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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
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<td><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>WHAT IS A BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN? </font></font></b>
<br><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font size=-1>by Pastor Albert N. Martin
Trinity Baptist Church of Montvllle, NJ</font></font></b></td>
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<td><img SRC="assets/martin.jpg" height=130 width=100 align=LEFT><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>There
are many matters concerning which total ignorance and complete indifference
are neither tragic nor fatal. I am sure that there are few of us who can
explain all the processes by which a brown cow eats green grass and gives
white milk but we can still enjoy the milk! Many of us are totally ignorant
of Einstein's theory of relativity, and if we were pressed to explain it
we would really be in difficulty. And not only are we ignorant of Einstein's
theory but most of us are quite indifferent; yet our ignorance and indifference
are neither tragic nor fatal. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>There are some matters, however,
concerning which ignorance and indifference are both tragic and fatal.
One such matter is the answer to the question, "What is a biblical Christian?"
In other words, according to the Scriptures, when does a man, woman, boy
or girl have the right to the name "Christian"? </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>One must not make the assumption
lightly that he or she is a true Christian. A false conclusion at this
point is tragic and fatal. Therefore I want to set before you four strands
of the Bible's answer to the question, "What is a biblical Christian?" </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>1. According to the Bible, a Christian
is a person who has faced realistically the problem of his own personal
sin. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>One of the many things which distinguishes
the Christian faith from the other religions of the world is that Christianity
is essentially and fundamentally a sinner's religion. When the angel announced
to Joseph the approaching birth of Jesus Christ, he did so in these words,
"And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for
he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). The apostle Paul
wrote in 1 Timothy 1:15, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."
The Lord Jesus Christ himself says in Luke 5:1-32, "Those who are well
do not need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call
the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." A Christian is one who has
faced realistically the problem of his own personal sin.
When we turn to the Scriptures, we find that each one of us has a two-fold
personal problem in relation to sin. On the one hand, we have the problem
of a bad record and, on the other hand, the problem of a bad heart. If
we start in Genesis 3 and begin with the tragic account of man's rebellion
against God and his fall into sin, then trace the biblical doctrine of
sin all the way through to the Book of the Revelation, we see that it is
not over sim purification to say that everything that the Bible teaches
about the doctrine of sin can be reduced to these two fundamental categories
-the problem of a bad record and the problem of a bad heart. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>What do I mean by "the problem of
a bad record"? I am using that terminology to describe what the Scriptures
set before us as the doctrine of human guilt because of sin. The Scriptures
tell us plainly that we obtained a bad record long before we had any personal
existence upon the earth: "Through one man sin entered the world, and death
through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans
5:12). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>When did the "all" sin? We all sinned
in Adam. He was appointed by God to represent all of the human race. When
he sinned, we sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.
That is why the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:22, "For as in
Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." Man was created
without sin in the Garden of Eden; but from the moment Adam sinned, we
too were charged with guilt. We fell in him in his first transgression
and we are part of a race that is under condemnation. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Furthermore, the Scriptures teach
that after we are born, additional guilt accrues to us for our own personal
transgressions. The Word of God teaches that, "There is not a just man
on earth who does good and does not sin" (Ecclesiastes 7:20); and every
single sin incurs additional guilt. Our record in heaven is a marred record.
Almighty God measures the totality of our human experience by a standard
which is absolutely inflexible. This standard touches not only our external
deeds but also our thoughts and the very motions of our hearts -so much
so, that the Lord Jesus said that the stirring of unjust anger is the very
essence of murder, and the look with intention to lust is adultery (Matthew
5:22,28). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>God is keeping a detailed record.
That record is among "the books" which will be opened in the day of judgment
(Revelation 20:12). In those books a_ recorded every thought, every motive,
every intention, every deed, and every dimension of human experience that
is contrary to the standard of God's holy law, either failing to measure
up to its standard or transgressing it. We have the problem of a bad record
-a record according to which we are guilty. We have real guilt for real
sin committed against the true and the living God. This is why the Scriptures
tell us that the entire human race stands guilty before Almighty God (Romans
3:19). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Has the problem of your own bad record
ever become a burning, pressing, personal concern? Have you faced the truth
that Almighty God judged you guilty when your father Adam sinned, and holds
you guilty for every single word you have spoken contrary to perfect holiness,
justice, purity and righteousness? He knows every object you have touched
and taken contrary to the sanctity of prop erty. He knows every word spoken
contrary to perfect, absolute truth. Has this ever broken in upon you,
so that you have awakened to the fact Oat Almighty God has every right
to summon you into his presence and to require you to give an account of
every single deed contrary to his law which has brought guilt upon your
soul? </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>But this problem of a bad record
is not our only problem. We have an additional problem -the problem of
a bad heart. The Bible teaches that the problem of our sin arises not only
from what we have done, but from what we are. When Adam sinned, he not
only became guilty before God, he also became defiled and polluted in his
nature. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>This defilement is described in Jeremiah
17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desper ately wicked;
who can know it?" Jesus describes it in Mark 7:21: "From within, out of
the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts"; and then he names all the various
sins that can be seen in any newspaper on any given day -murder, adultery,
blasphemy, pride. Jesus said that these things rise out of an artesian
well of pollution, the human heart Notice carefully that he did not say,
"For from without, by the pressure of society and its negative influences,
come forth murder and adultery and pride and theft" That is what our so-called
sociological experts tell us. They say it is "the condition of society"
that produces crime and rebellion; Jesus says it is the condition of the
human heart. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Each of us by nature has a heart
that the Scriptures describe as "desperately wicked," a foun tain of all
forms of iniquity. Romans 8:7 asserts, "The carnal mind is enmity against
God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." Paul
does not say that the carnal mind, that is, the mind that has never been
regenerated by God, has some enmity; he calls it enmity itself: "The carnal
mind is enmity against God." The disposition of every human heart by nature
can be pictured as a clenched fist raised against the living God. This
is the inward problem of a bad heart -a heart that loves sin, a heart that
is the fountain of sin, a heart that is enmity against God. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Has the problem of your bad heart
ever become a pressing personal concern to you? I am not asking in theory
whether you believe in human sinfulness. You might agree that there are
such things as a sinful nature and a sinful heart My question is, have
your bad record and your bad heart ever become matters of deep, inward,
pressing concern to you? Have you known anything of real, personal, inward
con sciousness of the awfulness of your guilt in the presence of a holy
God? Have you seen the horrible ness of a heart that is "deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked"? </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>A biblical Christian is a person
who has in all seriousness taken to heart his own personal prob lem of
sin. The degree to which we may feel the awful weight of sin differs from
one person to another. The length of time over which a person is brought
to the consciousness of his bad record and his bad heart differs. These
are many variables, but Jesus Christ as the Great Physician never brought
his healing virtue to anyone who did not know himself to be a sinner. He
said, "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance"
(Matthew 9:13). Are you a biblical Christian -one who has taken seriously
your own problem of sin? 2. A biblica1 Christian is one
who has seriously considered the divine remedy for sin. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>In the Bible we are told again and
again that Almighty God has taken the initiative in doing something for
man, the sinner. The verses some of us learned in our youth emphasize God's
initiative in providing a remedy for sinful man: "For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son"; "In this is love, not that we
loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins"; "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love
with which he loved us" (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10; Ephesians 2:4). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>A unique feature of the Christian
faith is that it is not a religious self-help scheme where you patch yourself
up with the aid of God. Just as surely as it is a unique tenet of the Christian
faith that Christ is the only Savior for sinners, so it is also a unique
tenet of the Christian faith that all of our true help comes down from
above and meets us where we are. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own
bootstraps; God in mercy breaks in upon the human situation and does something
which we could never do for ourselves. When we turn to
the Scriptures, we find that God's divine remedy has at least three simple
but profoundly wonderful focal points: </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>(a) First of all, God's remedy for
sin is bound up in a Person. Anyone who begins to take seriously the divine
remedy for human sin will notice in the Scriptures that the remedy is not
in a set of ideas, as though it were just another philosophy, nor is it
found in an institution, but it is bound up in a Person: "For God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten Son"; "And she will bring forth
a Son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins" (John 3:16; Matthew 121). Jesus himself said, "I am the way,
the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"
John 14:6). The divine remedy for sin is bound up in a Person, and that
Person is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ -the eternal Word who became
man, uniting a true human nature to his divine nature, Here is God's provision
for man with his bad record and his bad heart a Savior who is both God
and man, the two natures joined in the one Person for ever. If your personal
problem of sin is ever to be remedied in a biblical way, it will be remedied
only as you have personal dealings with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Such is the unique strand of the Christian faith: the sinner in all his
need, united to the Savior in all the fullness of his grace; the sinner
in his naked need, and the Savior in his almighty power, brought directly
together in the Gospel. That reality is the glory of God's Good News to
sinners! </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>(b) Secondly, God's remedy for sin
is center in the cross upon which Jesus Christ died. When we turn to the
Scriptures we find that the divine rem edy in a unique way is centered
in the cross of Jesus Christ John the Baptist uses the Old Testament image
of the sacrificial lamb when he points to Jesus and says, "Behold! The
Lamb of God who take. away the sin of the world!" (John 129). Jesus himself
said, "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give
his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>True preaching of the Gospel is so
much centered in the cross that Paul says it is the word or message of
the cross. The preaching of the cross is "foolish ness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians
1:18). When Paul came to Corinth -a center of intellectualism and pagan
Greek philosophy -he did not follow their prescribed patterns of rhetoric
but said that he "determined not to know anything among you except Jesus
Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>The cross is not to be thought of
as an abstract idea or a religious symbol; the meaning of the cross is
what God declares it to mean. The cross was the place where God, by imputation,
heaped the sins of his people upon his Son. On that cross there was substitutionary
curse-bearing. In the language of the apostle Paul, "Christ has redeemed
us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Galatians
3:13), and "He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might
become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>The cross is not a nebulous, indefinable
symbol of self-giving love; on the contrary, the cross is the monumental
display of how God can be just and still pardon guilty sinners. At the
cross, God, having imputed the sins of his people to Christ, pronounces
judgment upon his Son as the representative of his people. There on the
cross God pours out the vials of his wrath unmixed with mercy until his
Son cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1;
Matthew 27:46). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>At Calvary, God is demonstrating
in the visible world what is happening in the invisible, spiritual world.
He shrouds the heavens in total darkness to let all mankind know that he
is plunging his Son into the outer darkness of the hell which your sins
and my sins deserve. Jesus hangs on the cross in the posture of a guilty
criminal; for him society has but one verdict: "Away with him" "Crucify
him" "Hand him over to death" -and God does not intervene. In the theater
of what men can see, God is demonstrating what he is doing in the realm
where we cannot see. He is treating his Son as a criminal. He is causing
Jesus to feel in the depths of his own soul all of the fury of the wrath
that should be vented upon us. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>(c) Thirdly, God's remedy for sin
is adequate for all men, and it is offered to all men without discrim ination.
Before we have any felt consciousness of our sin, it is very easy to think
that God can forgive sinners. But when you and I begin to have any idea
at all of what sin is, our thoughts are changed. We see ourselves as little
worms of the dust, creatures whose very life and breath are held in the
hands of the God in whom "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>We begin to take seriously that we
have dared to defy the God who consigned angels to everlasting darkness
when they rebelled against him. We con fess that this holy God sees the
effusions of our foul, corrupt human hearts. Then we say, "0 God, how can
you be anything other than just? If you give me what my sins deserve, there
is nothing for me but wrath and judgment! How can you forgive me and still
be just? How can you be a righteous God and do anything other than consign
me to everlasting pun ishment with those angels that rebelled?" When we
begin to feel the reality of our sin, forgiveness becomes the most stubborn
problem with which our mind has ever wrestled. It is then that we need
to know that in a Person, and that Person crucified, God has provided a
remedy adequate for all men and offered to all men without discrimina tion. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>If any conditions were placed on
the availability of Christ we would say, "Surely I don't meet the conditions;
surely I don't qualify." The wonder of God's provision is that it comes
in these unfetter terms: "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price" Isaiah 55:1); "The one who comes
to me I will by no means cast out" (John 6:37). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>See the beauty of the free offer
of mercy in Jesus Chris We do not need God to step out of heaven and tell
us that we, by name, are warranted to come; we have the unfettered offer
of mercy in the words of his own Son, "Come to me, all you who labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>3. A biblical Christian is one who
has wholeheartedly complied with the terms for obtaining God 's provision
for sin. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>The divine terms are two: repent
and believe. Of Jesus' earliest ministry it is recorded, "Now after John
was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom
of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at
hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel'" (Mark 1:14-15). After his resurrection
Jesus told his disciples that "repentance and remission of sins should
be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47).
The apostle Paul testified "to Jews, and also to Greeks, repen tance toward
God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>What are the divine terms for obtaining
the divine provision? We must repent, and we must believe. Although it
is necessary to discuss these as separate concepts, we must not think that
repen tance is ever divorced from faith or that faith is ever divorced
from repentance. True faith is permeated with repentance, and true repentance
is permeated with faith. They inter-penetrate one another in such a way
that, whenever there's a true appropriation of the divine provision, you
will find a believing penitent and a penitent believer.
What is repentance? The definition of the Shorter Catechism is an excellent
one: "Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of
a true sense of his sin, and apprehension (that is, laying hold) of the
mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from
it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience." </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Repentance is the Prodigal Son coming
to his senses in the far country. Rather than remain at home under his
father's rule, he had asked to receive his inheritance early and left home
for a far country, where he squandered it. Reduced to misery through his
sins, he came to himself and said, "How many of my father's hired servants
have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise
and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Make me like one of your hired servants'" (Luke 15:17-19). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>When the Prodigal Son recognized
his sin he did not sit there and think about it, write poetry about it,
or send telegrams home to Dad. The Scripture says, "And he arose and came
to his father" (v 20). He left those companions who were his friends in
sin; he abhorred everything that belonged to that life-style and turned
his back on it. What was it that drew him home? It was the confidence that
there was a gracious father with a large heart and with a righ teous rule
for his happy, loving home. He did not write saying, "Dad, things are getting
rough down here; my conscience is giving me fits at night. Won't you send
me some money to help me out, or come and pay me a visit and make me feel
good?" Not at all! He did not need just to feel good; he needed to become
good. So he left the far country. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>It is a beautiful stroke in our Lord's
picture when he says, "But when he was still a great way off, his father
saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him"
(v 20). The Prodigal did not come strutting up to his father, talking about
making a decision to come home. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>There is a notion today that people
can walk up an aisle, pray a little prayer, and do God a favor by making
their decision. This has nothing to do with true conversion. True
repentance involves recogniz ing that I have sinned against the God of
heaven, who is great and gracious, holy and loving, and that I am not worthy
to be called his son. Yet when I am prepared to leave my sin, turn my back
upon it and come back meekly, wondering if indeed there can be mercy for
me, then -wonder of wonders! -the Father meets me, and throws his arms
of reconciling love and mercy about me. I say, not in a sentimental way
but in all truth, that he smothers repenting sinners in forgiving and redemptive
love. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>But the father did not throw his
arms around the Prodigal when he was still in the hog pens and in the arms
of harlots. Do I speak to some whose hearts are wedded to the world and
who love the world's ways? Perhaps in your personal life, or in relation
ship to your parents, or in your social life where you take so lightly
the sanctity of the body, you show what you really are. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Maybe some of you are involved in
fornication, or in heavy petting, or in looking at the kind of stuff on
television and in the movies that feeds your lust, and yet you name the
name of Christ. You live in the hog pens and then go to a house of God
on Sunday. Shame on you! Leave your hog pens and your haunts of sin. Leave
your patterns and practices of fleshly and carnal indulgence. Repentance
is being sorry enough to quit your sin. You will never know the forgiving
mercy of God while you are still wedded to your sins. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Repentance is the soul's divorce
from sin, but it will always be joined to faith. What is faith? Faith is
the casting of the soul upon Christ as he is offered in the Gospel. "But
as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of
God, even to those who believe in his name" (John 1:12). Faith is likened
to drinking of Christ, for in my soul-thirst I drink of him. Faith
is likened to looking to Christ, and following Christ, and fleeing to Christ.
The Bible uses many analogies and the sum of all of them is this: in the
nakedness of my need I cast myself upon the Savior, trusting him to be
to me all that he has promised to be to needy sinners. Faith brings nothing
to Christ but an empty hand, by which it takes Christ and all that is in
him. What is in Christ? Full pardon for all my sins! His perfect obedience
is put to my account. His death is counted as mine. The gift of the Spirit
is in him. Adoption, sanctification and ultimately glorification
are all in him; and faith, by taking Christ, receives all that is in him.
"You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>What is a biblical Christian? A biblical
Christian is a person who has wholeheartedly complied with the divine terms
for obtaining the divine provision for sin. Those terms are repentance
and faith. I like to think of them as the hinge on which the door of salvation
turns. The hinge has two plates, one that is screwed to the door and the
other that is snowed to the jamb. They are held together by a pin,
and on that hinge the door turns. Christ is that door, but none enters
through him who does not repent and believe. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>There is no true hinge made up only
of repen tance. Repentance that is not joined to faith is a legalistic
repentance. It terminates on yourself and on your sin. Likewise, there
is no true hinge made up only of faith. Professed faith that is not joined
to repentance is a spurious faith, for true faith is faith in Christ to
save me not in but from my sin. Repentance and faith am inseparable, and
"unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3). The unbelieving
are named among those who "shall have their part in the lake which burns
with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Revelatian 218). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>4 A biblical Christian is a person
who manifests in his life that his claims to repentance and faith are real. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Paul preached that men should repent
and turn to God and do works consistent with repentance (Acts 26:20). God
intends that there should be such works: "For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of
works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should
walk in them" (Ephesians 2:8-10). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Paul says in Galatians 5 that faith
works by love. Wherever there is true faith in Christ, genuine love to
Christ will be implanted. And where there is love to Christ there will
be obedience to Christ. "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it
is he who loves me.. He who does not love me does not keep my words"
(John 14:21-24). We are saved by trusting Christ, not by loving and obeying
Christ, but a trust that does not produce love and obedience is not true
saving faith. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>True faith works by love, and that
which love works is not the ability to sit out on a beautiful starlit night
and write poetry about how exciting it is to be a Christian. True faith
works by causing you to go back into your home and to obey your father
and your mother, or to love your husband or wife and children as the Bible
tells you to do, or to go back to your school or to your job to take a
stand for truth and righteousness against all the pressure of your peers. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>True faith makes you willing to be
counted as a fool and crazy -willing to be considered out dated -because
you believe that there are eternal, unchangeable moral and ethical standards.
You are willing to believe in chastity and the sanctity of human life and
to take your stand against premarital sex and the murdering of babies in
mothers' wombs. For Jesus said, "Whoever is ashamed of me and my words
in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will
be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels"
(Mark 8:38). </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>What is a biblical Christian? It
is not merely one who says, "Oh, yes, I know I am a sinner, with a bad
record and a bad heart. I know that God's provision for sinners is in Christ
and in his cross, and that it is adequately and freely offered to all.
I know it comes to all who repent and believe." That is not enough. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Do you repent and believe? And if
you profess to repent and believe, can you make that profession stick -not
by a life of perfection, but by a life of purposeful obedience to Jesus
Christ? </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord,
Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, "Jesus said, "but he who does
the will of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). In Hebrews 5:9 we read,
"He be came the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him." 1 John
2:4 says, "He who says, 'I know him,' and does not keep his commandments,
is a liar, and the truth is not in him". </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>Can you make your claim to be a Christian
stick from the Bible? Does your life manifest the fruits of repentance
and faith? Do you possess a life of attachment to Christ, obedience to
Christ, and con fession of Christ? Is your behavior marked by adherence
to the ways of Christ? Not perfectly -no! Every day you must pray, "Forgive
me my tres passes as I forgive those who trespass against me." But at the
same time you can also say, "For me to live is Christ" or, in the words
of the hymn, Jesus I my cross have taken All to leave and follow
thee. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>A true Christian follows Jesus. How
many of us are true, biblical Christians? I leave you to answer in the
deep chambers of your own mind and heart. </font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana"><font size=-2>But remember, answer with an answer
that you will be prepared to live with for eternity. Be content with no
answer but one that will find you comfort able in death, and safe in the
day of judgment. </font></font></td>
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