The Sacred Import of the Christian Name # 4

The Sacred Import of the Christian Name # 4

"What is it to be a Christian?"

To be a Christian, in the popular and fashionable sense, is no really difficult or excellent thing. It is to be baptized, to profess the Christian religion; to believe, like our neighbors, that Christ is the Messiah, and to attend upon public worship once a week, in some church or another. In this sense a man may be a Christian - and yet be habitually careless about eternal things. He may be a Christian - and yet fall short of the morality of many of the heathen. He may be a Christian - and yet a drunkard, a swearer, or a slave to some vice or other. He may be a Christian - and yet a willful, impenitent offender against God and man. To be a Christian in this sense - is no high character; and, if this be the whole of Christianity, it is very little matter whether the world is Christianized or not.

But is this to be a Christian - in the original and proper sense of the word? No! that is something of a very different and superior kind. To be a Christian indeed - is the highest character and dignity of which the human nature is capable! It is the most excellent thing that ever adorned our world! It is a thing that heaven itself beholds with approbation and delight! 

To be a Christian indeed - is to be like Christ, from whom the name is taken!

To be a Christian indeed - is to be a follower and imitator of Christ!

To be a Christian indeed - is to have Christ's Spirit and temper; and to live as He lived in the world!

To be a Christian is to have those just, exalted, and divine beliefs of God and divine things; and that just and full view of our duty to God and man, which Christ taught. In short, our character and practice, formed upon the sacred model of the gospel. Let me expatiate a little upon this amiable character.

1. To be a Christian - is to depart from iniquity. To this the name obliges us; and without this we have no right to the name. "Let every one who names the name of Christ - depart from iniquity" (2 Timothy 2:19). That is, let him depart from iniquity - or not even dare to take that sacred name. Christ was perfectly free from sin: he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." His followers also shall be perfectly free from sin - in a little time! Before long they will enter into the pure regions of perfect holiness, and will drop all their sins, along with their mortal bodies - into the grave! But this, alas! is not their character in the present state - but the remains of sin still cleave to them. Yet even in the present state, they are laboring after perfection in holiness. Nothing can satisfy them - until they are fully conformed to the image of God's dear Son!

They are hourly conflicting with every temptation, and vigorously resisting every iniquity in its most alluring forms. And, though sin is perpetually struggling for the mastery, and sometimes, in an inadvertent hour, gets an advantage over them - yet, as they are not under the law - but under grace, they are assisted with divine grace, so that no sin has any habitual dominion over them (Romans 6:14).

Hence they are free from the gross vices of the age, and are men of good morals. This is their habitual, universal character; and to pretend to be Christians without this prerequisite, is the greatest absurdity!

What then shall we think of the drunken, swearing, debauched, defrauding, worldly, profligate, profane "Christians", who have overrun the Christian world? Can there be a greater contradiction?

A loyal subject in arms against his sovereign; an ignorant scholar; a sober drunkard, a charitable miser; an honest thief - are not greater absurdities, or more direct contradictions!

To depart from iniquity - is essential to Christianity, and without it there can be no such thing as a Christian! 

There was nothing that Christ was so remote from - as sin! And therefore, for those that indulge themselves in sin - and yet to wear His name - is just as absurd and ridiculous as for a coward to denominate himself a great hero; or an illiterate dunce to call himself a university professor!

Therefore, if you will not renounce iniquity - then renounce the Christian name! You cannot consistently retain both!

~Samuel Davies~

(continued with # 5)