What is a Christian?

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith (Galatians 3:26)

 

If we were to conduct a poll about the question, ‘What is a Christian?,’ we would receive a range of answers, some partly true, some true, and some false. How would we answer the question if we were asked to describe a Christian in a few words? There is a sense in which the Bible answers this question many times without mentioning the question. The words in our text do so, and Paul mentions three obvious things in it that we will explore – they are ‘in Christ Jesus,’ ‘sons of God,’ and ‘people of faith.’

 

Who is the ‘you’ in the verse?

As we begin, we should say something about the ‘you’ in the verse. Who were they? They are the Galatians to whom Paul sent this letter and for most of their lives they had not been Christians; those of them who were Gentiles would have been pagans, worshipping non-existent idols. But they heard the gospel of grace and believed savingly in Jesus. Yet after they did so, they were not ideal Christians because after a while they took on board serious errors about the Jewish ceremonial law. Yet despite that error, Paul describes them in verse 26 as real Christians.

 

The Messiah has come

Paul, in this set of verses, is contrasting the spiritual life under the old covenant of Israel with the spiritual life under the new covenant. Both covenants had blessings given by God, but the main difference between them is that the coming of the Messiah was future in the old covenant but it has happened already in the new covenant; indeed, it was the Messiah who inaugurated the new covenant with his death. A reference to the Messiah begins verse 26 and, as we know, Jesus is the Messiah.

 

Illustration

Imagine you received a letter from Downing Street which said, ‘in the realms of King Charles, you are British citizens through birth.’ How would that make you feel? Maybe not too much if you happened to be living in Spain or Turkey. Yet the fact that you live in such places would not change the meaning of the sentence, or the potential of the sentence, because it would still be true that ‘in the realms of King Charles, you are British citizens by birth.’ That sentence is a faint illustration of what Paul is saying about Christians. It is true that in the realms of the Messiah we are children of God by faith.

 

So we can consider three truths from this verse: first, the significance of being ‘in Christ Jesus;’ second, the importance of being sons of God; and third, what is the faith that Christians have?

 

In Christ Jesus

The phrase ‘in Christ Jesus’ or similar occurs many times in the New Testament. It means that believers are united to Jesus. This union covers many areas of their spiritual life. He is king and they are subjects, he is the shepherd and they are sheep, he is the bridegroom and they are the bride, he is the head and they are the body, he is the vine and they are the branches, he is the foundation and they are the building. These aspects are true everywhere, we might say, in the areas of his responsibility, and they are the recipients of his resources constantly. Going back to the illustration of Charles, he has areas of responsibility, and he provides resources to those over whom he reigns. Jesus is much greater than any earthly ruler and his domain has many more resources for his people.

 

Every Christian is always ‘in Christ Jesus’. There is nowhere where that is not the case. They live with him, they receive grace from him every day and all the day, they die in him (they fall asleep in Jesus says Paul), and they go to be with him in heaven after being with him on earth. It is their spiritual country, where they dwell under the eye of their Saviour and securely held in his hand. Nothing can cause them to be removed from his world. They are in him for ever and will also be with him for ever.

 

Sons of God

What does it mean to be a son of God? No doubt, that question could be asked at different levels in a theological sense. But I would mention three details that should help us grasp something of the wonder of this title.

 

The first detail is that a son of God has been forgiven all the sins that he or she committed against God throughout their lives. None of them knows how many sins he or she has committed, but what each can know is full pardon for their personal sins. This pardon is an expression of the mercy of God and is an astonishing expression of divine grace. It is offered to them in the gospel about the work of Jesus on the cross, and is a full forgiveness, with none of their sins omitted from this expression of divine pardon.

 

The second detail is that they have a new family connection because when they received pardon from God they were at once made permanent members of his heavenly family. They came under his special care, because they now belong to a family with incredible privileges in the present that they can enjoy. They have a Heavenly Father to whom they can pray, they have an elder brother in Jesus Christ who thinks about them continually, and they have the Holy Spirit dwelling in their hearts with the aim of giving them ongoing assurance that they belong to the heavenly family.

 

The third detail is that they have an incredible future because they become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus. Jesus is the heir of all things, and he graciously has decided to share it with his people. We are not told much about the future inheritance in the Bible, except to say that its bigness is stressed. It is likened to possessing cities to rule over, to having a new heaven and new earth to discover, a world in which nothing fades away, eternal life in its fullness will be enjoyed, and constant divine provision leading to endless satisfaction for all the heirs of God.

 

People of faith

What is faith in a biblical sense? It is not a leap in the dark because it is based on clear information. The information is summarised in the gospel message found in many verses of the Bible, such as John 3:16. The response of believing found in that verse has the idea of dependence, of relying on the promises made by God about his Son. Connected to such dependence is the idea of commitment, of giving to Christ the keeping of our souls.

 

Faith also exists in degrees. I read a helpful way of expressing this difference in one of Spurgeon’s daily readings. He was commenting on the verse in the Song of Solomon where the Bride says of her Beloved that his fruit was sweet to her taste. Spurgeon points out that the Bible often uses our senses to illustrate faith in action. It is likened to hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting, which each of the actions showing progression. A person hears the word of God and believes it. Then he continues to look at it and increases in knowledge in his mind. Then he senses the preciousness of the word, which Spurgeon likened to smelling, and this is followed by tasting its benefits such as peace and joy.

 

According to Spurgeon, ‘Any one of these acts of faith is saving.’ Nevertheless, says Spurgeon, ‘that which gives true enjoyment is the aspect of faith wherein Christ, by holy taste, is received into us, and made, by inward and spiritual apprehension of his sweetness and preciousness, to be the food of our souls.’ When that takes place, ‘It is then that we sit “under his shadow with great delight,” and find his fruit sweet to our taste.’

 

Faith therefore focuses on biblical descriptions of Jesus Christ. A believer considers Jesus most of all. He loves to run features of Jesus through his mind, thinking about his many names, working out what he does in his offices, reflecting on his wonderful promises of a great salvation. He loves the stories of Jesus in the Bible because they are not only accounts of incidents that happened long ago, but because they are revelations of the heart of Jesus. He listens in to how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about the new birth, to how he described the benefits of living water to the woman of Samaria, to how he spoke compassionately to outcasts and lepers, and to many other encounters as well.

 

This kind of faith leads those who have it to do their duty as far as Jesus is concerned. They love to see his name honoured and they will do what they can to help bring that about. Confessing his name is their desire because they love to speak about him and share with others what he means to them. ‘This is my beloved and this is my friend,’ is the voice of a heart in which faith is as it should be.