What is a Christian?
I wrote last month that I hoped to give this month my personal answer to the big question: ‘What do we have to do to be truly Christian?’ That is to ask: what is true Christian religion, or in other words: what does a true Christian do about what he or she believes? Naturally it is the faith that conditions our behaviour. So what do I believe that makes me a Christian? My answer is that I make the man Jesus of Nazareth central to my life and believe that in him we can see a man transparent to God. The creator of all that is, the origin from whom the big bang came, he who has always existed before anything created was made, this Being shows us insofar as is possible his character in the man Jesus, who shares the Creator’s divinity and is thus called the Son of God. By this I do not mean that Jesus is literally the son of God as if God were like the ancients sometimes thought of him – as a being who could become a creature and have sex with women to produce semi-divine offspring. I don’t profess to understand all this fully but that’s about as near as I can get to it. But we do have the assurance from Jesus that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. (More about this, I hope, in my next month’s piece.)
So what do I do about what I believe? I spend much time studying the Bible, which I don’t for a moment believe to be anything like 100% exact history but which does give us a series of pictures about what believers down the ages have thought about God and his will for the humans he made for himself out of love. I seek to be as like Jesus as I can be, hoping to grow through my life and contemplation of him in generous love towards all people, in compassion, forgiveness and caring. However banal it may seem, I want to be good as God is good. I see that goodness in Jesus. And yes, I do think it important to worship with my fellow Christians. I notice that Jesus attended the synagogue every Sabbath day and the temple in Jerusalem at the traditional times and seasons. You can’t be a Christian on your own because we are required to do things together. As I personally see it, though other good Christians disagree over this, I have an absolute obligation to obey the command of Jesus to “do this in remembrance of me”, which means sharing in the holy Communion service in Church where possible; for the idea behind this is that we need to be close both to Jesus Christ and to each other and by celebrating this communion together we are as it were bringing Jesus himself into our midst.
-Peter Graham
