Dear Editor,
I had an article arrive via social media a few days back that added much fuel to one of my personal pet peeves.
See, I have an issue with the tag Christian that people associate with themselves. A Christian is a person whom God has re-created into a new creature. This takes a miracle of God to rebirth a normal human being into a Holy Spirit indwelt individual.
Romans 8:9 says, “But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)” Another version of this passage ends with, “they are not Christians at all”.
So a Christian is a Holy Spirit indwelt human being.
The article I was sent stated that 75% of Americans claim to be Christian. The writer went on to redefine the term Christian into three separate and very distinct classifications.
The first was Cultural Christians. These are the people who, because they live in America and have some basic form of morality and are not Atheist, Jewish or Muslim, consider themselves Christian.
The second group was the Congregational Christian. These are people who have at some point in their life attended a church service. They may have become a member of the church, been baptized, went forward, signed a card or raised their hand in a service.
The third group was the Conventional Christian. According to the article these are those who, “self-identify as Christian who orient their life around their faith in Christ.”
The fourth group, or the definition that I gave early in this writing, was not mentioned at all. This group is those who have been recreated by God into new creatures. They are the reborn, those who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. They are the humans who God has made Christian by His miraculous work in their life.
The reason I don’t think this group was mentioned is because most “Christians” do not know what a true Christian is and therefore there is no classification for this group.
The article went on to state that people would be dropping the title or tag of Christian as our nation continues to turn up its hatred toward the group of people called Christians.
The nominal Christian, that is presently only using the title for a societal purpose, will not be able to stand up to the pressures of this world. They will drop the tag out of fear for what others think of them.
See, we have quite a mess in our society. One of the problems is these so called Christians do not know how a true Christian is made so they want to force their moral standard upon the people around them who are not, according to them, living right before God.
There is a problem with this philosophy. It doesn’t work and leads to the culture war we have before us today. Until Christians, those recreated by God, begin to lead people to God through Jesus Christ for this recreating work, this war of force will continue and true Christians will continue to be misunderstood.
True Christians are not trying to force morality upon an immoral society. We are trying to lead people who are tired of the world’s mess to a God who can give them life in this world all the while being separated from the world’s ways.
Pastor Thomas R. Swain
First Church of God
Great Bend