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R edeem er Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

What Is a Biblical Christian? Part One

Selected Scriptures

Introduction to Series
I grew up attending a small church in south central New Jersey called
Community Baptist Church. It was (and still is) a great place. The pastor is a faithful
expositor of God’s word that lives the Christian life with authenticity, and he shepherds
people who are warm and sincere. One of the loveliest members of the church is a
woman named Bette Bates. Mrs. Bates is an elder’s wife with a sweet spirit and a
Christ-like demeanor. For as long as I can remember she has gone out of her way to
make me feel significant.

One evening I was visiting with my mother and she popped a question. “Guess
who’s getting baptized?” she said. I said, “Who?” And she said, “Mrs. Bates.” And
again I said, “Who?” Again she said, “Mrs. Bates.”

I came to find out that the reason why Mrs. Bates was being baptized (again)
was because she came to realize that she really wasn’t a Christian after all. Her
conversion took place under the preaching of her own son. She, for the first time in her
life, had understood the significance of her sinfulness, her wretched state before God,
her total inability to avoid judgment, and the gracious work of Jesus on the cross for
sinners like her.

She had come to realize that up to that point in time she had not trusted in Jesus
Christ for salvation from sin and eternal life with God.

What a shocker! Here we have an elder’s wife, a woman with remarkable

character, a woman with such a gentle, sweet disposition, coming to see that for almost
all of her adult life her claim to Christianity was a sham. Thinking she was right with
God, she had been tragically deceived to the true condition of her soul.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to ask her about her conversion
experience. And among the many elements that she relayed, there is one that I won’t
soon forget. She said that when some members of the church found out that she was
going to be baptized, that she had never truly trusted in Jesus Christ, they became very
upset with her, almost to the point of being angry with her.

Their anger, of course, was not really directed at Mrs. Bates as it was at the
implications of her recent confession. It caused many to take an extremely sober
reassessment of their own souls. “If Bette’s not saved, where does that put me? How
can it be that an upstanding member of our congregation, even an elder’s wife who I

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have known for years, could be without Christ for so long and not know it? How, then,
am I doing?”

What I want to suggest to you is that these questions are not at all poor ones.
They are, in fact, the kinds of questions we need to be asking ourselves regularly so as
to avoid a situation like Mrs. Bates. As the Apostle Paul has said, we need to test
ourselves to see whether we are in the faith; we need to examine ourselves (2
Corinthians 13:5).

Are we Christians or aren’t we? Answering this question is important for all of us
to do. The question may be even more pressing for those of us who have been in the
church for many years. We may be tempted to think that we are right with God simply
because we have been associated with the church, involved with its ministries, served
as its officers, been baptized, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper.

As your shepherd I am unwilling to take for granted my own salvation. Richard

Baxter, the English Puritan, put it this way: “Many a preacher is now in hell, who [has] a
hundred times called upon his hearers to use the utmost care and diligence to escape
it.”1 How much more unwilling then should I be to take yours for granted? I do not want
any of you to stand before the Lord Jesus on the Day of Judgment and say, “‘Lord,
Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in
Your name perform many miracles?’” Only to hear Jesus say, “I never knew you;
DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS” (Matthew 7:22-23).

Simply because you attend a Bible-believing church, and may even have done
so since the church’s humble beginnings in the Cooper’s basement, does not guarantee
that you are a Christian. Just because you are married to an elder, or a deacon, or a
spouse that is totally dedicated to the Lord and his work, does not guarantee that you
are a Christian. Merely because you come from a Christian family, because your
parents love the Lord and are committed to God’s church does not guarantee that you
are a Christian. It is of the utmost importance that we come to understand whether or
not we are Christians. Our eternity depends upon it.

But before we can answer whether or not we are Christians, we need to know
what a Christian is. So we must begin with the Bible; for our beliefs are only legitimately
Christian to the extent that they are truly biblical. We need to answer the question:
“What is a biblical Christian?”

Some of you may be saying to yourselves, “If our beliefs are only legitimately
Christian to the extent that they are truly biblical, isn’t a question like ‘What is a biblical
Christian?’ a trifle redundant? If something can’t be Christian without being biblical,
there is no such thing as an “unbiblical” Christian. Maybe we should just ask, ‘What is a
Christian?’” While this is in one sense true, in another sense it fails to account for the
simple fact that we are living during a time in which not only the culture, but the church
itself is virtually illiterate when it comes to the Bible.

1
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1997 reprint of the 1862
edition) 53.

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Back in 1999, Christianity Today featured an article by Gary M Burge entitled,

“The Greatest Story Never Read,”2 in which he exposed what we may call the rising tide
of biblical illiteracy.

The sheer extent of the ignorance has manifested itself through an exam that has
been administered by Wheaton College for incoming freshman since 1995. Students
who are accepted at Wheaton are both intellectually sharp and passionate about the
things of God. Most of the freshman come from strongly evangelical churches and have
a long history of involvement in the church. Listen to how they did:

“When asked to complete a test in which a series of biblical events must be

placed in order, our students returned surprising results. One-third of the freshman
could not put the following in order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of
Christ, and Pentecost. Half could not sequence: Moses in Egypt, Isaac’s birth, Saul’s
death, and Judah’s exile. One-third could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a list
of New Testament names. When asked to locate the biblical book supplying a given
story, one-third could not find Paul’s travels in Acts, half did not know that the Christmas
story was in Matthew or that the Passover story was in Exodus.”3

It seems, then, that framing the question “What is a biblical Christian?” has
become an essential qualification for a biblically illiterate Christian culture. It doesn’t
matter if we can say that we are Christians if our categories for discussion are not
biblical. For as we have said, if it isn’t biblical it isn’t Christian. So over the next four
weeks we will spend some time answering the question, “What is a biblical Christian?”
in order that we might evaluate the reality or lack thereof of our Christianity.

What Is a Christian?
While we could begin literally anywhere in the Bible and end up with the answer
to our question, for the purposes of our study I thought it would be interesting to spend
some time in the (few) passages that use the term “Christian.” Certainly, if the Bible
addresses the subject more or less directly, it would be important, along with other
considerations, carefully to study such passages.

First, then, turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 4.

This epistle, as you may know, was written to Christians scattered over a fairly
wide geographical region who were suffering under the reign of Nero in the mid 60s
AD/CE. Suffice it to say that it was not exactly pleasant to be a Christian under Nero.
The Roman historian Tacitus reported that in order to fight off the rumors that Nero
himself started the fire of Rome in 64 AD/CE, Nero blamed the Christians and “‘inflicted
the most elaborate tortures on them….Covered in the pelts of wild animals, they were

2
Gary M Burge, August 9, 1999.
3
Burge 45-46.

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torn to death by dogs, or were crucified, or were set on fire as torches when the daylight
had faded.’”4

Peter labors from the very beginning of his letter to connect the sufferings of
Christ with the Christian community cf. 1:2. And this continues throughout the epistle cf.
2:21-24; 3:17-18; 5:10-11. Nowhere is this connection made more explicit than in 4:12-
19:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes
upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you;
but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so
that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are
reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of
God rests on you. Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or
evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not
to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. For it is time for judgment to
begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the
outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? AND IF IT IS WITH
DIFFICULTY THAT THE RIGHTEOUS IS SAVED, WHAT WILL BECOME OF
THE GODLESS MAN AND THE SINNER? Therefore, those also who suffer
according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing
what is right.

Peter’s point is that suffering is an unavoidable feature of the Christian life. If

Christ suffered, and believers are one with Christ, they ought to expect that they too will
suffer. He is also concerned to point out that suffering can also be the result of wicked
and foolish behavior, and so they should be careful to analyze whether or not their
suffering is sin-related or Savior-related. Instead, they should behave like Jesus
(compare 4:19 w/ 2:20, 23).

For the purposes of our study, we will focus our attention on verse 16: but if
anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him
glorify God. The contrast that is being made here is between suffering as the result of
sin and suffering as the result of being a Christian.

The term Christian simply means a Christ-partisan; it refers to a person who is

identified as party to Jesus Christ. It is structurally similar to the term “Herodian” used in
the gospels. In modern parlance, it is roughly equivalent to words like Arminian and
Calvinist. Scholars are divided as to whether or not the name is a self-designation of
the believing community, or is a name given to it by those outside the community—
either as a kind of by-word or as the simple misunderstanding that the term Christ is a
last name. In this text, Peter is using it to refer to members of the believing community.
At the very least, it has become a self-designation.

4
Quoted in Albert A Bell, Jr., Exploring the New Testament World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson
Publishers, 1998), 65.

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So then, a Christian is a person who supports Jesus Christ, this much we know.
But what does that entail? What is characteristic of a person who may be called a
Christian?

For Peter, a Christian is a person who possesses the glorious Spirit of God. How
do we know this? Well, look back up to verse 14; he says, If you are reviled for the
name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests
upon you. Those who are mocked for their identification with Jesus Christ are
considered blessed because they possess the Holy Spirit. As we move to verse 16,
note the language of the name that Peter employs. Read it again: but if anyone
suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify
God. In what name? In the name Christian, in the name of Christ. This person may
praise or glorify God because his or her suffering is the sovereign indication that he or
she possesses the Spirit of God.

Peter makes a connection between the name of Christ and the name of Christian
in this passage. For his purposes, they are virtually synonymous. The first
characteristic of a biblical Christian, then, is that they possess the Spirit of God. In 2
Corinthians 13:5, Paul exhorts the Corinthian Christians to “test [themselves] to see if
[they] are in the faith; [to] examine [themselves].” Like Peter, Paul sets before his
readers the same standard of measure. Listen to the whole of 2 Corinthians 13:5: “Test
yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize
this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”

You will get an “F” on the Christian exam if you fail to possess the Holy Spirit of
God. Without him living in you, you are not a biblical Christian. It is impossible to be a
biblical Christian without the indwelling Spirit. Paul puts it this way in Romans 8:9: “But
if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”

Now if the criterion for being a biblical or true Christian is possession of the Holy
Spirit, then we need to ask how we know whether or not we have him. Apparently, we
can know if he indwells us or else Paul would have used some other criteria, criteria that
could actually be measured. How then can we know that we have received the Spirit?
Peter’s epistle suggests three characteristics.

Three Ways to Know You Have the Spirit

1. You long for heaven (1 Peter 1:3-5): Do you long for the future? Do you long for
a time when you will never sin against God or others? Do you long for the new
heaven and the new earth? So many of us are too earthly-minded. Edwards, in
a sermon called “The Christian Pilgrim; or The True Christian Life as a Journey
Towards Heaven,” is wonderful in this regard:

God is the highest good...and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness
with which our hearts can be satisfied.—To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is
infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and
mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but
shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered
beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain.

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These are but drops; but God is the ocean.—Therefore it becomes us to spend
this life only as a journey towards heaven…Why should we labour [sic] for, or set
our hearts on, anything else, but that which is our proper end, and true
happiness?5

Elizabeth Prentiss, the youngest daughter of one of the great revival preachers of
the 19th century, Edward Payson, possessed this characteristic in large measure.
Listen to the following excerpt from her journal:

As we rode along and I saw the grain ripe for the harvest, I said to myself
“God gathers in His harvest as soon as it is ripe, and if I devote myself to Him
and pray much and turn entirely from the world I shall ripen, and so the sooner
get where I am all the time yearning and longing to go!” …This world seems less
and less homelike every day I live. The more I pray and meditate on heaven and
my Savior and saints who have crossed the flood, the stronger grows my desire
to be bidden to depart hence and go up to that sinless, blessed abode. Not that I
forget my comforts, my mercies here; they are manifold; I know they are. But
Christ appears so precious; sin so dreadful! so dreadful!6

See a longing for heaven is the same time a disgust of sin. One of the most
wonderful truths about finally being with Christ either when we die or finally and fully at
the restoration of all things, is that we will no longer grieve the one we love so much.
We will live only to please him. If this doesn’t thrill your heart, then you need to ask
whether or not you are a biblical Christian.

2. You last through your trials (1 Peter 1:6-7): We have already seen the
connection between Christianity and trials in chapter 4. Paul says essentially the
same thing in Philippians 1:29: “For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake,
not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”

This does not mean that you must have suffered to the extent that the Christians
under Nero suffered. Your persecution may have been (no doubt) milder than that. But
what is not in doubt is that biblical Christians suffer.

At the same time, it i not simply that the presence of suffering confirms one’s
genuine claim to biblical Christianity. It is that the trial itself functions to prove the
genuineness of the faith. Just as gold is tried in the fire such that the dross rises to the
top, so the biblical Christian is distinguished from the non-Christian under the fires of
persecution and affliction. Job, of course, is the supreme example. After having lost all
his children, all his possessions, and after having been afflicted from head to toe with
boils, he refused to curse God and die. What he said at first he could have said at last:
“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job
1:21).

5
Jonathan Edwards, The Complete Works, Vol 2 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1998 reprint of the
1834 edition) 244.
6
George Lewis Prentiss, More Love to Thee: The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss (Amityville,
NY: Calvary Press, 1994 photolithograph of the 1882 edition) 154.

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3. You love the Lord Jesus (1 Peter 1:8-9): While it is true that true love for God
cannot be reduced to a feeling, it would be wrong to conclude that love for God is
emotionless. This is why Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 13:3 that “if [he gives] all
[his] possessions to feed the poor, and if [he delivers his] body to be burned, but
do not have love, it profits [him] nothing.” Here we have a selfless act—giving all
he has to feed the poor—devoid of love (“but do not have love”).

Clearly, then love isn’t only selfless acts, it includes emotions, or affections. So
love for Christ will consist not only in obedience to his commands (“If you love me, you’ll
obey me”), but also in affection for his person. Jonathan Edwards addresses this issue
as well in his famous “Treatise on Religious Affections.” He is thoroughly biblical in his
conclusions (and far more eloquent than I am). Listen: “That religion which God
requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us
but a little above a state of indifference: God, in His word, greatly insists upon it, that we
be in good earnest, ‘fervent in spirit,’ and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion.”7

So then, in order to be a biblical Christian, you must love Jesus. Can you say
this: I love Jesus? Or do you choke on your words, aware, deep down, of your
insincerity?

These characteristics, longing for heaven, lasting through trials, and loving the
Lord Jesus, we have derived from 1 Peter alone. If we were to work our way through
the NT, we would see many other characteristics as well. Let me give you just three
more:

1. You accept the truth of God’s word (1 Corinthians 2:14-15): “But a natural man
does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him,
and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he
who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man.” The
person who is spiritual, that is, the person who possesses the spirit puts him- or
herself in the equation, so to speak. They know that it is real.

2. You evidence the fruit of the Spirit—all of it (Galatians 5:22-23): “But the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, [and] self-control.” These are the benefits of the possession of the
Holy Spirit, and as such, unlike spiritual gifts, are the property of every biblical
Christian.

3. You are compelled from within for fellowship with God (Galatians 4:6): “And
because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,
crying, "Abba! Father!" For the biblical Christian there is an innate desire (like a
baby for its mother) to be intimate with God. If you are claiming to be a Christian
and have no desire to be alone with God, you can’t be one of his kids.

Conclusion

7
Edwards, Vol 1, 234.

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So then, what is a biblical Christian? For Peter, a Christian is one who suffers for
in the name of Jesus and as a result of his or her perseverance manifests his or her
possession of the glorious Spirit of God. If then, you do not possess the Spirit. And to
borrow from Paul—if you fail the test, then you cannot possibly be a biblical Christian.

The wonderful thing about possessing the Spirit is that he produces in us very
tangible, measurable characteristics. If you do not long for heaven (even when you
aren’t ill or in pain), if you have never suffered for Christ and don’t last through your
trials, if you do not love the Lord Jesus, if you do not believe the Bible, if you do not
evidence (to some degree) all of the fruit of the Spirit, if you are not compelled from
within for fellowship with God, then you do not possess the Spirit, and you are not a
Christian.

Please take this admonition seriously. Do not take your salvation for granted.
Your eternity hangs in the balance. Our feeble bodies are just one accident away from
certain death—no matter how healthy or cautious we may be. Do not delay in having
your dealings with God. Do not rest until you know you are a biblical Christian.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
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What Is a Biblical Christian? Part One © 2002 by R W Glenn