Who Are the Real Christians?

Test 1: Theological Transformation
Do you believe that Jesus is the eternal God who became a man to live without sin, die in your place on the cross for your sins, and rise from death as Lord of your life?

Test 2: Moral Transformation

Do you admit that you are a sinner and want to stop sinning and live like Jesus by the grace of God?

Test 3: Social Transformation

Do you receive God’s love and love Him and other people beginning with fellow Christians?

John’s point is not that if we strive to do these things we can become Christians. Rather, it is by turning from sin and trusting in Jesus that our heart and life is changed. We want to know Jesus as we meet him in the Bible. We want to live a new life because Jesus made us a new person by putting the Holy Spirit in us (2:20, 2:27, 3:24). We want to be part of a community with other people who love and follow Jesus—the extended family called the Church. The big idea is that a Christian is a person who has met Jesus and been changed by Jesus and is being changed to be more and more like Jesus. For more than two decades I’ve been saying, “It’s all about Jesus.”

What does that tell us? By John’s definition, there are people who are not hypocrites but in fact simply not Christians.

The Good News

The Bible gives us another clear way to define who is or is not an actual Christian. According to Scripture, Christians are people who believe certain truths. Authentic believers do not twist God’s book to mean whatever they want it to. They instead hold tight to its core content. They do not simply believe its truth intellectually but trust it experientially.

The big idea of the Bible is the “Gospel,” which means “good news.” In later blogs for this series we will more thoroughly scrutinize the Bible itself in response to the statement “I don’t share the same beliefs that the Christian faith tells me I should.” But for now, we need to establish this overarching message of the Bible. Why does this matter? Because the world’s continual onslaught of information has the tragic outcome of causing us to overlook the few things we truly must know. Thankfully, a short Bible passage reveals the singular most important truths in all the world. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 the Apostle Paul writes:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (ESV)