What Constitutes a Christian?

The Question of Christian Identity

Find out whether we really have an answer to what constitutes a Christian. There are an amazing number of ideas as to what in the end produces the Christian. And many of those things are slowly but surely breaking up under the pressure and force of modern life. It is those things that are vanishing. And those things which are being destroyed are things that in themselves are not true. They have been deception or delusion—those things that we thought produced Christians and in actual fact, when put to the flame of trial, proved wrong.

It is therefore all the more necessary that we should together really ask ourselves, first, what constitutes a Christian? And secondly, am I, in the light of that, a true Christian?

The Gospel of John: A Clear Definition

Of course, naturally, we would expect the Word of God to give us a clear definition of a Christian. And we must remember that the gospel from which we read this evening was the last thing written in the New Testament by the closest and most intimate friend and associate of the Lord Jesus. That has now been proved beyond really any shadow of doubt. He was an old man, John, when he penned these words.

All around him, things were building up to the biggest crisis of his day and generation. That was the crisis of the destruction of Jerusalem and the old temple, which to all the Jews was the dwelling place of God. And then the great might of imperial Rome coming down heavily upon those called Christians to crush them out of existence. John himself was suffering for what he believed and for what he had experienced and for what he taught. And as if that was not enough, on every side heresies were beginning to develop and grow up—things that denied the very thing for which John suffered.

And so, as an old man, he wrote this wonderful gospel. I think by all, it is agreed, the most spiritual interpretation and the most spiritual understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ. He wrote it to give us a clear definition as to exactly who the Lord Jesus was, what He came to do, and how He did it, and what really constitutes those who belong to Christ.

Nicodemus and the Doctrine of New Birth

Therefore, when we come to the third chapter of John, and you must remember that when John wrote this, there were no chapter or divisions or verse divisions. When we come to what we now have as the third chapter of John, we come to really that which is the heart of this whole matter. They are the words of the Lord Jesus. They were spoken to the teacher of Israel—not just a teacher of Israel, but the man who was popularly acclaimed as the greatest theologian and scholar of his day, Nicodemus.

This man, being so popular and so well known, was far too frightened to come to Christ in the day or to ask his question publicly. And so in the quiet of the night, he stole away to the Lord Jesus. And when no one could see him but the Lord, he unburdened his heart. His whole question was, who is Christ? Who is this person?

Nicodemus' Recognition of Christ's Uniqueness

Nicodemus was no fool. And to the end of his life, though a secret believer, he did in actual fact remain a believer. But he knew, because he was an unbiased and an unprejudiced man, that this person was no mere ordinary teacher. He was no mere fanatic of a popular religious movement. He knew that this man was not even just a prophet. Something inside of Nicodemus told him that he was with this man, face to face with a unique being, a person who is singular.

And I think poor Nicodemus very, very quickly found that when he began his conversation by speaking about the Lord Jesus, "Obviously," he said, "the Lord's with You. God is with You. You couldn't do these things..." The Lord Jesus dismissed it all and got right to the point. He said, "Look, Nicodemus, the whole point is this, except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven."

The Challenge to Religious Understanding

That's a very strange way to answer a man's question. Here's a man who is a great theologian. He is a man who has his Old Testament at his fingertips. He is versed in the law of God. He understands all the complexities and intricacies of which only the Jewish rabbi could in any way be versed. He was well versed in the whole thing. He knew it all. He had come to find out who the Lord Jesus was. And the Lord Jesus never answered him plainly, but talked about being born anew, as if the answer to Nicodemus' question was simply being born anew.

This was a new conception to Nicodemus. He reeled back mentally and in every way, theologically, in every single way. Nicodemus could not understand quite what it was that the Lord Jesus was saying.

The Purpose of Christ's Coming

But the Lord Jesus went from one thing to the other. First, He said—He made it absolutely and abundantly clear to Nicodemus—that the whole point of His coming was that men and women might be born anew. There was no other point. He had come not to start a new religion called Christianity, not to launch a new reform movement. He had not come to ennoble this world with a great example and wonderful ideas. He had not come to give us what we call the New Testament as a kind of collection of religious writings and doctrines.

He had come that men and women might be born anew and that by being born anew, they might become partakers of God's life, and by becoming partakers of God's life, might enter into a new understanding of their existence and of the existence of this universe and of the existence of God.

The whole point was being born anew. This was the essential difference between all that this world had ever known in grand teaching, pure teaching, moral teaching, all that this world had ever learned in ethical standards, all that this world had ever known in religion. The great and decisive difference between all that and what Christ came to do—to do, not just to teach or to reveal, but to do—was that men and women might be born anew and by this deep, inward spiritual experience might come into a knowledge personally of God.

The Typology of the Brazen Serpent

When the Lord Jesus had told Nicodemus that, He passed straight on to the next thing, which was how He was going to do it. And He told him that the way Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness was but just a figure, a type, a shadow of what He Himself was going to do. He was going to be lifted up. And because He was going to be lifted up like that serpent in the wilderness, every man who looked to Christ and believed, trusted in Him, would be saved, should be given eternal life.

Just as in the history of the Jewish people, when that brazen serpent had been made, when men and women were dying everywhere from the scourge of those vipers, when they looked in faith to that brazen serpent, they were forgiven and healed. So the Lord Jesus said, any man or any woman that will look to Me as crucified shall, because of their trust, be saved, be born of God.

The Heart of the Gospel Message

The Lord Jesus put it simply in the words that are so familiar to us all. He said:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The Lord Jesus said, I did not come to judge the world. I have not come to condemn the world. I have not come to reject the world. I have come that the world might be saved.

New Birth as the Foundation of Christian Identity

So this is the background of what the Lord Jesus says here. And this is the thing that is taken up throughout the New Testament in all the writings of the apostles. The point where they all begin is being born again. And the thing that they make so abundantly clear is this: that if we are not born anew, if we have not had this experience, we have no right to the name Christian.

We may be moral, we may be upright, we may be decent, we might be respectable, we may be law-abiding, we may be loving, we may be filled with good works. But the only thing that qualifies us to remain Christian is whether we have been actually born anew of the Spirit of God. So said the Lord Jesus.

The Imperative Nature of New Birth

And the words I want to underline this evening are these: Marvel not, He said, marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born anew. The Lord Jesus looked upon it as the primary and essential necessity to an understanding of the Bible, to an understanding of God, to any coming into a real experience of His own salvation.

And I cannot help but marvel, and I know many of you must also marvel, that in this 20th century, with all that we have on every side of us, the one thing that Christianity is supposed to proclaim everywhere is the one thing that people are so painfully ignorant of.

Historical Patterns of Spiritual Renewal

In every single great movement of the Spirit of God down through church history, it has begun with a new discovery of what we call the Gospel. It doesn't matter if you go back to Huss. It doesn't matter if you go back earlier to other great saints or whether you come forward to those who have followed them. You will find that every single movement of the Spirit of God has begun with a fresh discovery as to what constitutes the Christian, and the putting into the hand of men and women everywhere of that constitution.

And every time things have become lethargic and apathetic and indifferent and so often hypocritical, when there is all this farse of religion and behind it and within it so very little real experience of God, it has been when this elementary basic proof had been hidden or forgotten.

It is remarkable that men and women can have their Bibles and still not really see on each page almost the necessity of being born of God. How men and women can understand the Bible as mere literature, as something to just be mentally appreciated, naturally understood, is something that is hard to understand.

The Necessity of Inquiry

The Lord Jesus said, Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born again. It's a good thing when we have questions about being born again. How can I be born again? What does it mean to be born again? How exactly is one born again?

Of course, we shall always be called cranks and we shall always be termed fanatics if we ever come into a real experience of God. But I think we can all take great encouragement that all those, both in the New Testament and ever since who have so obviously had the hand of God upon them, have all been men and women who had the same initial experience. They may have got varying measures of understanding afterwards, but all began with birth.

The Rationale for Spiritual Birth

Now, there are one or two things about this that I should like to say. One of the first is this: why must we be born anew? If the Lord Jesus says that the essential point of His coming was that men and women, good and bad, might be born anew, what really is the point of it?

The Authority of Christ's Command

There are quite a number of things I would like to say. First of all, and straight away, that to me, although I know full well that this will probably not meet everyone else's approval, but to me, just because the Lord Jesus said it, I believe it to be utterly necessary.

You know, it's a marvel to me—and must be to many people—that leaders of so-called movements are so quickly, in the third and fourth generation, reared up as heroes and all that they ever live for or proclaim is quietly forgotten. This is one of the strange enigmas of human history. The Lord Jesus Himself said, Ye are of your fathers. They stoned the prophets and you built their memorials.

There's always been truth. I sometimes wonder what Wesley would have thought if he could have sat today under some who are supposed to follow him and hear what they've got to say. I would love to know what George Fox would say if he entered today into the presence of many who were supposed to follow him and heard what they had to say. I would love to know what Luther would say if he could hear what so many had to say. They revere their memories and forget what they looked for. It is the same way with the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus said you must be born again. If there was absolutely nothing else—if you and I are going to be qualified to be called Christians, then obviously we must have what Christ Himself said was a necessity.

If the Lord Jesus said ye must be born again, then we must be born again. Otherwise we must call ourselves religious. That's a good term. Just call yourself religious. Let me call myself religious. Don't let the name Christian come into it unless we're prepared to start where Christ started. Christ started with being born anew. That's where you must begin. If you want any claim to the name Christian, you must begin there and nowhere else. You can't begin anywhere else but there. You must begin there with this question of birth.

The Scriptural Witness to New Birth

The whole Word of God speaks of this question of being born again. It's not as if this is an isolated instance that someone might come to me and say, Well, of course you know—how do we know the Lord Jesus really said it? Well, if you search through the scriptures you will find that it's such a common thing. Are we to believe that all these men have built one vast lie?

It's amazing that people can suggest what they do suggest about the words of the Lord Jesus. We know, of course, today that so often things are distorted in the papers. But if people said what they said about some—about the Scriptures—if they were to say that about reports in the newspaper, there'd be a tremendous hullabaloo. They try to make out that the men who wrote these things were so dishonest. It didn't matter that every one of them died for their faith. It didn't matter that every one of them suffered all their lives for what they proclaimed. Oh, no. Evidently, they didn't worry very much if they distorted things. They didn't worry if they changed things, if they put into the Lord's mouth words which He never said.

Of course, if we could only find it in one of them, we might be tempted to believe that this man was a little bit imaginative. When we find it in all of them, then we have to take note that there is something more in this than meets the eye. The Lord Jesus said we must be born anew. So whatever we might feel about it, if we want to have a claim to the name Christian, we must start there. It is a necessity, because the Lord Jesus said it was a necessity.

Birth as Irreplaceable

And then again, I would like to say that there is absolutely no substitute for birth. There is no substitute for birth. There are many, many other things that men have invented and produced and created, but no one has yet got a substitute for birth. They've even built electronic brains—automatons. But there's no substitute for birth. None of you would want to be married to an electronic brain. None of you would want to have a child with an electronic brain. Might solve some problems, but you wouldn't be happy with it in the end. You see, there's no substitute for birth.

The Organic Nature of Birth

Birth is something organic. Birth is something living. Birth is something in many ways which is a mystery. It's life. It's something which develops, moves. Just think of it as I've often said to you. There you are sitting in those chairs. But just think of it. When you were born, you were just a small little handful almost. And yet all that sitting in the chair was there and you were born. Oh, yes, it's only a development. There have been many influences upon you. Many things have come in and developed you and so on. But you are essentially the same person, only in a developed form. It was all there when you were born.

There's no substitute for birth. If you create an electronic brain, it remains an electronic brain. It doesn't develop, doesn't grow. It's always the same. But birth is a miracle because from something small and helpless you grow up into what you are. There's no substitute for birth.

The Singular Beginning of Christian Life

Being a Christian begins with birth and with nothing else. Nothing else but birth. What a lie it is where men and women think that they become Christians by putting their names on a church register or roll or by joining a religious movement or by giving your money to things. You think those things are things that qualify you to be called a Christian? Where anywhere can you find in the Word of God anything that says those things can produce the Christian? You will not find it anywhere. There is no substitute for birth.

When a man's been born of God, he grows like God. When a man just becomes a man-made Christian, he remains just a man-made Christian. Or an actor. Very good word, just an actor, nothing else. He is something which he is not essentially. He is something which he is not truly. Like his clothes, they are put on. Like his manner, it is something outward, like myself here now—just something that you see, perhaps not the real person. That's a man-made Christian.

The Distinction Between Flesh and Spirit

You can doll it up, you can dress it up, you can teach it religious phraseology, you can give it the Bible, it can pray, it can do all kinds of things, but it's not a Christian and nothing that it can do will make it a Christian. What is flesh, said the Lord Jesus, is flesh. You can have a respectable flesh. You can have decent flesh. You can have educated flesh. You can have cultured flesh. You can have religious flesh. You can have Christian flesh. But it's still flesh. What is of the Spirit is spirit.

And what is of the Spirit begins with being born of the Spirit. If a man is not born of the Spirit, he is not a child of God. Children begin with birth. I was born a child. I was never put together and made into a child. I was born as a child. To become a child of God, you are born of God.

And when you're born of God, you've got something within which is altogether different to what you are naturally, which will grow. The Quakers called it the seed of Christ. It is something conceived by the Holy Spirit. And it is something which we can only describe as an inward, true, unemotional experience. Something which is absolutely and essentially the work of God by the Holy Spirit upon our spirit. That is a Christian, nothing else and nothing more.

So you see, there is no substitute for birth. According to the word of the Lord Jesus, we may have everything that we consider to produce Christians and not be Christians. And we have only to read church history to discover what religion can do to people who, later it has been proved, were true Christians. There is no substitute whatsoever for true birth. The scripture says that's where we begin. There is no substitute for it.

Union with God Through Spiritual Birth

I may say another thing. There is no other way to be joined to God than by spiritual birth. Flesh is flesh. God is not flesh. God is spirit, says the Word of God. There is no other way to be joined to God than by being born of God. For the scripture says:

He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

That's the only way that you can come into a union with God is to be born of God. You cannot unite two alien substances. You can only fuse two substances of the same.

We apologise, but the master tape ran out at this point. We trust that the message thus far is helpful.