It’s impossible to be a Christian and not clothe ourselves with Christ (Romans 13:14). Many call themselves Christians, but few choose to be “buried” in Christ (Romans 6:4) by leaning into what it means to deny ourselves the way Jesus commands us to (Matthew 16:24). His blood cleanses our conscience of our sins and washes them away by our obedience in baptism (1 Peter 3:21), but His blood has no bearing in us without faith in the truth of His work on the cross. Without faith, we cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6), and without His truth in our hearts (John 17:17), calling ourselves Christian is no more than a label.

RADICAL CHANGE, FRUITS, & SPIRITUAL INTIMACY

But being a Christian is not a label; it’s our identity. Wearing Christ like a t-shirt is what makes Christianity religious; wearing Christ as our identity is what causes Christianity to be the description of our God-given purpose for existing. That is to say: to be Christian is to realize we exist to know God; to give Him glory in our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Either we ask Jesus to penetrate our soul, or a radical change in our hearts will never take place—and what, then, is the purpose of becoming a fake Christian? Fake Christians don’t inherit anything in God’s Kingdom. Truth be told, fake Christians (people who claim to believe in Jesus without bearing any fruit) don’t really know God. They may know of God, but that is not the same as knowing God. The difference is that fake Christians misunderstand what it means to desire a spiritually rich, intimate relationship with God through Christ that enables their lives to change, beginning at the level of the root of the soul. We know that this change is real by how it bears the fruits of the spirit; fruits that display our desire for what God wants in and through us, no longer adhering to fleshly, carnal desires for what the world offers.

In other words, we can’t fake wanting God and still pursue drunkenness, sexual immorality, money and power as idols; we cannot desire to have more and be more in this world if our genuine focus is to prepare for the eternal Kingdom to come.

CONVICTED TO LIVE HOLY AND RIGHTEOUSLY

Everything begins in the heart. Without faith, nothing Jesus accomplished does anything for our lives.

Many of us become Christians because we fear the idea of hell, but not because we want to know God. Christianity isn’t a “get out of hell free” card. If we don’t or won’t learn to die to ourselves (which must happen to bear the fruits of the spirit), we’ll never make it into God’s Kingdom because our faith is dead (James 2:26). Being Christian looks like putting into practice the action of sacrificing the ways of the world in order to be salt of the earth that looks like Christ’s love. By faith, we are convicted through the Holy Spirit to be pure, righteous, holy, and grounded by God’s Word (Ephesians 1:4). There is no, ‘God is love, so we can live based on our own subjective definition of goodness and still be Christian’: that isn’t biblical doctrine; that is man-made ideology.

 LEGACY OF OBEDIENCE, FEAR OF GOD, AND TRUST

Faith in Jesus has survived by people who have gone to great lengths digging deep into their soul fighting to understand how to die to their flesh in order to live for Christ, based on God’s Word. Many men and women have gone to their grave fighting with themselves to be more pure and selfless. They left behind a legacy of their introspection on Christ’s impact on their lives; the reflections of a healthy, intimate relationship with God in their prayer closet. In their stead was the evidence of a soul nourished by the Holy Spirit-led desire to be like Christ despite the temptation to act like the Devil, and the end result of their journey was the picture of a painfully flawed human being capable of maturing into an adult genuinely willing to embrace Christ’s truth during life’s hardest, grittiest moments. They trusted in God’s character rather than relying on emotions and human platitudes to direct how they responded to the suffering God allowed them to endure for the purpose of knowing Him and realizing His glory.

Because of obedient men and women who knew and loved God, who were able to share that love with others, Christianity has survived by the movement of the Holy Spirit in such people who adhered to the Bible, not to societal norms, cultural schisms, or religious fallacies.

GOD-GIVEN HARDSHIP IN PREPARATION FOR BLESSINGS

Today, however, many of our hearts still remain stubborn, our minds perplexed at life’s disturbances without keeping an open mind to the reality of interference from the spiritual realm (Ephesians 6:12). Coupled with that is how we read the Bible without understanding more than the idea that “God is love,” choosing to believe what we like and shun the rest. Disparagingly, we live only as though we expect blessing after blessing even when we don’t put God first in life. To the detriment of our own spiritual walk, we often misconstrue the purpose of a period of hardship where God allows suffering in order to mature us for a bigger blessing. Either we blame God for allowing what He knows we need in order to receive something better that He wants for us, or, we deny Him and run away because we aren’t willing to understand how a loving Father could discipline and prune His child to prepare them to receive what they aren’t yet ready for (John 15:2).

God knows our hearts better than we do, and He doesn’t want us to ruin our blessings, nor does He want us to regret spoiling our gifts by a lack of appreciation and gratitude. And yet, our attitude and heart posture keep us from learning to mature through wilderness periods to see that the light shining into the darkness is actually Christ encouraging us to remain steadfast and to trust in Him, not our circumstances (Habakkuk 1:5).

INTROSPECTIONS ON BAPTISM

Do we think on these moments before we’re baptized? Does the idea of putting on Christ and denying ourselves cause us relief, or panic? Is the act of being baptized beautiful because of the opportunity God gives us to respond to His gift of salvation through His Son, or do we just consider getting wet in public to be honorable?

Do we die to ourselves when we choose baptism, or are we more focused on who is seeing us immersed? Without faith, baptism is meaningless; the water is literally just water. But with faith, the water washes us clean by the power of Jesus’ blood shed on the cross. And just as He died on the cross and was buried afterwards in order to rise again, so we must deny ourselves who we’ve learned we are in this world, become crucified to our sins, and rise again by faith that Jesus is making us new in spirit. This act of obedience—baptism—is directly related to putting on Christ, and not insisting on keeping to the sinful ways of this world. Should we misunderstand baptism, we may just as well be misunderstanding the choice to die to ourselves, and consequently we will not shed the skin of our earthly lives and we will ultimately wear a lie that is the Christian “t-shirt”, but not the identity of Christ Himself, in us.

A TERRIFYING REALITY BETWEEN BAPTISM AND FAITH

We will be lukewarm, confident in our salvation, and yet spiritually dead without realizing it. This is terrifying. Every person who feels compelled to believe in Jesus as Lord should dig as deeply as possible into what that means for them. Faith isn’t the same as believing we can live in sin and be saved. Furthermore, claiming Christ as our identity but not being baptized does not signal we’ve accepted God’s gift, and we are not saved. Being baptized but not believing that it means we have accepted death to our sin and life to our soul, may signal for us to live the way we want to without considering that Jesus is calling us away from certain ways of life we didn’t think would be displeasing to the Lord. Some of us even let our spiritual naivety drive us as far as separating us from Him under the guise of thinking He is okay with sin because “He is love”. Don’t be deceived.

We’d only know by reading the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit, or having that information shared by an obedient Christ-follower willing to lead someone to Christ in truth and conviction.

NOT AN OPTION, NOT JUST AN EXPRESSION: A COMMAND

That is what Christianity is all about; this is why baptism is actually not just an expression of faith, but an act of obedience out of gratitude: it’s our acceptance of what God’s done for us in Christ, and it’s our agreement to leave sin behind and to follow Jesus’ footsteps with our own. Baptism is not an option, but a command, just like denying ourselves is commanded of us after we repent and accept that our sin has been both covered and forgotten by a God who responds faithfully with forgiveness to those who turn away from their old lives (1 John 1:19).

How can we say we’ve “put on Christ” when we haven’t decided to die to ourselves? This is a process, but it must begin with faith, continue by repentance, and be finished (as it was finished with Jesus’ death on the cross (John 19:28-30)) with our baptism as we are buried in Him to rise again; reborn.

A COMPLETE CHANGE OF IDENTITY

The faith behind our baptism is no more visible than our decision to choose Jesus over every other false god in the world. We make that decision spontaneously, and we get baptized just as urgently; to remove our sins and live for Christ as soon as the choice is made. If Jesus had waited until it was too late to lay His life as our atonement, or if He had chosen to have angels take Him off the cross—we wouldn’t have a risen Savior to be saved by! So why do some wait to get baptized as though His death was such a light matter? No other God was raised from the dead to grant us salvation. How can we take it lightly to live as though Christianity were only a label, and not a complete change of identity? We are meant to be unrecognizable in Christ because we are no longer ours, but His!

THE HOLY SPIRIT AT WORK IN US FOR NONBELIEVERS

We cannot take this matter lightly, which is why I am writing this article on this very topic. If we take faith lightly, we’ll preach it lightly. If we preach it lightly, others will learn to take it lightly. If others take putting on Christ lightly, how will they respond to adversity when (not if) it strikes? How will they respond to people who ask for money on the sides of the street, or to people who hate them when they say they’re Christian? If we take faith lightly, how passionate will we ever be about being with Jesus for eternity? Our faith could never become bold enough to call out sin with both love and conviction; our lives would never be convicting enough for any nonbeliever to take seriously the inspiration of the Holy Spirit at work in us.

SERIOUS THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRIST-FOLLOWER

As a Christ-follower and a writer, I’ve never felt compelled to write about Christianity passively. I praise God for the intensity through which He inspires me to write about topics such as taking off the world in us and putting on Christ. This is such an important subject in today’s world with false prophets, apostates, and people who preach the Word of God at others as though the Holy Spirit-influenced book was written to condemn and not to convict, instruct, and refine (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We can never be the Christ-followers we are called to be if we don’t take seriously how faith in Jesus is meant to change us for the better. We are here to know God and give Him glory through the way we live, and our lives are very short (James 4:14). If we aren’t aiming to improve the way we live by aiming higher morally, righteously, and biblically, how can we say we want to please God? How can we live our lives humbly if we don’t seek His will and submit to His authority?

PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE

This article was written for those of us who may need more refining in the area of becoming more like Christ and taking it seriously to ask God to help us to know what parts of ourselves needs to be removed through repentance and grace. Perhaps fasting may even be necessary. In any case, I pray this article can help each of us understand our relationship to God a little more clearly, that our command to be in Christ has never been so important and relevant. Hopefully, this challenges us all to think deeply about our faith, and it encourages us to take the actions necessary to be disciplined in our walk with Christ.

While there is still breath in our lungs, there is still time to repent, to turn away from sin, and to put on Christ through obedience by faith. May the Lord of Heaven’s Armies be with you, wherever you are on this rock called Earth!

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