What is a Biblical Christian?  by Albert N. Martin

   Al Martin is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, 116 Horseneck Road,
Montville, New Jersey 07045, U.S.A., and an Associate Editor of the
Banner of Truth magazine. This address was given at the Banner of Truth
Youth Conference 1984.

   There are many matters concerning which total ignorance and complete
indifference are neither tragic nor fatal. I believe many of you are
probably totally ignorant of Einstein's theory of relativity and if you
were asked to explain it to someone you would really be in a
difficulty. Not only are you ignorant of Einstein's theory of
relativity, you are probably quite indifferent, and that ignorance and
indifference is neither fatal nor tragic. I am sure there are few of us
who can explain all the processes by which a brown cow eats green grass
and gives white milk. It does not keep you from enjoying the milk. But
there are some things concerning which ignorance and indifference are
both tragic and fatal and one such thing is the Bible's answer to the
question I am about to set before you.

   "What is a biblical Christian?" In other words, when does a man or
woman, a boy or girl, have the right to take to himself or herself the
name Christian, according to the Scriptures?

   We do not want to make the assumption lightly that you are true
Christians. I want to set before you four strands of the Bible's answer
to that question.

   1. ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE A CHRISTIAN IS A PERSON WHO HAS FACED
REALISTICALLY THE PROBLEM OF HIS OWN PERSONAL SIN.

   Now one of the many unique things about the Christian faith is this
- unlike most of the religions of the world, Christianity is
essentially and fundamentally a sinner's religion. When the angel
announced to Joseph the approaching birth of Jesus Christ, he did so in
these words, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his
people from their sins" [Matt. 1:21]. The apostle Paul wrote in 1
Timothy 1.15, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." He came into
the world to save sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ himself says in Luke
5:31-32, "Those that are healthy do not need a doctor but those who are
sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
And the Christian is one who has faced realistically this problem of
his own personal sin.

   When we turn to the Scripture and seek to take in the whole of its
teaching on the subject of sin, right down to its irreducible minimum,
we find that the Scripture tells us that each one of us has a two-fold
personal problem in relation to sin. On the one hand, we have the
problem of a bad record, and on the other, the problem of a bad heart.

   If we start in Genesis 3 and read that tragic account of man's
rebellion against God and his fall into sin, then trace the biblical
doctrine of sin all the way through the Old Testament, and on into the
New, right through to the book of Revelation, we shall see that it is
not over- simplification to say that everything the Bible teaches about
the doctrine of sin can be reduced to those two fundamental categories
- the problem of a bad record and the problem of a bad heart.

   What do I mean by "the problem of a bad record?" I am using that
terminology to describe what the Scripture sets before us as the
doctrine of human guilt because of sin. The Scripture tells us plainly
that we obtained a bad record long before we had any personal existence
here upon the earth: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned" [Rom. 5:12]. When did the "all" sin? We all sinned in
Adam. He was appointed by God to represent all the human race and when
he sinned we sinned in him and fell with him in his first
transgression. That is why the apostle writes in 1 Corinthians 15:22,
"As in Adam all die." We passed our age of accountability in the Garden
of Eden and from the moment Adam sinned we were charged with guilt. We
fell in him in his first transgression And we are part of the race that
is under condemnation. Furthermore, the Scripture says, after we come
into being at our own conception and subsequent birth additional guilt
accrues to us for our own personal, individual transgressions. The Word
of God teaches that there is not a just man upon the face of the earth
who does good and does not sin [Eccles. 7:20], and every single sin
incurs additional guilt. Our record in heaven is a marred record.
Almighty God measures the totality of our human experience from the
moment of our birth by a standard which is absolutely inflexible; a
standard that touches not only our external needs but also our thoughts
and the very motions and intentions of our hearts; so much so, that the
Lord Jesus said that the stirring of unjust anger is the very essence
of murder, the look with the intention to lust is adultery. And God is
keeping "a detailed record."

   That record is among "the books" which will be opened in the day of
judgement [Rev. 20:12]. And there in those books is recorded every
thought, every motive, every intention, every deed, every dimension of
human experience that is contrary to the standard of God's holy law,
either failing to measure up to its standards or transgressing it. We
have the problem of a bad record - a record in which we are charged
with guilt; real guilt for real sin committed against the true and
living God.

   That is why Scripture tells us that the entire human race stands
guilty before Almighty God [Rom 3:19].

   Has the problem of your own bad record ever become a burning,
pressing personal concern to you? Have you faced the truth that
Almighty God judged you guilty when our first father sinned, and holds
you guilty for every single word you have spoken contrary to perfect
holiness and justice and purity and righteousness? He knows every
object you have touched and taken contrary to the sanctity of property
and every word you have spoken contrary to perfect, absolute truth. Has
this ever broken in upon you, so that you awakened to the fact that
Almighty God has every right to summon you into his presence and to
require you to give an account of every single deed contrary to His
law, which has brought guilt upon your soul?

   Certainly we have the problem of a bad record but we have an
additional problem - the problem of a bad heart. We are not only
pronounced guilty in the court of heaven for what we have done. The
Scripture teaches that the problem of our sin is one that arises not
only from what we have done, but from what we are. When Adam sinned he
not only became guilty before God, but defiled and polluted in his own
nature. The Scripture describes it in Jeremiah 17.9, " The heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?"

   Jesus describes it in Mark 7:21, "From within, out of the heart of
man, proceed..." and then He names all the various sins that can be
seen in any newspaper on any day - blasphemies, pride, adulteries,
murder. Jesus said that these things rise out of the artesian well of
pollution, the human heart. Notice carefully that he did not say, "For
from without, by the presence of society and its negative influences,
come forth murder and adultery and pride and thievery." That is what
our so-called sociological experts tell us. It is the "condition of
society" that produces crime and rebellion. Jesus says it is the
condition of the human heart. For from within, out of the heart,
proceed these things - lies, selfishness, self-centeredness, total
pre-occupation with my feelings and my desires and my plans and my
perspectives.

   We have hearts that the Scripture describes as "desperately wicked"
- the fountain of all forms of iniquity. To change the biblical
imagery, Romans 8:7 reads, "The carnal mind is enmity against God, for
it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." Paul
says that the carnal mind, that is, the mind that has never been
regenerated by God, is not reflective of some enmity; he calls it
enmity itself. "The carnal mind is enmity against God." The disposition
of every human heart by nature can be visually pictured as a clenched
fist raised the living God.

   This is the inward problem of a bad heart - a heart that loves sin,
a heart that is the fountain of sin, a heart that is at enmity with God.

   And such is the problem that every one of us has by nature.

   Has the problem of your bad heart ever become a pressing personal
concern to you? I am not asking whether you believe in human sinfulness
in theory. Oh, there is such a thing as a sinful nature and a sinful
heart. My question is: Have your bad record and your bad heart ever
become a matter of deep, inward, personal, pressing concern to you?
Have you known anything of real, personal, inward consciousness of the
awfulness of your guilt in the presence of a holy God? - the
horribleness of a heart that is "deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked"?

   A Bible Christian is a person who has in all seriousness taken to
heart his own personal problem of sin.

   Now the degree to which we feel the awful weight of sin differs from
one person to another. The length of time over which a person is
brought to the consciousness of his bad record and his bad heart
differs. There are many variables, but Jesus Christ as the Great
Physician never brought his healing virtue to any who did not know
themselves to be sinners. He said, "I did not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance" [Matt. 9:13]. Are you a Bible
Christian, one who has taken seriously your personal problem of sin?

   2. A BIBLE CHRISTIAN IS ONE WHO HAS SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED THE ONE
DIVINE REMEDY FOR SIN.

   In the Bible we are told again and again that Almighty God has taken
the initiative in doing something for man the sinner. The verses some
of us learned in our infancy underscore divine initiative in providing
a remedy for sinful man: "God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son..."; "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he
loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins"; "But
God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us..."
[John 3:16; 1 John 4:10; Eph. 2:4]. You see, the unique feature of the
Christian faith is that it is not a kind of religious self-help where
you patch yourself up with the aid of God. Just as surely as it is a
unique tenet of the Christian faith that Christ is a Savior for
sinners, so it is also a unique tenet of the Christian faith that all
of our true help comes down from above and meets us where we are. We
cannot pull ourselves up by our own boot-strings. God in mercy breaks
in upon the human situation and does something which we could never do
for ourselves.

   Now when we turn to the Scripture we find that divine remedy has at
least three simple but profoundly wonderful focal points:

   (a) First of all, that divine remedy is bound up in a Person.

   Anyone who begins to take seriously the divine remedy for human sin
will notice in the Scripture that the remedy is not a set of ideas, as
though it were just another philosophy, nor is it found in an
institution, it is bound up in a Person. "God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son." "Thou shalt call his name Jesus for he
shall save..."

   He, himself, said, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man
comes to the Father but by me" [John 14:6]. That one divine remedy is
bound up in a Person and that Person is none other than our Lord Jesus
Christ - the eternal Word who became man, uniting to his Godhead a true
human nature.

   Here is God's provision for man with his bad record and his bad
heart, a Savior who is both God and man, the two natures joined in the
one Person for ever. And your personal problem of sin, and mine, if it
is ever to be remedied in a biblical way will be remedied only as we
have personal dealings with that Person. Such is the unique strand of
the Christian faith - the sinner in all his need united to the Savior
in all the plenitude of his grace, the sinner in his naked need and the
Savior in his almighty power, brought directly together in the Gospel.
That is the glory of the Gospel!

   (b) It is centered in the cross upon which that Person died. A cross
that leads to an empty tomb, yes! And a cross preceded by a life of
perfect obedience, yes! And when we turn to the Scripture we find that
the divine remedy in a unique way is centered in the cross of Jesus
Christ. When he is formally announced by John the Baptist, John points
to him and says, "Behold the Lamb of God who is bearing away the sins
of the world" [John 1:29]. Jesus himself said, "I did not come to be
ministered unto, but to minister and to give my life a ransom for many"
[Matt. 20:28], and true preaching of the Gospel is so much centered in
the cross that Paul says it is the word, or the message of the cross.

   The preaching of the cross is "to them who are perishing
foolishness, but unto us who are being saved it is the power of God" [1
Cor. 1:18], and this same apostle went on to say that when he came to
Corinth - that bastion of intellectualism and pagan Greek philosophy
with its set patterns of rhetorical expertise - "I came amongst you
determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him as crucified" [1
Cor. 2:2].

   You see, God's gracious remedy for sin is not only bound up in a
Person, it is centered in the cross of that Person - not the cross as
an abstract idea, nor as a religious symbol, but the cross in terms of
what God declares it to mean. The cross is the place where God heaped
upon his Son, by imputation, the sins of his people. On that cross
there was substitutionary curse-bearing. In the language of Galatians
3.13, "God made him to be a curse for us"; "God made him to be sin for
us" [2 Cor. 5:21] - the one who knew no sin. It is not the cross as
some nebulous, indefinable symbol of self giving love, it is the cross
as the monumental display of how God can be just and still pardon
guilty sinners; the cross where God, having imputed the sins of his
people to Christ, pronounces judgment on his Son as the representative
of his people. There on the cross God pours out the vials of his wrath,
unmixed with mercy, until his Son cries out, "My God, my God, why have
you abandoned me? Why have you forsaken me?" [Psalm 22.1; Matt. 27:46].
There in the visible world at Calvary, God, as it were was
demonstrating what was happening in the invisible spiritual world. He
shrouds the heavens in total darkness to let all mankind know that he
is plunging his Son into the outer darkness of the hell which your sins
and my sins deserved. Jesus hangs on the cross in the place of an
undefended guilty criminal; he is in the posture of one for whom
society has but one option, "Away with him," "Crucify him," "Hand him
over to death," and God does not intervene. There in the theater of
what men can see, God is treating his Son as a criminal, he is causing
him to feel in the depths of his own soul all of the fury of the wrath
that should have been vented upon us.

   (c) A remedy that is adequate for and offered to all without
discrimination. Before we have felt any consciousness of our sin, about
the easiest thing in the world is to think that God can forgive sinners.

   But when you and I begin to have any idea at all of what sin is -
we, little worms of the dust, we creatures whose very life and breath
is held in the hands of the God in whom "we live and move and have our
being" [Acts 17:28] - when we begin, I say, to take seriously that we
have dared to defy Almighty God who holds our breath in his hands, the
God who, when angels rebelled against him, did not wait to show mercy
but consigned them to everlasting chains of darkness with no way of
mercy ever planned or revealed to them, then our thoughts are changed.
Once we take seriously the truth that it is this holy God who sees the
effusions of the foul, corrupt human hearts which are yours and mine,
then we say, "O God, how can you be anything other than just; and if
you give me what my sins deserve, there is nothing for me but wrath and
judgement! How can you forgive me and still be just? How can you be a
righteous God and do anything other than consign me to everlasting
punishment with those angels that rebelled." When you begin to take
your sin seriously, forgiveness becomes the most knotty problem with
which your mind has ever wrestled. It is then that we need to know that
God has provided in a Person, and that Person crucified, a remedy that
is adequate for and offered to all without discrimination. When God
begins to make us feel the reality of or sin, if there were any
conditions placed on the availability of Christ we would say, "Surely I
don't meet the conditions, surely I don't qualify," but the wonder of
God's provision is that it comes in these unfettered terms: "Ho,
everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; he who has no money, come,
buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do you
labour for that which does not satisfy " [Isa. 55:1-2]. "Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Him
that comes unto me I will in no wise cast out" [Matt. 11:28; John 6:37].

   Oh, the beauty of the unfettered offers of mercy in Jesus Christ!

   We do not need to have God step out of heaven and tell us that we,
by name, are warranted to come; we have the unfettered offers of mercy
in the words of his own Son, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

   3. A BIBLE CHRISTIAN IS ONE WHO HAS WHOLEHEARTED COMPLIED WITH THE
DIVINE TERMS FOR APPROPRIATING THE DIVINE PROVISION.

   The divine terms are two - repent and believe. That is what Jesus
preached, "At that time Jesus came preaching, Repent and believe the
gospel" [Mark 1:15-16]. It is what Paul preached. He says, "I testified
to Jews and Greeks wherever I went, repentance toward God, faith toward
our Lord Jesus Christ" [Acts 20:21]. This is the Gospel that Jesus told
his own to preach [Luke 24:45-46]. He opened their minds to understand
the Scripture and told them it was necessary for Christ to die, and to
be raised again from the dead the third day, that repentance unto
remission of sins should be preached in his name among all the nations,
beginning at Jerusalem.

   What are the divine terms for obtaining the divine provision? We
must repent, we must believe. Now because we have to speak in terms of
one word following another, or preceding another, we must not think
that this repentance is divorced from faith or that this faith is ever
divorced from repentance. True faith is permeated with repentance, true
repentance is permeated with faith. They inter-penetrate one another so
that, whenever there is a true appropriation of the divine provision,
there you will find a believing penitent and penitent believer. The one
will never be divorced from the other.

   What is repentance? The definition of the Shorter Catechism is an
excellent one: "Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a
sinner, out of a sense of his sin, and apprehension of (that is, a
laying hold of) the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred
of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and
endeavoring after, new obedience."

   Repentance is the prodigal down in the far country coming to his
senses. He left his father's home because he could not stand his
father's government. Everything about his father's will and ways
irritated him. It was a constant block to following the desires of his
own foul, wretched, sin-loving heart. The day came when he said he
wanted what was due him. He went into the far country. When he left he
had a notion of his father, of his government and of his ways, which
was entirely negative, but the Scripture tells us in Luke 15 that down
in the far country he came to himself: "And when he came to himself he
said, I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, Father, I
have sinned against heaven, and before you, and am no more worthy to be
called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants." And then the
Scripture says he did not sit there and think about it, and write
poetry about it and send telegrams home to Dad. It says, "He rose up
and came to his father." He left all those companions who were his
friends in sin; he loathed and abominated and abhorred everything that
belonged to that lifestyle. He turned his back on it. And what was it
that drew him home? It was the confidence that there was a gracious
father with a large heart and with the righteous rule for his happy,
loving home. And he said, "I will arise and go to my father." He did
not send a telegram saying, "Dad, things are getting rough down here;
my conscience is giving me fits at night; won't you send me some money
to help me out and come and pay me a visit and make me feel good?" Not
at all! He did not need just to feel good, he needed to become good.
And he left the far country. It is a beautiful stroke in our Lord's
picture when he says, "While he was yet a great way off, his father saw
him and had compassion, and ran, and threw his arms around him and
kissed him." The prodigal did not come strutting up to his father,
talking about making a decision to come home. There is a notion that
people can come strutting into enquiry rooms and pray their little
prayer and so do God a favour by making their decision. This has no
more to do with conversion then my name is "Abraham Lincoln." True
repentance involves recognizing that I have sinned against the God of
heaven, who is great and gracious, holy and loving, and that I am not
worthy to be called his son. And yet, when I am prepared to leave my
sin, to turn my back upon it and to come back haltingly, wondering if
indeed there can be mercy for me, then - wonder of wonders! - the
Father meets me, and throws the arms of reconciling love and mercy
about me. I say it not in a sentimental way but in all truth, he
smothers repenting sinners in forgiving and redemptive love.

   But note, the father did not throw his arms around the prodigal when
he was still in the hog pens and in the arms of harlots. Do I speak to
some whose hearts are wedded to the world, who love the world's ways?

   Perhaps in your personal life, or in relationship to your parents,
or in your social life where you take so lightly the sanctity of the
body, you show what you are. Maybe some of you are involved in
fornication, in heavy petting, in looking at the kind of stuff on
television and in the cinema that feeds your lust, and yet you name the
name of Christ. You live in the hog pens and then go to the house of
God on Sunday. Shame on you! Leave your hog pens, your haunts of sin.
Leave your patterns and practices of fleshly and carnal indulgence.
Repentance is being sorry enough to quite your sin. You will never know
the forgiving mercy of God while you are still wedded to your sins.

   Repentance is the soul's divorce from sin but it will always be
joined to faith. What is faith? Faith is the casting of the soul upon
Christ as he is offered to us in the gospel. Forsaking All I Take Him.

   That is faith! "As many as received him, to them gave he the right
to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name" [John
1:12]. Faith is likened to drinking of Christ. In my soul-thirst I
drink of him. Faith is likened to looking to Christ. Faith is likened
to following Christ, fleeing to Christ. The Bible uses many analogies
and the sum of them all is this, that in the nakedness of my need I
cast myself upon the Savior, trusting him to be to me all that he has
promised to be to needy sinners.

   Faith is taking nothing to Christ but an empty hand by which it
takes Christ and all that is in him. And what is in him? Full pardon
for all my sins! His perfect obedience is put to my account. His death
is counted as mine. And the gift of the Spirit is in him. Adoption,
sanctification and ultimately glorification are all in him, and faith,
in taking Christ, receives all that is in him. "But of him are ye in
Christ Jesus, whom God has made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and
sanctification and redemption" [1 Cor. 1:30].

   What is a biblical Christian? A biblical Christian is a person who
has wholeheartedly complied with the divine terms for obtaining the
divine provision for sin. Those terms are repentance and faith. I like
to think of them as the hinge on which the door of salvation turns. The
hinge has two plates. One that is screwed to the door and the other
screwed to the door jam. They are held together by a pin and on that
hinge the door turns. Christ is that door, but none enter through him
who do not repent and believe, and there is no true hinge made up only
of repentance. A repentance that is not joined to faith is a legal
repentance. It terminates on yourself and on your sin.

   A professed faith that is not joined to repentance is a spurious
faith, for faith is faith in Christ to save me, not in but from my sin.

   Repentance and faith are inseparable, and except you repent you will
perish. He that believeth not shall be damned.

   4. A BIBLE CHRISTIAN IS A PERSON WHO MANIFESTS IN HIS LIFE THAT HIS
CLAIMS TO REPENTANCE AND FAITH ARE REAL.

   Paul said that he preached that men should repent and turn to God
and do works meet for, answering to, consistent with, repentance [Acts
26:20]. "By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should
boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good
works which God before ordained that we should walk in them" [Eph.
2:8-10]. Paul says in Galatians chapter 5, that faith works by love.

   Wherever there is true faith in Christ there will always be
implanted genuine love to Christ and where there is love to Christ
there will always be obedience to Christ. True faith always works by
love, and what does it work? A life of obedience! "He that has my
commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me. He that loves me
not keeps not my sayings" [John 14:21-24]. We are not saved by loving
Christ, we are saved by trusting Christ, but a trust that produces no
love is not real.

   True faith works by love, and that which love works is not the
ability to sit on a beautiful starlight night writing poetry about how
exiting it is to be a Christian. It works by causing you to go back
into that home and to obey your father and mother as the Bible tells
you to do, or back to that university campus to take a stand for truth
and righteousness against all the pressure of your peers. True faith
makes you willing and prepared to be counted a fool and crazy, willing
to be considered anachronistic, because you believe that there are
eternal, unchangeable, moral and ethical standards. You are willing to
believe in the sanctity of human life, and to take your stand against
pre-marital sex and the murdering of babies in mothers' wombs. For
Jesus said, "Whoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this
adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of man be
ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels"
[Mark 8:38]. What is a Bible Christian?

   Not one who merely says, "Oh, yes, I know I am a sinner, with a bad
record and a bad heart. I know that God's provision for sinners is in
Christ and in his cross, adequate, freely offered to all, and I know it
comes to all who repent and believe." That is not enough. Do you
profess to repent and believe? Then can you make that profession stick,
not by a life of perfection but by a life of purposeful obedience to
Jesus Christ? "Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said, "but he who is doing the will of my
Father who is in heaven" [Matt. 7:21]. In Hebrews 5:8 we read, "He
became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him." And in
John 2:4, "He that says, I know him, and keeps not his commandments is
a liar, and the truth is not in him."

   Can you make your claim to be a Christian stick from the Bible?

   Does your life manifest the fruits of repentance and faith? Do you
possess a life of attachment to Christ, of obedience to Christ and
confession of Christ? Is your behavior marked by adherence to the ways
of Christ? Not perfectly - No! Every day you must pray, "Forgive us our
sins as we forgive those who trespass against us." But you can also
say, "For me to live is Christ," or "Jesus I my cross have taken. All
to leave and follow thee. The world behind me, the cross before me, I
have decided to follow Jesus." That is what a true Christian is. How
many of us are real Christians? I leave the answer in the deep chambers
of your own mind and heart. But, remember, answer with an answer that
you will be prepared to live with for eternity. Be content with no
answer but that which will find you comfortable in the death and safe
in the day of judgement.

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   The following comments are not part of the original text but were
added by me (Gary Duncan).

   You will notice in statement #4 it gets down to where you live,
we're not talking about what you do in your heart where no one can see
(except God) but we're talking right out here in the open. Let's take a
deeper look at what the Bible has to say about some of these things and
others that we could encounter on a day-to-day basis.

   First, as it states in the text, the Bible tells us to obey our
parents (even when you don't think there are being fair!). "Children
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." "Honor your father
and mother"- which is the first commandment with a promise-" [Eph.
6:1-2]. Now let me ask you, does it say to obey only when you want to
or when you feel that they are being fair? No, it just says OBEY. Does
it say or imply that this only applies if your parents are saved? Again
no, it just says OBEY. Now that does not mean that if they tell you to
do something that is obviously contrary to God that you must do it. Now
another question, for us older folks: Are you still your parents
children? If you do not have your own family, then yes you are. "For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his
wife" (Gen. 2:24).

   Now, how about standing for the cause? Sometimes that's
uncomfortable, right? We are told that we are to conform our selves to
the image of Christ. Which would mean following his example, and
responding to things the way Christ would respond. If Christ were in
body among us today, do you think he would respond to abortion the way
so many "Christians" do today? Or what about the divorce rate among
"Christians." What do you think the Lord's response to that would be?

   "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for
there is no authority except that which God has established. The
authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he
who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has
instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement upon themselves"
(Romans 13:1-2). What does this say to you? To me this says that I
better obey the laws of the land, because if I break the law of the
land I am rebelling against God! Now of course we all know that we
should not break the big laws; murder, stealing, etc., but what about
the "small" laws? I don't think it specifies in that passage that we
are to obey only the ones that seem important. One thing I see almost
every day that grieves me to no end: I'll be driving down the highway
and this car goes speeding passed me going at least 10 mph over the
speed limit, and as this car passes me I see bumper stickers on the car
that imply that the owner/driver is a Christian. Now some people say
that they have to give you 5 mph over, that's not true. Speeding is
breaking the law, period.

   And my Bible says that breaking the law is rebelling against what
God has instituted and for that matter against God himself.

   As Christians we are not to be conformed to the world, which of
course means that it doesn't matter if everyone else is doing it, if
its wrong its wrong. I think most everyone would agree that the easiest
way to witness to somebody is if they come up and ask you a question.
Before they will ask a question they have to see something different in
your life that they like, and if we live like they do, we show them
that we are just like they are, and they are not going to ask us what
is different in our life.

   Being a Christian is more than just having a title. Being a
Christian is living a life. Along with the other items that pastor
Martin talked about in his message.

   In Christ, Gary Duncan