Christianity may be humanly understood in two ways. The first is fundamental to persons and God. That is the individual person takes a genuine step of faith in the redemptive plan of God. Basically that refers to the understanding that the penitent person acknowledges failure in his or her nature to meet the standards of God for acceptance. This is summarized and characterized that the person is, in the simple word, a sinner. This is followed by an effective faith that changes the nature of the person. This is simplified in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus: Ye must be born again. (John 3) Taken genuinely and personally the individual is promised immortal award with God. It is a spiritual negotiation. It is not physical, or social, or found in any other context that may be designed. When genuine it is immortal.
The second meaning of Christian relates to obedience to the life pattern of the person following the fundamental moral pattern of God. That pattern follows scriptural injunctions which are summarized in the word righteousness (right). The first meaning is joined with the applied human context meaning of Christianity. The first meaning gets us to the door into the vestibule and the second gives us the context of the house. If we are not in the house, the keeping of righteousness is not enough to gain ultimate benefit although it is an ideal context for life even for non-Christians. Many non-Christians try to follow biblical morality. Righteous conduct is an ideal for common grace, the gift of God to all persons of whatever persuasion and nature. (Proverbs 14:34) Weakness in choosing righteousness without biblical definition is that persons tend to pick and choose from the context of righteousness so that it is diluted, perhaps made ineffectual by the contradictions of those who decide what concepts and conducts to which they relate.
Those who acknowledge God in the redemptive experience, but do not seek to follow in the scriptural pattern for life and service tend to accept birth without growth that offers to both Christians and the world the model of the redemptive life. It becomes life without growth which seems to shrivel those who fail to join with God in forming redemptive life. This is to acknowledge that there are Christians, or so I presume, that do not act christianly. They are faced with problems they do not understand including disappointment, doubt, lack of maturity in Christian life which takes away, or seriously dilutes, assurances, understandings, fulfillment, and various gifts of Christian personhood. God will sift lives in evaluation.
God’s life gifts include love, joy, peace, and a series of benefits that relate to the fruit of the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 5:22; 1 Corinthians 14:12; Hebrews 11:4; Matthew 7:11; Ephesian 5:9) Here is the life of the Christian reflective of the life God would have his children live, and matured in the Christian ultimately. All this is important to our understanding so to benefit personally from the context God has designed out of his own nature for the maturation of his children. Those who affirm that they have faith in Christ, but do not find the work of the Holy Spirit within them providing growth in faith and conduct will not function well as Christians, nor will they gain full benefit for their faith. God’s evaluation will differentiate his awards, or there would be greatly reduced cause for the development of Christian life once a person has made a faith decision. Further in the ultimate evaluation, the minimalists will gain less than they ought to have gained for immortality. Perhaps we can explain the point in referring to peace and joy. The person working for years in ministry can often tell the general position of persons, Christian or non-Christian, on the continuum of righteousness. The Christian in surrender to God’s directives will find peace when there is no one peaceful around; will find joy when all around are in sadness; will find love when surrounded by haters; and, so the story goes. How do persons manage a joyful life with the constant flow of bad news fed daily to the public arena? The Christian in spiritual maturity has resources to manage and find life is what is sometimes identified as victorious. It has a heavenly context to it that protects from sadness, ugliness, conflict, despair, hatred, and the like. Christian as Christ would have us christianly is to find what human masses are looking for in the here and now. The gifts of God offer the ultimate perfect human context. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020