Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian – Part 10

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Welcome to Powerful God – Practical Faith, and our blog series entitled, “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”.

It has been a pleasure working through the Word of God with you all as viewers of this blog series and learning together as we define what it is to be a Christian. I hope that you have been helped both spiritually and intellectually as we continue to increase our understanding of our relationship with God, and this incredible gift of salvation he has given us.

For new or perhaps casual readers to this blog, if you have not already, I would encourage you to view our previous posts, parts 1-9, in order to catch up on what has been taught up to this point. Quite a bit of material has been shared so far and I don’t want anyone to miss the flow of this series if they find themselves in the middle of our series.

And with that being said, let us continue…..

In our last post, we discussed Statement 5 and the incredible truth of God’s love for the Christian, in eternity past. We learned how before we were even born, in fact, before the world itself was created, he chose the Christian to receive his wonderful gift of salvation. We also learned that this salvation, which God in his grace gave to the Christian was executed in time through faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. There is so much to be thankful for in God’s divine plan for those whom he has called to himself.

This brings us now to our next statement, which is really, just an extension of Statement 5.

Statement 6 says…..

A Christian is a person who has had God’s love shown to him by having the penalty for his sin, paid for by the death of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

In this blog, we will begin to understand more about the “means” by which God saves us.

Now if you recall, Statement 5 said that God extended his love toward us even though we were at that time sinners and enemies of God. Even earlier in our series, we learned that the Christian was a slave to sin and facing God’s eternal punishment.

It is very important to pause here and consider, once more, the seriousness of what it “really” means to be a sinner. I can’t say, even as I ponder what God’s Word says about it, that I always take to heart, how evil, contentious, and defiant sin is and how God abhors it. It is as if God sees sin as much more than acts of disobedience. Sin in reality is truly rebellion against God from the inside out. This rebellion is so spiritually toxic, that it decays the soul, making us totally unfit to be in the presence of a Holy God.

Now as we learned in our earlier blogs, this soul decaying sin nature has a consequence. The consequence is both fatal and final, if allowed to be faced by us alone. This consequence for sin is, of course, death, as we learned earlier. We also learned that this consequence of death is both a spiritual and physical reality.

So how did the Christian, who was once a sinner, pay the penalty for his sin? How did he suffer the fatal and final consequence of his actions against a holy and completely righteous God, and “live” to tell about it? Well, the answer is simple. He didn’t. Even though this penalty had to be paid, no Christian alive today has paid it. No Christian has paid this penalty because no Christian could. Remember again Romans 6:26 which says….

For the wages of sin is death…..

For the Christian to pay for his sin, he would of course have to die. If the payment is death, then there is no hope for the Christian because there is no coming back from death, at least from a human perspective. The Christian, nor anyone else has the capacity to satisfy his debt to God without it being his ultimate end. In fact, this condition is so bad that God considered us already dead even prior to physical death. Listen to how Paul describes Christians before they came to know Jesus Christ:

And you were “dead” in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Ephesians 2:1-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

In this passage, Paul was essentially calling us the “walking dead”.  We were living a life totally devoid of the holiness of God. Paul also notes in this passage …“how”… we were dead. The passage says that we were dead in “trespasses and sins”. Now these two terms, although rather synonymous with one another seems to have special emphasis when they are spoken of together. The term trespass means the actual sinful activity itself. It is the unlawful or immoral deed committed. The term sin or sins, although it can also mean a trespass, seems to lean toward the intention or the heart that brought about the trespass. Paul is saying that we are spiritually alienated from God, or … “dead”…, because our immoral deeds, which are motivated by our corrupt, depraved, sinful hearts. The sinner in essence is both dead and will die.

So, what can be done about this dilemma?  The Christian has a “death” payment that has to be paid, but he cannot pay it and live. It is an absolute certainty that he cannot pay the penalty for his sin and then recover from that penalty. Nonetheless, as our God would have it, there is an answer… a remedy for this seemingly impossible set of circumstances. The remedy is none other than God himself. Listen to what Paul articulates in Romans 5….

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

So then, in this passage we learn that the remedy for our fatal and final dilemma is Christ’s death for us, in our place, because of God’s love for his people.

Now it is important to note the timing in which this act of love was applied on our behalf. Paul says that God demonstrated his love…. while we were still sinners. We should never lose the significance of this phrase because loving us while we were still sinners shows something unique about God’s Eternal Intention. First of all, it means that he loved us before we had the ability to love him back. As sinners, in our sin, we had no ability to love God truly or to seek him as we learned in Romans 3. Secondly, God’s love was not based on anything good that we did. There was nothing that the Christian did or could do that would motivate Christ to take on death for his sin. God’s love and His “demonstration” of love was fully and completely unconditional. It is certainly true what the prophet Jonah said in his prayer of contrition in Jonah 2:9…….

“Salvation is of the Lord”

Thirdly, this means that God is very intentional in his plans and activities. He saw a people He wanted to save from sin and death and did all that a Holy, but merciful God could do to grant us life everlasting. With God, there was no chance, happenstance, or plan “B”. There was only the Triune God executing the work of redemption to an undeserving people.

In St. John 15:13, Jesus says ….

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his” friends.

John 15:13 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

There could never be enough rejoicing, praise and thanksgiving for the God-Man, who gave his life for us. It is an humbling but gratifying honor to be a Christian loved by God!

I hope you are enjoying this blog series and finding it to be informative and helpful. Next time we will be discussing the application of Christ’s righteousness and the necessity of His resurrection for the eternal redemption of the Christian.

Thank you for visiting Powerful God – Practical Faith. I hope you come back to read more as we enter the latter half of this series on “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”

God Bless.