What is Christianity according to the Bible?

What is Christianity? It is the result of the activity of God's love in a world of sinners, towards those who are hopelessly lost and ruined in themselves. The whole world was subject to the just judgment of God, ere the day of Pentecost dawned with its new wonders of divine beneficence and grace. "Now is the judgment of this world" were the words of Jesus as the cross rose to His view. Jew and Gentile there united, under Satan, the prince and god of this world, to reject, and crucify, and slay the Heir of all things, the Son of God, the Lord of glory! Could human wickedness proceed further? Could it rise to a greater height? Not only had the Jews utterly broken their law, and the Gentiles abused the power entrusted to them of God, and gone into all the abominations detailed in Rom. 1, but when Christ came, the Messiah of the Jews, and a light to lighten the Gentiles, Jews and Gentiles conspired to put Him to death. As to both, it was thus made manifest that "this is the condemnation, that light had come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." This being the world's condition, condemned, under judgment, for rejecting and crucifying the Son of God, why was not judgment executed at once? Ah! there were depths of compassion and grace which God had in store, and which Pentecost was to disclose. What were these? That God had raised up His Son Jesus, and exalted Him to His own right hand, and that, guilty and condemned and hopelessly undone as all men were, all who believed on the name of Jesus should receive remission of sins. The blood of Christ shed by man on earth had availed for man in heaven, and through it God now made Himself known as the merciful yet just justifier of the guiltiest who believed in Jesus.

Such is Christianity. Existing by virtue of the death, and resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, it assumes that man is wicked and condemned, and the world under judgment for the murder of God's Son; but it proclaims God as the Pardoner, instead of the Avenger, of man's sin — as the Justifier, instead of the Condemner, of any one, of every one, who believes in Jesus! This is Christianity. Abounding grace — pardoning mercy — infinite, unfathomable love; and all these exercised holily and righteously through the sacrifice of Jesus, in the complete, free, everlasting justification of all who believe in Him: all, I say, whatever their country, character, or condition might be. All had sinned, all were lost, all had come short of the glory of God. To all did the gospel, did Christianity, proclaim this free gift of righteousness, through the blood of Jesus, to any one anywhere who, through grace, believed in Him!

Here we have unfolded before our eyes some of the glories of true, practical, vital Christianity, in striking contrast with all the barren and dreary forms of carnal and worldly religiousness. Christian life does not consist in the observance of certain rules, commandments or traditions of men. It is a divine reality. It is Christ in the heart, and Christ reproduced in the daily life, by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is the new man, formed on the model of Christ Himself, and displaying itself in all the most minute details of our daily history, in the family, in the business, in all our intercourse with our fellow men, in our temper, spirit, style, deportment, all. It is not a matter of mere profession, or of dogma, or of opinion, or of sentiment; it is an unmistakable, living reality. It is the kingdom of God, set up in the heart, asserting its blessed sway over the whole moral being, and shedding its genial influence upon the entire sphere in which we are called to move, from day to day. It is the Christian walking in the blessed footsteps of Him who went about doing good; meeting, so far as in him lies, every form of human need; living not for himself but for others; finding his delight in serving and giving; ready to soothe and sympathise wherever he finds a crushed spirit or a bereaved and desolate heart.

This is true Christianity. It is not flesh turned religious and leading a pious life. It is not unrenewed, fallen, ruined nature trying to recover itself by rites and ceremonies, prayers, alms and vigils. It is not the old man turning from “wicked works” to “dead works,” exchanging the beer parlor, the theatre, the gaming table and the race course, for the monastery, the pew, the meeting house or the lecture hall. No reader, it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and Christ reproduced in your daily life by the powerful ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

This is true Christianity. It is a very real thing. It is not a matter of holding certain doctrines; it is not the mere subscription to a creed; Christianity is a vital thing. It is the parting company with all that a man is in the flesh, good and bad, and the partaking of the moral characteristics of Christ. It is “Christ lives in me.”

This, then, is what our Lord Jesus brings before us — God, as He knows Him; God manifesting Himself in two ways. First of all, He is the Father; not God in His abstract majesty as such; not Jehovah in government of a people, thus remaining hidden away in clouds and veils, so that He could not be known intimately, only approached dimly and distantly. So it had been, and it was Judaism. But a change was near; which Jesus here announces. Christianity is the ineffable love of God that comes down and seeks worshippers who are by grace made His children, not only bringing them out of their vileness, but at once calling them to Himself, as Father. For it is no question of gradual attainment, a sort of process of purification, either on earth or in heaven, or in some invisible state of the dead. The blessedness of the gospel is, that it shines from heaven and meets souls on the earth, putting them while here below through the cross into relationship with heaven, yea with God Himself. This is Christianity; anything short of it is not our revealed portion, though short of it there may be many elements of truth. There are none that know and love Christ at all who have not a measure of the truth. And there are those that preach not a little that is unsound, with a very small measure of the gospel. Does it not delight us that they preach Christ (even though there be sad drawbacks), and that God uses it? What a mercy that He does not limit His blessing to such as teach Christ fully, that His mercy is with all sorts of preaching and preachers, even such as are much mixed up with the world! Nevertheless there is something of Christ about them, and God can and does use this. Are we jealous of it? Do you not like God to save people, in a Roman Catholic chapel, or anywhere else?

A living, risen Christ—that is the starting-post of vital Christianity! Christ risen from the dead, having annulled the power of death and the grave, having broken the power of Satan and made atonement for sin—that is its mighty foundation!

What mortal tongue can unfold the preciousness of all this? It is not living by rules and regulations. It is not pursuing a dead round of duties. It is not subscribing to certain dogmas of religious belief. No; it is union with Christ and the manifestation of Christ. This we repeat and reiterate and would impress upon the reader. This and nothing less, nothing different, is true, genuine, living Christianity. Let him see that he possesses it, for if not, he is dead in trespasses and sins, he is far from God and far from the kingdom of God. But if he has been led to believe on the name of the only begotten Son of God, if as a consciously ruined and guilty sinner he has fled for refuge to the blood of the cross, then Christ is his life, and it should be his one unvarying object, day by day, to study his model, to fix his eye on the headline and aim at coming as near to that as possible. This is the true secret of all practical godliness and sanctification. This alone constitutes a living Christianity. It stands in vivid contrast with what is commonly called “a religious life” which, alas! very often resolves itself into a mere dead routine, a rigid adherence to lifeless forms, a barren ritualism which, far from exhibiting anything of the freshness and reality of the new man in Christ, is a distortion of nature itself.

Yes; this is the point; if we would only look them out. It is easy for us to close our eyes to such things, to turn away from — to "forget" that there are — such things always within reach of us. We can sit in our easy chair, and speculate about truth, doctrines, and the letter of scripture; we can discuss the theories of Christianity, and split hairs about prophecy and dispensational truth, and, all the while, be shamefully failing in the discharge of our grand responsibility as Christians. We are in imminent danger of forgetting that Christianity is a living reality. It is not a set of dogmas, a number of principles strung together on a thread of systematized divinity, which unconverted people can have at their fingers' ends. Neither is it a set of ordinances to be gone through, in dreary formality, by lifeless, heartless professors. No; it is life — life eternal — life implanted by the Holy Ghost, and expressing itself in those two lovely forms on which we have been dwelling, namely, praise to God and doing good to man. Such was the life of Jesus when He trod this earth of ours. He lived in the atmosphere of praise; and He went about doing good.

It was not long, alas! before the outward profession of Christ became separated from true faith in Him in the great mass who were recognised as Christians in the world, and in practice they became anything but followers of Christ, as both scripture and history show. To learn what Christianity is according to God, we must turn, not to the great professing body, but to the scriptures, which testify clearly of the declension which was even then begun.

Christianity then, I repeat in closing, is a matter of the first day of the week; the empty tomb; the risen and ascended Christ; the new relationship; the new revelation — the Father; the new life; the new Centre; the new Head; the commission of grace and the exercise of holy discipline. May we all seek that available grace which will enable us to enter into the practical good of these blessed things, under the drawing power of Christ's irresistible charm.