What is a Biblical Christian? By Albert N. Martin

There are many things concerning which ignorance or indifference are neither tragic nor fatal.
There are many of us sitting here this morning who will both live and die absolutely ignorant
of Einstein's theory of relativity.
Now that ignorance is neither tragic nor is it fatal.
Some of you children here, you're ignorant this morning, you'll be ignorant tomorrow
morning and all the mornings of your life, or perhaps you may add to your ignorance some
indifference with regard to something like how a black and white cow can eat green grass
and end up giving white milk.
Can you explain that to me?
You say, no, pastor, I'm ignorant about that, and furthermore, I could care less just so
long as cows of whatever color continue to give white milk.
That satisfies me.
Well, you see, we could multiply the kinds of issues concerning which sheer ignorance
and total indifference are neither tragic nor are they fatal.
However, there is one issue, and only one issue, concerning which ignorance and indifference
are both tragic and fatal for time and for eternity.
And that one issue is the issue that grows out of the simple question, what is a Christian?
Or stated another way, what must a boy or girl, teenager, man or woman, what must a
person know and experience in order to be equipped to live, prepared to die, and fit
to go to judgment with peace and with confidence?
When I say that there is only one issue ultimately concerning which ignorance or indifference
are tragic and fatal, it is the issue bound up in that simple little question, what is
a Christian?
Or more fully considered, what must I know and what must I experience to be equipped
to live, to be prepared to die, to be fit to go to death and to judgment?
And so our subject matter for this morning is that very simple but profoundly important
question, what is a Christian?
Although that question and its answer are woven through the fabric of almost every sermon
that is preached from this pulpit—and may God have mercy on any of us who stand in this
pulpit when that is no longer so—it is good for us from time to time not simply to
have that as a thread woven into the fabric of our teaching of the whole counsel of God,
which again is our duty, but to focus on that one simple question.
Now why is it important to do that?
Well for at least two reasons.
Reason number one is lest anyone fail to get the heart of the biblical answer to that question,
the longer I live, the less confidence I have in the human heart to ascertain the most elementary
truths of the Word of God, even though they are heard again and again and again.
And because this issue is of supreme importance, whatever other issues we may be ignorant of
in life in general or even with regard to the Scriptures concerning this issue, we must
not be ignorant.
What is a Christian?
What must I know and experience to be equipped to live as I ought, to be fit to die, to be
prepared for judgment?
And the second reason why we must from time to time take up that question is in order
to give a working, simple acquaintance with a succinct statement of God's answer to
that question so that the people of God will have a working model of communicating the
gospel of the grace of God to others.
And so for those reasons I have chosen on this weekend, when we are normally in a state
of flux, to take up this simple question, what is a Christian?
Now, the fuzzy thinking and confusion on this most important of all issues is both amazing
and appalling.
For some people, a Christian is anyone who is not a Muslim, a Jew, or an atheist.
And if you don't fit into one of those three categories, you must be a Christian.
For others, a Christian is someone who's been christened.
He had a priest or a minister rub a little water on his forehead and pronounce over him
some mumbo-jumbo in his infancy, and then around puberty he or she got confirmed and
is in some way or other connected with some visible branch of the Christian church, and
in the minds of many that's what it means to be a Christian.
There are yet others.
To be a Christian means to be kind, to be gentle, to be considerate, to make an honest
effort to live by the good rule and do the Christian thing that constitutes a person
a Christian.
For yet others, if one has had some kind of a religious crisis, in some way connected
to some degree with Jesus, that in some way or another helped a person to feel good and
get his act together, he must be a Christian.
Well, you see, none of those notions has any foundation in the Word of God, none whatsoever.
And yet those are notions that are widespread right in our own day.
If we were to do a man or a woman or a boy or a girl on the street interview with people
and ask the question, What is a Christian?, you would get answers that would fall into
these various categories.
Let me suggest that when we turn to the Word of God, the Scriptures themselves, this question,
What is a Christian?, is answered to us in terms of three simple categories of biblical
reality.
What is a Christian?
A Christian is, and the answer is going to have three simple parts, and I hope the youngest
child who can comprehend even half of my words will be able to leave this morning with a
clear understanding from the Scriptures with respect to this vital issue.
And may I urge you to remember, you're not simply hanging in there to respect the pastor
and pay attention half the time.
I have nothing to gain from addressing myself to this subject.
It is your eternal well-being that is at stake.
If you die ignorant or indifferent to the Bible's answer to this question, it were better
for you that you had never been born.
So may you gird up the loins of your mind and listen with all the eagerness of men and
women and boys and girls who know that they are on their way to death and after death
the judgment.
What, then, is a Christian?
Well, the first part of the answer is this.
A Christian is one who has honestly faced the personal problem of sin.
A Christian is one, be it a five-year-old boy or a seventy-year-old man, be it someone
from a very moral, upright background or someone who came out of the most immoral, unstructured
background, whoever that person may be, whatever his background, a Christian is someone who
has honestly faced the personal problem of sin.
Now, one of the most wonderful and amazing things about true Bible Christianity is that
it is essentially and fundamentally a religion for sinners.
Not a religion for good people, not a religion for the strong, not a religion for the noble,
not a religion for those of great philosophical minds.
It is essentially and fundamentally a religion for sinners.
And therefore, only those who have honestly faced their own personal problem of sin can
have any claim to being Christians and make that claim stick.
Listen to the words of Jesus that address themselves so simply and yet so pointedly
to this issue.
In the fifth chapter of Luke, we have the record of some people whose religion consisted
not in being a sinner but in being a good person.
And when they saw Jesus hobnobbing with sinners, it shook them up, and I mean it really shook
them.
They could not understand how a great religious leader would be such an intimate friend of
sinners, and Jesus turned to these people and told them,
You don't understand the ABCs of why I have come to earth.
And in Luke 5, 31, Jesus says, And answering he said unto them, The people that are healthy
have no need of a doctor, but those that are sick.
I am not come to call the righteous, those who have no sin, those who have no consciousness
of sin, those who have no awareness of their personal involvement in sin.
I have not come for such people, but I have come to call sinners to repentance.
And so you see the eye of Jesus, and you see the sinnerhood of those for whom he came.
I have come to call sinners to repentance, and here our Lord without embarrassment says,
My religion is a religion for sinners.
And he goes on to make it evident that rather than simply mention that on the sly, he puts
it in current terminology right up front for everyone to behold.
I have come for sinners.
Listen to the testimony of the great apostle Paul, that great spokesman of the Lord Jesus
who said in 1 Timothy 1 and verse 15, This is a faithful saying, a saying worthy of all
acceptance, and here it is, that Christ Jesus came into the world, not to help good people
get better, not to help righteous people become more righteous, but look at the language.
This is the faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance, Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners.
And so you see, brought into the closest relationship again, Christ Jesus and sinners.
And the whole purpose of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ has to do with sinners.
And until a person honestly faces his personal problem of sin, he cannot, he will not become
a Christian.
Now human sin and the problem that that sin brings has a million manifestations.
But when you boil down the problem of human sin to its most distilled essence, the problem
of human sin has but two fundamental points of focus.
You've heard this language before.
A number of years ago I preached an entire sermon entitled The Bad Record and the Bad
Heart.
And the problem of human sin is basically that twofold problem, the problem that we
all have of a bad record and the problem of a bad heart.
Now when I say a bad record, what am I talking about?
Well I'm talking about that which the Bible sets before us with the picture of God as
the judge of the world who keeps record books on all of his creatures who are part of his
universe.
And the Scripture tells us that in the last day, Revelation 20 verses 11 to 15, when men
stand before God the judge, the books will be opened and the dead will be judged out
of the books according to their works.
And you see, it's what's in those books that constitutes our bad record.
In the court of heaven, the sentence of guilty has gone forth upon every single one of us.
Well, you say, guilty for what?
Guilty first of all of that sin which we committed in our first father, Adam.
The Bible makes it abundantly plain that when Adam took that fruit from the hand of Eve
and in open-eyed, willful, deliberate disobedience sinned against God, when Adam sinned, we sinned
in him and with him.
Romans 5 and verse 12, Wherefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death
passed upon all men, for that all sinned.
And when did we all sin?
We all sinned in Adam.
Don't you say, Pastor, that doesn't sound fair to me.
How could I sin in Adam and I wasn't even born?
I'm only eight years old.
Adam lived thousands of years ago.
It isn't fair.
God didn't wait till I was born and asked me to vote upon it.
Well, dear children and adults, it may not seem fair, and you may not be able to figure
out how it can be that the sin of the one is the sin of the race.
But facts are facts, and the sooner we come to reckon with them, the better off we are.
You are guilty in Adam, and if you don't come to grips with that guilt, God will make you
come to grips with it in the day of judgment.
As in Adam all die, 1 Corinthians 1522, and we've got a bad record that goes right back
to the Garden of Eden.
Just as a little aside, what makes you think you'd have done anything different from what
Adam did?
Created upright, created in the image of God and in communion with God, put in a perfect
environment with a perfect wife, perfect surroundings, and yet he sinned.
What makes you think you'd have done anything different?
No, we are guilty in Adam, but the Bible goes on to say we are guilty because of our own
individual and actual sins.
Ecclesiastes 7.20, there is not a just man upon the face of the earth that doeth good
and sinneth not.
We read such passages as Romans 3, 10-18, where the apostle brings verses together from
various places in the Old Testament and demonstrates there is none righteous, no, not one.
They are all gone out of the way.
They are together become unprofitable.
None that doeth good, no, not one.
You see, when we begin to take seriously, fellows and girls, men and women, that sin
is any failure to come up to the standard of what God requires or any deviation by cutting
across that standard, and we realize that God judges thoughts and the very intentions
of the heart as well as words and deeds, who among us is so foolish to say that our record
in heaven is clean?
If Jesus says that anger in the heart in an unjust cause is the essence of murder, lust
in the eye is the essence of adultery, desiring inordinately is the essence of idolatry, who
among us is going to dare claim our record is clean?
Who is so foolish to say every thought and intention and motive and desire and attitude
has been perfectly in line with God's holy law from the time we had any being?
No, no, we have a bad record, and that bad record is not in some human court that has
human authority to execute human law or even human authority to exercise divine law.
We have a bad record in the court of the heaven, of heavens, the court of the God who has the
power, the power to do what?
To take every guilty criminal in his court who has a bad record and consign him to the
just desserts of that bad record, and the wages of sin is death.
The soul that sinneth it shall die.
And so in that picture of the court of heaven in Revelation 20, it ends with these frightening
words, Whosoever was not found written in the book of life shall be cast into the lake
of fire.
This is the second death.
The Scripture says God will by no means clear the guilty.
God doesn't get up some morning and say, Well, I'm in a good mood, and that's an awful backlog
of paperwork, all that fellow's sins, all those mean words to his sister, all those
lies to his mother, and that little girl's record down there, all of her jealousy and
all of her envy.
But I'm in a good mood today.
I think we'll just have a record-burning day.
No, no, my friends.
If God were to burn the record of one sin you've committed, he would cease to be God.
He would cease to be just.
The God who is upholding his holy law, the pillars of the universe would crumble if God
were to clear you of one sin without having a just cause to clear you of that sin.
What is a Christian?
I tell you, a Christian is someone who begins to take seriously that bad record.
Isn't that the picture Bunyan gives of his pilgrim?
When did he set out on that journey?
He said when he understood from the book in his hands that he must die and go to judgment,
and he was not prepared for such an experience.
He said, I know from the book in my hand that I must die and go to judgment, and I'm not
prepared for that.
Why?
He knew he had a bad record.
He had a bad record that would meet him in the day of judgment, that would force, I say
it reverently, that would force Almighty God to say those awful words, Depart from me,
you cursed, into everlasting fire.
But you see, our problem is not only the problem of a bad record, it's the problem of a bad
heart.
And when I use the word heart, I don't mean that organ that pumps the blood, that has
its oracles and its pentacles.
The Bible uses the heart as meaning the real you.
Proverbs 4.23, Guard your heart, for out of it are the issues of life.
From the very moment we were conceived, our hearts, our nature, our disposition was bad.
People say, Oh, well, he's a good boy who went bad.
No, he's a bad boy who showed what he was.
No such thing as a good boy who went bad, a good girl who went bad.
We are conceived and born bad.
Jeremiah 17.9, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
David said in Psalm 51.6, Behold, I was shaped in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive
me.
Not that the act of the sexual relationship between David's mother and father was sin.
No, no.
What he's saying is that when as a result of that act, I was conceived, what was conceived
was a sinner from conception.
That's why the Bible says they go astray from the womb, speaking lies.
That's why Jesus said in Mark chapter 7, these very, very straight and plain words, listen
to his language, For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed.
Where do you get those evil thoughts when you're sitting there in school and all of
a sudden you begin to think, well, if I look over at Johnny's paper, I can get his answer.
And you begin to think evil thoughts of cheating or you think evil thoughts of meanness or
deceit.
Where do they come from?
God says they come out of your heart.
How'd they get there?
They got there when you were conceived as a sinner.
They didn't come from the outside.
They are inbred into your very nature.
Evil thoughts, fornication, that sexual impurity, thefts, being a thief, murders, adulteries,
coveting, wickedness, deceit.
Oh, you children, how easy it is to deceive.
We can deceive with a look.
You know that you started the fight with your brother or sister, and yet when your mom or
dad comes into the room to break it up, you look up and say, well, oh, you're the look
of innocence, deceiving.
How can you do it so easily?
You don't even have to plan it.
If you can do your schoolwork that easy, you get straight A's without trying.
How is it you can deceive so naturally?
Oh, dear children, it's because of the heart you've got.
It's because of your heart.
You've got a bad heart that's full of sin, full of deceit, full of lies, full of railing
and pride and foolishness.
Jesus said, these things proceed from within and defile the man.
You see, that's our problem.
We have the problem not only of a bad record, we've done bad things, but we've got the problem
of a bad heart.
We are bad in our natures.
Now, who is a Christian?
A Christian is someone who has taken seriously that personal problem of a bad record and
a bad heart.
Now, why do I emphasize the personal problem?
Oh, you've got a lot of people disturbed about sin, sin in society.
We must do something about injustice.
We must do something about inequity.
We must do something about the distribution of wealth.
And listen to me, though no one takes second place to me in my abominating the present
practice of the murder of innocent babies in the wombs of their mothers.
Listen, you've got people that are all fired up against abortion as a social evil, who
don't have an ounce of concern for the sin in their own hearts.
They murder Christ again by their unbelief, and it doesn't bother them.
And some of the very vanguard murder Him on their Romish altars every Sunday with their
masses.
And it doesn't disturb them while they're guilty of blasphemy while they're crying out
against the sin of the murder of innocents in the wombs.
That's why I underscore the word personal.
A Christian is someone who has taken seriously his personal problem of sin.
Not sin in society, sin among the nations, sin in terms of all of these things, but the
person who's come with David to say, Against thee and thee only have I sinned.
That's a Christian.
That's a Christian.
A Christian is someone who's taken the place with that man described by our Lord in Luke
19, the publican, who stood at a distance, would not so much as even lift up his eyes
to heaven.
When he thought of heaven, he thought of God, and when he thought of God, he thought
of holiness, and when he thought of holiness, he thought of his own bad record.
He couldn't look up to heaven.
It haunted him.
So his eyes were probably fixed on the altar of sacrifice, and it says he beat upon his
breast and he cried out, God, God be merciful to me, the sinner.
You see, he didn't say, Oh God, do something about the sin of these tribes and Pharisees.
They're going around with their robes of self-righteousness.
They're doing this.
They're doing that.
Lord, do something about this thing, that thing, the other thing.
He said, Oh God, be merciful to me, the sinner.
Now I want to ask you sitting here this morning, children, teenagers, visitors, friends, you
may have even been a member of this church for years.
Have you ever been brought to the place where you've taken seriously the personal problem
of your sin?
Not the sins in society, the sins in government.
Come on, man.
Come on, woman.
Come on, dear boy, dear girl, answer that question.
Have you taken seriously the personal problem of your sin, your bad record and your bad
heart?
Have you ever lost a moment's sleep over it?
You ever found it difficult to go to sleep at night saying, Oh God, I lied to mommy today.
I confessed it to her.
Oh God, how can that lie be scrubbed out of the record book of heaven?
God, how can it be rubbed out of your record, Lord?
I don't want to go to judgment with that on my account.
You children, has that ever troubled you?
Your bad record, your lies, your filthy words, your filthy thoughts, your mean thoughts,
your selfish thoughts?
What about you adults?
Have you been troubled about your bad record?
What about your bad heart?
Does it ever become a weight to you?
Does it ever become a matter of concern to you until you've tried out, Oh God, created
me a clean heart?
How can this creature think pure thoughts with a heart like this?
How can I love what is pure with a heart like this?
A Christian is someone who to some degree, and I'm not going to prescribe what degree
because the Bible doesn't, but a Christian is someone who has taken his personal problem
of sin seriously.
Have you?
Have you?
That's the question.
But I must hasten on because a lot of people come that far and they're not Christians.
A Christian is someone who has not only honestly faced the personal problem of sin, but is
one who has seriously considered the divine remedy for sin.
A Christian is someone who has seriously considered the divine remedy for sin.
And again, one of the most unique things about the Bible is this.
Not only does it tell us that Christianity is a religion for sinners, but it tells us
that the remedy for sinners is divinely initiated.
In other words, God takes the first step and the second and the third.
We take John 3 16 for God, it starts with God, not with man.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
Or a passage like Ephesians 2 4, describing man's terrible condition with his bad record
and his bad heart in the first three verses, then in verse 4 Paul says, but God, but God
against the backdrop of human sin, God has come to do something.
You see, it is not self-help, picking yourself up by your bootstraps, human help, having
some other fellow creature help me, but it's God intervening.
Now what are the major elements in that remedy?
And I'm just going to touch on three of them very quickly and simply.
Here they are.
That serious consideration of the divine remedy for sin is a consideration of a remedy that,
number one, is bound up in a person.
You see, certain remedies come to us in a pill.
Other remedies may come to us in a diet.
Other remedies may come to us in certain forms of therapy.
In terms of what our malady and our illness is, the remedy comes in different ways.
For some people, a change of climate, got to get away from dampness and from spores
and from different kinds of pollens.
So how does the remedy for sin come to us?
It comes to us bound up in a person.
Not in a set of ideas that float by called Christianity, not in a set of rules that come
by saying Christianity, but the remedy comes to us in a person.
The Scripture tells us, Thou shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from
their sins.
Jesus Himself said in John 14, 6, I am the way.
Not my church, not my ministers, not even my doctrines taken away from me.
I am the way, the truth and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by me.
Or we go back to our old standby, John 3, 16, God so loved the world that He gave a
set of truths about salvation, no.
God so loved the world that He gave a church in which there is salvation, no.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
You see the remedies in a person, and oh, you dear children, I longed to make this plain
and would that I could come out of the pulpit and just kneel at your feet and take your
face and cup it in my hands and look you straight in the eye and say whatever else
you're learning from mommy and daddy and in Sunday school and church, are you learning
this?
That the only answer to your bad record and your bad heart is in a person, it's in a person.
And that person is the blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
John could say this is the record that God has given unto us eternal life and this life
is in His Son.
That's the glory of the Christian faith, the remedies in a person.
And that person is the God-man, Christ Jesus Himself.
And the second thing we need to say about that remedy is that it is centered in the
cross.
Although the remedies in the person, it is not the person as a great example, not the
person as a noble leader, not even the person who is worthy as an object of love.
The remedy that comes bound up in a person is a remedy centered in the cross of that
person.
That's why we read in 1 Corinthians 1 18, the preaching of the cross is to them that
are perishing foolishness.
Paul could say, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him as the
crucified one.
And here again I want to speak as simply and plainly and I trust none despises the simplicity.
The heart of the message of the cross is this, Jesus took what sinners deserved.
Jesus took what sinners deserved.
Now because of our bad record and our bad heart, what do we deserve?
We deserve the wrath of God.
The Bible tells us Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
us for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, Galatians 3 13 or 2 Corinthians
5 21, God made him who knew no sin.
The words are almost shocking.
Listen to them.
God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.
He became sin without committing sin.
His own record was perfect in the court of heaven.
His own heart was pure.
But when our sins were charged to him, he so took them to himself that the scripture
says he became sin for us.
And when he was bearing the sins of men, the Father did to him what he must do when
he comes to deal with sin in righteousness and in holiness and in justice.
He punished his own dear son.
And when you children are reading your gospels and you come to those words where it says
there was darkness over the whole land from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, that's
Right about this time, if you go outside in a few minutes, you see the sun, if it's there
and not hidden by the clouds, is right at its height, its brightest and warmest.
It says from high noon to three o'clock in the afternoon, there was darkness over the
whole land.
And toward the end of those three hours, Jesus cried with a loud voice, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?
Why have you abandoned me?
Why have you cast me off?
There was no answer from heaven, but the answer that the Bible gives is plain for any to read.
The Father cast him off because that's what sin deserves.
And he was being made sin for us.
And the Father bruised his own son in the language of Isaiah 53.
He made our sins to rest upon him in the language of that same wonderful chapter.
You see, the remedy that God has made is not just bound up in a person, but bound up in
the person who died as a substitute for sinners.
And then the third thing I want to say about that remedy is this, it is adequate for and
offered to all without exception.
You see, one of the problems that anyone has who begins to take his sin seriously is this.
Oh yes, what Jesus did when he died for sinners may be good for this one and that one and
the other one, but there's no sinner quite like me.
I was born in a Christian home.
I had the Bible taught to me for my infancy.
I went to a church where the Word of God was preached.
I did not merely sin against conscience.
I sinned against the love, against the instruction, against the restraints of my godly home.
I sinned in the full light of the preaching and teaching of the Word of God I received
in Sunday school and church.
I sinned against the pressure of even some Christian friends.
Oh yes, there may be forgiveness for this one and that one, but Lord, I've sinned
too much.
I sinned too deeply.
I sinned too grievously.
And oh, what we need to know is that there is no record so bad that the blood of Jesus
can cleanse it.
We need to understand that God says, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow.
Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
You need to know that what Jesus Christ has done is adequate for the vilest of sinners.
That's why Paul could say in 1 Timothy 1.15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners of whom I am chief.
Oh, listen, dear young person, man, woman, boy, or girl, that provision is adequate no
matter what you've done.
Ah, but you say, preacher, you don't know what I've done.
It was my joy just this past week to sit down with someone whose past is filled with the
most grievous kinds of sin and to break this person off and say, look, my friend, you could
sit here for the next twenty-four hours and pour out a tale, true in every detail, about
the sins you've done.
But there is nothing you can tell me about but that the blood of Jesus Christ cannot
cleanse it, hallelujah.
What a joy to sit and preach the gospel in my own study and tell a man there is provision
adequate for every sin.
That's the gospel.
That's the good news of salvation.
But it's not only adequate, it's sincerely offered to everyone.
Listen to the language of Isaiah 55, ho, you know what the word ho is?
You don't use it now.
You want to go out and call your buddy in the block.
You don't go, ho, John!
No, you say, hey!
And he doesn't look at you, you say, hey, John, and he turns around.
God is saying, hey, hey, till he gets our attention and then this is what he says, hey,
everyone that's thirsty, come to the waters.
He that hath no money, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Hey!
Stop getting your attention, boy, girl, man, or woman.
And he's saying, all the benefits of salvation are freely offered, freely and sincerely offered.
He that is a first, let him come and drink of the water of life.
Jesus could say in Matthew 11, 28, come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden
and I will give you rest.
Who is a Christian?
A Christian is someone who has not only honestly faced the personal problem of sin, but has
seriously considered the divine remedy for sin.
May I ask you this morning, have you seriously considered the divine remedy for sin?
That remedy that's bound up in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, that remedy that is centered
in his cross, that remedy that is offered, adequate for and offered to all men.
I ask you this morning, have you seriously considered that remedy?
I'm not asking you, do you occasionally give it a fleeting thought and have you sat
while these things have been preached and say, oh yes, I believe that.
My friend, have you seriously considered that remedy?
Well, you see, a sick man who knows he's dying doesn't play around with the remedy
that's offered, that is adequate to bring him health and to avert death, and when we
know ourselves to have a bad record and a bad heart, and the news comes that God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should
not perish.
That becomes the most wonderful news we've ever heard.
And then finally, and I'll only touch on it for about two minutes, a Christian is one
who has in the last place wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, and I've chosen my word carefully,
a Christian is one who has wholeheartedly complied with the divine terms for obtaining
the divine provision for sin.
You see, God has made that provision.
It's adequate and offered to all in the gospel, but God doesn't say it automatically becomes
the possession of all who hear about it.
God says the terms are these, repent and believe the gospel.
Mark 1 and verse 16, Jesus came preaching, repent ye and believe the gospel.
Acts 20, 21, Paul said he preached repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And you will not become a Christian until from the heart, not in a surface cavalier
in different, careless way, but from the heart you comply with those terms on which God offers
His mercy to sinners.
You must repent, and as we saw several weeks ago in the Sunday evening service, that simply
means you must turn from your sin unto the God against whom you've sinned, walking in
the direction of doing your own thing, thinking your own thoughts, planning your own life,
living by your own standards.
God says in the gospel, let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man, his thoughts,
and let him return unto the Lord.
This is the prodigal saying, I will arise and go to my Father.
My friend, that's what it means to repent.
To say, I will arise and go to my Father, I'll go to the God who made me, the God against
whom I've sinned, the God in whose presence my sins are so ugly, yet the God who so loved
the world is to give His only begotten Son.
You must repent, and you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
That means you must cast yourself upon Him to be cleansed in His blood, to be forgiven
by the virtue of His life and death, to be accepted by His righteousness.
And you see, repentance and faith are not the acts of a moment, oh yes, they must have
a beginning, but then they become the very dispositions of the heart, so that we who
truly repent continue to repent.
And if we have truly believed, we are characterized in the Bible as those who do continually believe.
And unless you repent in belief, even acknowledging your malady, even saying you understand the
provision of God in Christ for sinners, there is no life until you repent and believe.
There is no salvation if you do not repent and believe, for the Scripture says he that
believeth not shall be damned.
The Scripture says, except ye repent shall perish.
Now in the midst of all the things you've heard over the many years, some of you, this
is the heart, this is the soul, this is the bloodstream of it all.
What is a Christian?
A Christian is someone who has taken seriously and honestly his bad record and his bad heart.
Is that you?
Is that you?
A Christian is someone who has taken seriously God's remedy for sin, the remedy bound up
in a person, the remedy centered in His cross, the remedy adequate for and offered to all
without discrimination.
But a Christian is someone who wholeheartedly has embraced the terms on which that offer
of mercy is made.
He has come to grips with the reality of his sin, and there is no sin that he will willfully
and deliberately cling to.
There is no sin but what he looks to Christ to break the power of that sin as well as
to cleanse him of the guilt of that sin.
That's repentance turning from sin unto God and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, resting
the whole way to the soul upon Christ, trusting in Him to forgive, to cleanse, to make us
accepted in Himself.
There was a time when I would have made an apology for speaking so simply to a congregation
so well instructed in the Gospel, no more.
I would far rather have a critic leave saying, a Bible school graduate could have preached
that sermon.
I welcome, I welcome that kind of a sneer should it be on the face and in the thinking
of any.
I welcome it far rather than have one person come to judgment saying, amidst all the preaching,
amidst all the teaching, it was never spelled out one, two, three so I could see it and
take hold of it.
My friend, it's been spelled out as simply as I know how.
Had the morning not been as warm, I would have brought in more illustrations, more analogies,
more likenesses, more pictures to make it even yet more simple.
But a warm morning does not permit a lengthy sermon, but oh, I hope it's come home with
clarity.
Are you a Christian?
If that's what a Christian is, are you a Christian?
You say, well, I don't see how I could be, pastor.
Well, my question is, do you want to be?
Do you want to be?
And with all your heart, seek the Lord while He may be found.
Call upon Him while He is near.
Perhaps God tailor-made this word for you that it might be the open door to your life
and your salvation.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we are so thankful that your word, though it contains profound truths that baffle
the most brilliant sanctified minds of men and women.
We thank you that it also contains these elementary, basic, clear statements of who we are, who
you are, and what you have done in Christ for needy sinners, and what you offer to needy
sinners if they will repent and believe the Gospel.
Lord, may it please you to take these simple, these basic, these elementary truths and make
them effectual in the hearts of many.
We pray, O Holy Father, that that great and final day will make it plain that some on
this day understood and embraced the truth as it is in Jesus.
And then, Lord, for those of us who by grace can say, yes, we are Christians, you have
shown us our sin and revealed to us the Savior, you have inclined our hearts to repent and
believe.
O God, give us a new measure of zeal in proclaiming these simple truths to men and women, boys
and girls, work associates, neighbors, relatives, O God, make of each one of us zealous evangelists,
zealous proclaimers of this blessed message of life and deliverance, hear then our prayer
and seal the word to our hearts.
We plead in Jesus' name, amen.