WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHRISTIAN?
By Rev. J. B. Silcox
WHAT is it to be a Christian? Is it to believe some particular doctrine? Is it to sign a creed? Is it to join a church? Is it to conform to a ceremony? Is it to observe an ordinance? A man can do all this and not be within astronomic distance of Christianity. It is written, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” We bear the name of Jesus; the real question is, Do we possess the Spirit of Jesus? Are we modeling our life after His life? Have we made the principles of His life the principles of our life? To be a Christian is to duplicate the character of Jesus in our own. It is to live for the same end that He lived for. His sacrifice on the cross is not merely an object of pious meditation. It is rather the revelation of a law of life. To be a Christian is to live for men as Jesus lived for men. It is to be unselfishly consecrated to the service of humanity. We are in the world for the same purpose that Jesus was in it. We are in it to save it. “Father, as Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” The mission of Jesus is to be our mission. According to our ability and opportunity, we are as responsible for the world’s redemption as Jesus was. We have no more right to carry on our business for personal profit than Jesus had to live His life on earth for personal profit. You can not think of Jesus living in a city indifferent to the physical and moral conditions of the people. It is as obligatory on us to better the physical and moral conditions of mankind as it was on Jesus. To be a Christian is to duplicate Jesus in service to humanity. When Jesus was on earth there gathered about Him all sorts of folks. He did not belong to any set or sect. Those high up and those low down found in Him a genial friend and helpful brother. He was the meeting-place of the rich and poor, the learned and the illiterate. He manifested personal sympathy with and loving interest in all who came. He did not seem to notice the social and racial differences that separated man. He welcomed the wealthy nobleman and the impoverished prodigal with equal cordiality. Jesus loved His kind. He called Himself the Son of man. He was not ashamed to call men His brethren. He loved men, not because of their wealth, or culture, or position, but because they were men, men made in the image of God, His Father. His sympathies went out in every direction. He looked on every man as His brother, on every woman as His sister. He fraternized with everybody. He brothered and mothered all kinds of folks. Jesus went down to the lowest levels of life. He got down under the submerged. He came into this world not through the golden portals of wealth, but in the swaddling-clothes of poverty. He came in by the manger. He went out by the cross. He lived a poor man among poor men. He knew by experience what the limitations and sufferings of the poor were. He had not where to lay His head. When He died He was buried in a borrowed tomb. Jesus ran through the whole gamut of human experience—from a manger on earth to a mansion in heaven, from a convict’s scaffold to a King’s throne, from the weakness of a babe to the omnipotence of a God. He was tempted in all points as we are. He is able to sympathize with humanity in every experience. What I ask you to remember about His divinely human life is, He gave Himself to men and for men. He consecrated all He had and was to the betterment of the race. He said, “I sanctify Myself; I set Myself apart to this work, the salvation and elevation of humanity.” Other men live for wealth, for position, for pleasure; Jesus lived for humanity. He gave His strength to the weak, His wisdom to the ignorant, His purity to the polluted, His refinement to the rude. His whole life, from Bethlehem’s manger to Bethany’s mount, declares that He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He who was all nobleness and refinement; He in whom were all the treasures of wisdom and poetry and art; He who was immeasurably above the highest of the high; He who was God manifest in the flesh—joined Himself to humanity, poured Himself into humanity, mingled familiarly with the ignorant and degraded, showed friendship to outcasts and harlots, ate with publicans and sinners—did it from choice, did it out of genuine sympathy, did it that He might lift humanity to higher levels, even to the level of His own transcendently beautiful life. He brought all the riches of His intellectual nature, all the refinement of His moral nature, all the inspiration of His spiritual nature, all the fulness of His divine nature, to bear on the thought and life and character of the lowest, that He might redeem them from the blighting curse of sin and elevate them to the glory of regenerated spiritual manhood. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of service.