Who (or What) Is a Christian?

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pastor J.D. answers a question about what it really means to be a Christian.

Show Notes:

* Everyone has a different assumption of what it means to be a Christian. In the Western world, a lot of people have the assumption that if you’re not a Jew, not a Muslim, and not an atheist, you must be a Christian.
* Some people think it means a certain amount of “religiosity”—a certain amount of church attendance, a desire to live by the Golden Rule, to do good to others, etc. The problem there is, “how much is enough?” At what point do you become good enough to be a Christian?
* There are two defining marks of a Christian to point out:

* First, a Christian is born again. To be born again means that you’ve come to a point where you recognize that your sin has separated you from God and there’s nothing you can do that would ever make you good enough to be accepted by God. Then Jesus, in your place, lived a life you were supposed to live, died a death you were condemned to die, and was then resurrected from the dead. He wants to take away the penalty of your sin by applying his death on the cross to your account and put the new life of his Spirit into you.
* Second, a Christian is a disciple of Jesus—which means you follow him, do what he did, live like he did, and obey his commandments. You devote your life to him. That's what it means to make him Lord of your life.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, which means we should live our lives as disciple-making disciples.

Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question!

As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast!

Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome, everybody to Ask Me Anything.
0:19.3	My name is Matt Love.
0:20.3	I'm here with Pastor J.D. Greer, and we have a really basic question, but I think sometimes it's good to come back to basics, right?
0:29.2	And just kind of talk about some of these things that maybe we assume we know the answer to.
0:33.3	But just to really remind us of some of these basic realities.
0:36.2	So, J.D., the question today is who or what is a Christian?
0:41.7	Yeah, actually, I do get that question quite a bit.
0:45.2	A lot of times it happens, I guess, on airplanes or in coffee shops,
0:48.4	or at least you find people with a different assumption.
0:52.2	Here in the Western world, in the United States, there's the
0:55.0	assumption that if you're not a Jew, not a Mosul, not an atheist, then, well, you must be a Christian.
0:59.6	And it just means that culturally you align with a certain set of beliefs or come from something.
1:03.6	Obviously, that's not what we mean. Some people think it means just a certain level of religiosity,
1:19.2	a certain amount of church attendance, a desire to do good and live by the golden rule, the Ten Commandments, a sermon on the Mount, something like that.
1:28.4	You know, that's not what a Christian is either. I guess the inherent problem there is always asking, like, you know, how much is enough?
1:33.1	At what point do you go from being just a, you know, to being a real Christian?
1:35.7	The Bible has a very clear answer on that.
1:42.7	I think what's instructive is that the Bible never uses really the term Christian the way that we do.
1:47.1	What it uses is the word disciple. The word disciple occurs 281 times in the New Testament, the word Christian, just a, I mean, two or three
1:53.2	times. And the times that it's given, it's given about believers, you know, from somebody else.
2:00.4	And you say, well, you know, who cares? What's
2:02.2	disciple, Christian? I mean, you know, it kind of means the same thing. Well, what's happened is
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from J.D. Greear, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of J.D. Greear and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.