What is a Christian?

It may be helpful to answer that question with an example. One of the most popular books, written within the past several decades, indirectly answers that question the following way:

Right now, God is inviting you to live for his glory by fulfilling the purposes he made you for. It’s really the only way to live. Everything else is just existing. Real life begins by committing yourself completely to Jesus Christ. If you are not sure you have done this, all you need to do is believe and receive . . .

First, believe. Believe God loves you and made you for his purposes. Believe you’re not an accident. Believe you were made to last forever. Believe God has chosen you to have a relationship with Jesus, who died on the cross for you. Believe that no matter what you’ve done, God wants to forgive you.

Second, receive. Receive Jesus into your life as your Lord and Savior. Receive his forgiveness for your sins. Receive his spirit, who will give you the power to fulfill your life purpose.

The Bible says, “Whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever!” Wherever you are reading this, I invite you to bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your life for eternity: “Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you.” Go ahead.

If you sincerely meant that prayer, congratulations! Welcome to the family of God!2

According to this book, then, a Christian is one who commits himself completely to Jesus Christ. How is this done? “First, believe.” “Second, receive.” Then “bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your life for eternity.” So, believe God loves you and receive Jesus into your life as your Lord and Savior. And then pray to Him to let Him know.

It is not the purpose of this article to critique this Gospel presentation. Instead, I would like to use it as a standard of comparison.

For many of you reading this, this is what you were told it meant to be a Christian . . . believe in God . . . receive Jesus into your heart . . . pray a prayer and now you are a Christian. But what does the Bible say about all this? How would it answer the question: “What is a Christian?”

According to Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, a Christian is

An adherent or follower of Christ. The word occurs three times in the New Testament: “The disciples were first called Christian in Antioch” (Acts 11:26); Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28); Peter exhorted, “If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed” (1 Pet. 4:16). In each instance, the word Christian assumes that the person called by the name was a follower of Christ. Christians were loyal to Christ, just as the Herodians were loyal to Herod (Matt. 22:16; Mark 3:6; 12:13).3

Simply put, a Christian is one who follows Jesus Christ. You can actually see the name “Christ” in the term “Christian.” A Christian is loyal to Christ. He adheres to the teachings of Christ. He considers himself to be a disciple or learner of Christ. And the best way to see what that looks like is with the words of Christ Himself. Luke 9:18–26 describes a time when Jesus told His disciples what it meant to follow Him:

And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them, saying, “Who do the people say that I am?”

They answered and said, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again.”

And He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.”

But [Jesus] warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.”

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

To give a little background to this passage, in Luke Chapter 9, Jesus had just fed 5,000 men with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. In other words, he fed a crowd of approximately 9,000 people4 using only enough food for one family. Needless to say, this created quite a stir among those present and Jesus then told this interested crowd what it truly meant to be His follower.5 In Luke 9:23, He tells those present that a Christian will do 3 things.

A Christian will deny himself.

A Christian will take up his cross daily.

A Christian will follow Jesus.

To help understand each of these points, we will examine them one at a time.

1. A Christian will deny himself

In Luke 9:23, the Lord says, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself.” The Greek verb for “deny” is aparneomai. It means “to deny, to refuse to recognize, to ignore.”6 To deny something is to disavow or refuse to acknowledge it. Jesus says that His followers are to do this with their very selves.

This may or may not come as a shock to those of you who are reading this, but we live in a world that is horrendously selfish. Let me throw out some terms that I am sure you are familiar with:

SELF–ESTEEM

SELF–LOVE

SELF–DOUBT

SELF–HATE

SELF–CONSCIOUS

SELF–PITY

SELF–SUFFICIENCY

SELF–WORTH

SELF–CONFIDENT

SELF–ASSERTIVE

SELF–ASSURANCE

SELF–RESPECT

What do all these phrases have in common? They are all selfish. They all focus on the self. They all make oneself the center of one’s life.

Jesus says that Christians are not supposed to live that way. Selfishness is against everything that Christianity stands for. If you are selfish, then you are either a Christian living in sin or you are not saved at all. As one author writes, “There is nothing self-indulgent about being a Christian.”7

Christianity is not about the Christian. It is about Christ, so much so that we are to deny ourselves – not love ourselves, not esteem ourselves, not pity ourselves, not hate ourselves – but deny ourselves for Jesus’ sake. We are to sacrifice our needs and wants for His. We are to deny our dreams and goals for the good of His kingdom and His church. We are to give up our friends, our family, and our career, if necessary, for Jesus Christ.

2. Christian will take up his cross daily

Luke 9:23 goes on to say, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily.” The Greek verb for “take up” is airo. Airo means “to raise, to take up, to lift, to draw up.”8 What Jesus is referring to is a form of torture that men and women in the Ancient Near East would have been very familiar with.

One Bible Dictionary describes it this way:

Crucifixion was preceded by scourging with thongs, to which were sometimes added nails, pieces of bone, etc., to heighten the pain, often so intense as to cause death.

The criminal carried his own cross, or a part of it, in which case another was compelled to share the burden. The place of execution was outside the city; [after arriving there] the criminal was stripped of his clothes . . . and [as] the cross had been previously erected he was drawn and made fast to it with cords or nails . . . The limbs of the victim were generally three or four feet from the earth.

The sufferer was left to die of sheer exhaustion, and when simply bound with thongs, it might take days to accomplish the process . . . Instances are recorded of persons surviving a crucifixion for nine days [before dying].

In most cases the body was suffered to rot on the cross by the action of the sun and rain or to be devoured by birds and beasts.9

Naked. Painful. Degrading torture. Crucifixion was a death of suffering that was only reserved for the worst of criminals. And it usually began with what Jesus is describing in verse 23. “If anyone would come after Me, He must – airo – take up, lift, raise up His cross daily.”

“If anyone would come after Me,” Jesus says, “He must begin the crucifixion process by carrying His cross to the place of execution.”

After self-denial, Jesus goes a step further. Speaking metaphorically – He is not promoting suicide – He says His followers must now put themselves to death. To be a follower of Jesus Christ, you must take up your cross and walk to the place of execution daily.

What does this mean? Why such graphic language?

Jesus uses graphic language here to make sure His audience understands the point. If they want to follow Him, they must give up the right to run their own lives, and they must give it up violently. You deny yourself to live for Him. You take up your cross to die for Him. As John Stott writes,

Jesus never concealed the fact that His religion included a demand as well as an offer . . . He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship . . . To follow Christ is to surrender to Him the rights over our own lives. It is to abdicate the throne of our heart and do homage to Him as King . . . If you want to live a life of easy–going self–indulgence, whatever you do, do not become a Christian.10

You cannot have salvation without submission. You cannot have Jesus Christ without a cross.

3. A Christian will follow Jesus

Luke 9:23 goes on to say, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Due to the verb tense in the Greek, the phrase “follow Me” could also be translated “continue to follow Me.” A Christian will not only deny himself and take up his cross daily; he will continue to do so for the rest of his life.

Followers of a religious teacher in Jesus’ day would physically walk behind their leader when they were traveling from one location to another. They would follow their leader’s teachings but they would also, literally, follow their leader. Jesus tells His audience that if they wanted to be His disciples, they must do this.

This is a teaching that is abundant in Scripture. John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him.” In John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” 1 John 1:6 tells us, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” In Luke 6:46, Jesus sarcastically asks a crowd of Jews, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

The Bible is very clear: you cannot hang on to your own way of living and continue to hang on to Jesus. If you want to follow Him, if you want to bear the name Christian, you must submit to His rule over your life. You must obey what He has commanded. Your obedience does not save you (Eph 2:8-9), but it does provide evidence of your salvation (Js 2:17, 26). You will obey your Master. If Jesus Christ is your Master, you will obey Him, and then you can proudly bear the name of “Christian.” If someone or something else is your master, then the title “Christian” does not apply to you.

At this point, you might be thinking “Wow, that’s pretty extreme!” “Deny myself with a violence?” “Give up the right to run my own life?” “Put myself to death and live for another?” “Is Jesus worth all that?” “What do I get in return for all the effort?” “If I do all that for Jesus, what will He do for me?”

Jesus’ audience must have been asking those same questions because Jesus answers them in Luke 9:24–25,

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?

The rewards of a Christian are as great as the demands. We are all sinners (Rom 3:23) and our sins are punishable with an eternity in Hell (1 Cor 6:9–10). Yet Jesus Christ in His gracious love toward mankind was punished so that those who follow Him would be rewarded (2 Cor 5:21). In Jesus’ own words, “for whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” What do you get for being a Christian? Your eternal life. What do you lose if you are not a Christian? Your eternal life.

The cost of being a Christian is, indeed, worth it.

So what would Jesus say to the book that was quoted above? Would He agree that a Christian is one who believes, receives, and says a prayer?

He would likely say that such an answer is misleading at best and deceptive at worst. Christians do believe. Romans 10:9–10 says:

That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

It should never be denied by any Christian that faith alone in Jesus Christ alone is what saves us. Ephesians 2:8–9 tells us,

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no man may boast.

Christians also receive salvation. John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.” Romans 5:17 says:

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

But, because of this believing and receiving, Christians do a lot of other things as well. They die to themselves. They take up their cross. They submit (Eph 5:21). They repent (Lk 13:3). They grow (Jn 15:1–2). They persevere (Heb 10:36).

Our goal as Christians is not to make Christianity appear easier, but to make it appear Biblical. People should know what they are being asked to do when they are asked to become a Christian. It is my prayer that this article would help you do just that.

End Notes

1This answer is not intended to be a comprehensive answer to the question “What is a Christian?” For a further response to what Christian salvation is, please see the 2010 issue of /jtst/.

2 Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002) 58.

3 Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. by Ronald F. Youngblood (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995) 261.

4 Although the text does not give an exact reference to the number of people present, it is well known that women and children followed Jesus wherever He went. If there were 5,000 men present at this event, there almost certainly would have been twice that number when all the women and children had been counted.

5 The commands in Luke 9:23 occur at a separate time from the feeding of the 5,000. Verse 18 sets the context for verse 23 in saying, “And it happened that while [Jesus] was praying alone . . .”

6 G. Abbot–Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2001 ed.) 44.

7 Leon Morris, Luke: An Introduction and Commentary in The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988 ed.) 186.

8 Abbot–Smith, 13.

9 Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1967) 229.

10 Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter–Varsity Press, 1971) 107, 111, 119.


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