How would you rate yourself as a Christian? On a scale of 1-10.
I was asked this question the other night at Bible Study. Offhand, I was thinking that on the days when I really feel God, "pretty good" would be my answer. Maybe about a 7. On the days when I'm not thinking about God at all, and forget about Him for a couple days (I know, who could forget their creator if they truly loved Him?) or days when I feel distant when I pray...maybe a 4. I think 4-7 was the range I came up with.
My friend then went on to say he's asked many Christians this question over the years. And do you know what? No one gave themselves a 10. Ever. In fact, the highest he's ever had anyone rate themselves is a 7, and some people have given answers around 3.
This, as he pointed out, was amazing and sad. In my Bible Study, we are working our way through the letter Paul wrote to the Romans right now. What we have to remember is that God does not see us when He looks at us. He sees Christ, who is perfect. So anyone who gives an answer less than 10 is beating up on themselves in a way that is not true to God.
Every Christian is a 10.
This was utterly profound to me. It's true, there are days when I feel "less Christian." But, if we follow the logic of the Bible, that feeling is not true. People are never "saved" and then "unsaved again" and then whoops! "saved" again the next day. Your faith does not depend on your feelings or how much you think of God or do, because then your faith would depend on your works, and not what God's doing in you.
Philippians 1:6: For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 1:8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life...
The first verse above shows that it is God planting the seed. Once you take the physical action of accepting His gift, the rest of the work is His.
This comes back to the question of "why not sin then, if it brings God more glory?" posed in Romans. Paul never really answers this question. The answer we came up with as a group in Bible Study was that once you accept Christ, it is Jesus living in you, and you grow more like Him each day. Sin is incompatible with Him, but you should be striving to work with God, and become more like Him.
I included the second verse above because it reminds us that the apostles were only human. We like to think of them as almost superhuman after the story of Pentecost (and kind of "none too bright" before then...they really didn't get what Jesus was saying most of the time, did they? And yet He chose them, not only to be His friends but to be the ones to carry His word to the world. That's the most valuable gift of all, one you'd only give to someone you have faith in or trust, because they HAVE to get that right. He could have given it to the chief priests or someone more versed in the Torah, and yet He gave it to them, because their willing hearts were more important to Him - the rest they could learn from Him, and learn as they went).
After Pentecost, the apostles are always shown as with the Holy Spirit and always praising God and Jesus and healing and doing miracles. It's hard to think they ever felt far from God or had days where they were down, or where nothing happened. Yet they did. They are just as real as we are. The Bible has the disadvantage of summarizing events so time seems to pass quickly, but there must have been dull days, or days where they really didn't convert anyone.
In fact, in several stories in Acts, they are stoned or driven out of a place by people who were not receptive.
The 2 Cor verse listed above is pretty cool because it says without doubt that even these men, who had devoted their lives to God, who had physically seen or knew people who had physically seen the Resurrection, were feeling very depressed and were despairing. It happens. How would they have rated themselves as Christians on those days? I don't know.
Much of Protestant understanding of Christianity is a late construct. I ended up looking up things like moral government and penal substitution as terms to describe Christ's atonement, something nearly every Evangelical and Baptist church I've been to has ascribed to be "the One and only Truth" [and if you don't believe it, you're not a Christian!] - at least that's the implication. Yet this idea of Christ's dying on the cross being necessary to pay for man's sin in order to satisfy God's divine judgment (in other words, as necessary in order to be consistent with a just God, rather than to satisfy God's honor or some other reason) is a Medieval construct at the earliest, and probably after the Reformation (according to Wikipedia).
My point with all this is, how did the apostles think about Christ after the Resurrection in their day-to-day lives? What was their understanding of what He said and His death? I don't know. But I do know that I now have Confidence (yes, with a capital "C"!) in myself as a Christian. I am a 10. You are a 10. We're all 10s if we believe in Jesus Christ, and believe what the Bible tells us about God.
Totally life-changing for me, as I said in the post's title. Blew my mind.
Also, a side note but definitely fits with this: we don't have to wait to get right with God. As we are in the midst of sinning, or have just sinned, often we feel guilty or somehow feel like hiding from God or pulling away from Him. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, see Genesis, by the way. Silly, because God still knows. But, as we feel guilty, we feel like we can't come to God right then.
That's not true. That's what the Devil wants you to think.
Even if you're feeling guilty, just come back to God. Don't waste time thinking you have to get your feelings in order first, to feel contrite first. In other words, as a different friend of mine and person I respect said, "Don't take yourself out of the game just because you made a mistake. Keep playing. Taking yourself out of the game wastes even more time."
Normally, I will be honest, I don't get much out of Bible Study. I find people debating the same tired points, and often people are content with content-reading - saying "What does this line say?" and answering it...which is fine as a beginning question to get people engaged, but not the whole study. If the right answer to every question is a simple "Jesus", then I'm basically in Vacation Bible School and not studying the Bible as deeply as I should be doing as an adult. You can go your whole life that way, knowing the "right" answer and never thinking or having to change your mindset. And Bible Studies, most I've been to (and I've been to quite a few now, in a bunch of different places), are like that. So it was quite refreshing to have a deep discussion for once.
Also, one more point: not everyone has a powerful life-changing emotional experience that brings them to God. I did, my spouse didn't. Some people just decide "Oh...it makes sense to me now." and that's it. And that's okay. I had the whole "God speaking to me" thing where it clearly proved to me there was a God, but my actual "putting my faith in Christ" moment was more of an "oh, I see" moment...less drama. In some ways, it makes it harder to hold to faith, because you don't have that dramatic Before-and-After to cling to as Christianity changing you. In other words, it's harder to see Christianity "working", for lack of a better term.
The Take-Away:
- It's not our effort that makes us a good Christian. We're always a good Christian because Christ is in us, and that's what God sees.
- The early apostles surely had days where they struggled too. They couldn't have loved God 100% every day, and worked for Him tirelessly every day. That just leads to burnout. Also, they had failures too, and that didn't lead to them being any less Christian - in fact, they're held up as models of the faith.
- God is always with you, and always working. Put aside your guilt and come right back to Him. Don't wait to feel contrite before you come back, or that's wasted time. God has started a good work in you, and is continuing to make you more like Christ - a better person, more like Himself, godly in character - every day.
- Being godly goes against our nature in so many ways. In some ways, it's hard to wrap our heads around because the concepts are so foreign to us. Like not pursuing our self-interests. Totally backwards idea to us, yet it's central to Christianity and to knowing God.
