them to do it. Those would be
some of the consequences. You’d have to hand that all over to the
Holy Spirit because you’d be dead to Christ and there’d be nobody
else to run your life, your physical, mental, emotional life. And
the Holy Spirit will take you through those things.
I don’t know what
it is for you but it’ll be something that is the heart of yourself.
It will be some part of your life that you will not let go out of
your grip and you’re saying to God, “I’ll follow you as long
as.” And the Holy Spirit takes that as long as and he says, “Now,
would you be willing to die to self there in that as long as?” And
there’ll come a time in your life, there certainly came a time in
my life, when I got to the ground of my heart and the Holy Spirit
showed me that the trouble was not anger, or impatience, or jealousy,
or lust, or envy, the trouble was me, Ernest O’Neill. Just me
myself. I was sin. I was rebellion against God. I was such a
miserable, rotten, wretch there was nothing for God to do but destroy
me and start all over again. And then he took me to the ground of my
heart and showed me what my besetting sin was and asked me, “Would
you be willing?”
Yeah, he asked me,
“Would you be willing to be a failure for me?” And you know,
when you’re a pastor you sort of want to be successful and you want
to do things and he said, “Would you be willing to be a failure for
me?” Would you be willing to be nothing for me? And there came a
day in my parsonage in North Minneapolis where I said, “Yes, I
would be willing.” And there was just an absolute confidence that
I had come to the ground of my heart and that I was really willing to
be crucified with Christ. And then Jesus poured the Holy Spirit into
me in fullness. And from that day I walked in incredible victory
with none of the old strain or the old defeat that I’d suffered for
10 or 12 years of my Christian life. And brothers and sisters,
that’s the way into victory.
God does not want
you to walk with these besetting sins on your heart. He does not
want you to walk in strained obedience. He wants you to enter into
this death with Christ. And that’s the truth of it, you know.
It’ll be as real as real death, it really will because you die to
everything that is dear to you, you know. You die to controlling
your own future, you die to having your own way at home, you die to
having your own way in your room, you die to having your own way as
far as your money is concerned, and you die to having your own way as
far as your relationships with others are concerned. And so it is a
real death and it’s more real I suppose than physical death and yet
when you’re willing to come into that and let what has taken place
already in Jesus take place in you today, then Jesus fills you
completely with the Holy Spirit.
And then it seems
that the real Christian life really begins and it just takes off and
it’s an effortless life of victory and it is really good. You know
you should pray about it because this is certainly at the heart of my
life. This is the thing that changed my life and it’s the thing
that gets you really into that stratosphere of God’s love. So
often we’re in the atmosphere and we’re feeling the pull of the
earth, and it’s pulling us down, pulling us down and the old
friction is going like mad and then you get into the stratosphere and
it’s just effortless quiet flying through the air. And that’s
where the Father wants us. But it only comes through that death.
Now there are lots
of ways to find out because you’ll be thinking about them. You’ll
be thinking about it increasingly these weeks and months. I’ve
written a wee thing called “Free to live through death to self”.
There might be some of those on the bookshelves, but there are other
men who have written about it far, far better. Absolute Surrender by
Andrew Murray is good on it and The Normal Christian Life by Watchman
Nee is good. And really – you actually don’t need to read
anymore, all you need is Romans 6 and Romans 8:13, or Galatians
5:24-25 and then ask the Holy Spirit to begin to make that real in
your life.
And oh I pray, I
know that God wanted me to speak it for someone today so there’s
someone here today that needs that otherwise I would have preached
what I had slogged out last night to prepare. But there’s someone
obviously who needs it so you should move on it now. You shouldn’t
hold back. That controlled surrender brings strain in the eyes and
eventually just nervous exhaustion in the body and eventually falling
out of any pretense at Christianity at all. There’s only one way
to go with Jesus and that’s the whole way. And this is really a
good way to go and really the only way to fly, really, if you want
to. So I pray that God will show it to you.
Let us pray. Dear
Father, we thank you for the completeness of your plans for us. We
thank you that you have not simply dealt with the superficial
symptoms of the rebellion against you but you have dealt with the
inside attitude that no other religion can deal with. That attitude
that says, “The good that I would I cannot do and the evil that I
want to avoid, that’s the very thing that I do.” Father, we
thank you that you dealt with all this in Jesus on Calvary and that
we are in our present trouble because we’re living a lie. We’re
living as if we had never died with Christ. We’re living as if
this life is our own and we have to guard it and protect it.
Father, we thank you
that that isn’t the case. That this life ended with Jesus on
Calvary and now the Holy Spirit is the one who controls these minds,
and bodies, and emotions and he will do it for your glory and we will
be able to just enjoy the ride. Father, we thank you for that.
Trust you Father for whatever brother and sister needs to hear this
this morning that you will deal directly with them and that you will
bring them right into this. I know Holy Spirit that you are a good
counselor and they need no other counselor but you. You will show
them where the ground of their heart is and where their own self is.
I trust you to do it so that we will be a glorious body without spot,
or blemish, or wrinkle, or any such thing and that when the world
sees us they will see you. We ask this in your name, Amen.
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