DaveJays Blog

What Makes Me a Christian?

AUG 13th 2008 • 2 Comments

I've been thinking recently about what I would say if someone asked me, "What makes you a christian?". Not "Why are you a Christian?" or "How did you become a Christian?", but what makes me a Christian? I was thinking about it, and the simplest answer to this question is God's grace. And that's probably the most important part of understanding what makes me a Christian: nothing I did, simply and absolutely, God's grace.

This doesn't mean that I was simply walking along, minding my business, when out of an orange-colored sky, Flash! Bam! Alakazam! Wonderful grace came by. Although, in a sense that is essentially what happens. In certain circles this topic is debated to no end. Did I have free will to choose to follow God? Or did God choose me, and I had no say in the matter? There's no answering this question, and getting caught up in it detracts from what's more important I think: Whether I had a choice in it or not, God's grace was given to me in spite of my depravity. This leads me to my next point.

Our Depravity

This is where answering the question of what makes me a Christian gets a little more sticky. There's a lot of tension about this topic. Simply put, every single person on this Earth who ever existed or who will ever exist is hopelessly depraved. There is nothing good in any of us, nothing at all, we're all scumbags. This is a difficult concept I think because we see so much good around us everywhere we go. People volunteering to help the elderly in a nursing home for example. I was recently up in Michigan visiting my Grandpa who was temporarily in a nursing home. And it was the type of environment that I would absolutely not want to work. Nobody had their mental faculties quite in order, simple things like going to the bathroom could not be done without help from an employee there. Who would want to work in that environment? I applaud the staff there, they all do an excellent job!

Who Gets the Ownership of Good?

Probably not all of the staff at the nursing home would claim to be a Christian. So how can they be hopelessly depraved and do all those good things? Despite what some might claim, Christians do not have the market cornered on good clean living. Every single person, whether they recognize it or not is benefitting from God's common grace to all of us. It's the question of who takes ownership of that goodness that is the key to understanding what makes a Christian. I am absolutely sure that any good that I do in the world, could not have come from myself. I know me, apart from Christ, I'm not a nice guy. I'm an arrogant, selfish, lover of evil. But I have died with Christ on the cross. And I won't suffer the penalty of my depravity anymore.

Grace is Without Power in the Absence of Depravity

One of my favorite quotes is from a Relient K song ("Be My Escape"): "The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair". If we try to credit our good works to ourselves, why would we need grace? Picture if you will that you're on the chopping block about to get beheaded for your crimes, and the King sends his son down, who isn't guilty of anything to get beheaded along with you. Both you and the King's son just died because of your crimes. Justice has been served, but not on the King's son. He was innocent. But wouldn't you know it, 3 days later the King's son gets raised from the dead, and you along with him. How cool is that? Because you died with the King's son, you get risen to new life along with him! That's just totally awesome!

Now picture the same situation again, you're on the chopping block and the King sends his son down to die with you. But instead of letting him die with you, you tell Him, "I don't need you to die with me. You see, this whole execution thing is a mistake. I don't recognize the King's authority over me. I may have made a few mistakes here and there, but overall I've lived a really good life and I don't deserve to be in this situation at all. You go back and tell your dad that I don't need or even want your help."

Do you see the difference between both scenarios? There's no way for the person on the chopping block to accept the grace that is being shown to them unless they admit their guilt. If we take out the penalty for sin, there's absolutely no need of grace.

The point I'm trying to make through the example with the King's son is that my old self, the one that is hopelessly depraved, was crucified with Christ and that we become new people when that happens. We're not sacrificing anything when we die with Christ because there's nothing to sacrifice. We're not adding to what Jesus did on the cross at all. If you pile up heaps of stinky garbage and take it to the dump to be disposed of, that's not a sacrifice, because that garbage holds no value at all. That's why absolute depravity is so important, because when we recognize that we're nothing but pond scum apart from Grace. We're only too happy to crucify that pondscum and receive grace.

That's what makes me a Christian, because I died with Christ on the cross and have been raised to new life. And it's my heart's desire to glorify him in all that I do in this life and the next.

posted in: God |