I’ve been contemplating one little question quite a bit lately. What does it mean to be a Christian?
It’s a simple question. But is there an easy answer?
Before writing this post, I decided to Google-test it. I queried “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Interestingly, there were thousands of search results, including one from Google’s Generative AI Overview. That was probably the best response of all! Here’s what the first sentence of the AI Overview said:
A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus Christ and follows his teachings.
That’s not bad, I guess. But it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. After all, hardly any of the first-century Christians the Apostle Paul wrote to in his letters followed all of Jesus’ teachings. The truth is, they were a screwed-up lot! The Corinthians were carnal and the Galatians backslid into works-based Judaism. Paul came down hard on both.
After chuckling at the simplicity of the AI response, I decided to see what the experts had to say. Here’s a quick sampling:
Sidenote: The italicized commentary in parentheses is very much tongue-in-cheek. Please don’t crucify me! Pretty please?
Looking for commonalities in the above explanations, I found three things that each of these definitions of Christianity have in common:
All of these experts can’t be wrong, can they? Surely, they know what they’re talking about. Right?
Humans tend to complicate things. The more intelligent or educated a person is, or the more knowledgeable they are about a particular topic, the more they tend to complicate. I’ve been guilty of that many times myself. Today, however, I want to simplify.
John 11 shows that Jesus arrived four days after learning that his friend Lazarus had died. Martha, Lazarus’s sister, was distraught. She was sure that her brother would not have died if Jesus had been there. What faith she had!
After a short tit-for-tat, Jesus asked Martha a simple question. “Everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Martha responded,
Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.
Jesus didn’t correct her.
Over and over, throughout the gospels, we see Jesus interacting this way with others. He heals their sicknesses, declares them well, and commends them for nothing more than having faith. He often doesn’t require anything of them in return and, when he does, those requirements are a prelude to a demonstration of faith. Here’s a short sampling:
In each of these scenes, people were healed and forgiven of their sins on no basis other than their faith or the faith of their friends and family. And let’s not forget the thief on the cross, who believed that Jesus was innocent, and on that basis, our Lord promised that thief that he would be in Paradise with our Lord that very day.
Throughout the New Testament, people are forgiven and healed based on faith. In the Old Testament, God considered Abraham righteous simply for believing a promise.
So, what is a Christian? A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus Christ, plain and simple. That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want and expect no consequences (we will always reap what we sow), but it does mean that our status as God’s beloved is not contingent upon our doing something. Our failures do not define us. God’s success does. In a world fraught with performance-based initiatives coupled with a strong lean toward judgment, we need to be reminded of that. I know I do.
Allen Taylor is the author of I Am Not the King.
This post was first published at Substack. Lead image from Unsplash. Comic image is AI-generated at Substack.
