“CHRISTIANITY?” . . . WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

Ours is a day when all truth is viewed as subjective. That is, across the board, relative to any issue or thing, truth is whatever people prefer it to be or decide that it is; and this can change from day to day depending on a person’s feelings or what expediency may dictate. This attitude and approach explains and drives most, and in many cases all, of the contemporary, woke church mentality and scene today. And, in all fairness, this same attitude and approach to truth has found its way into churches where people consider themselves to be conservative, fundamental, traditional etc. Consequently, many professed Christians, and no doubt millions of non-Christians, are confused as to what Christianity is—what is meant by the term. We live in a time when word-meanings and terms are deliberately and diabolically under assault to serve the purposes of the great enemy of souls who has the distinction of being the “author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33).

Let me identify what I am referring to when and wherever I use the term “Christianity.” I am referring to two things that are in existence simultaneously. The first of these is salvation; the positional sanctification that exists where people, by and within the context of God’s grace, have acknowledged themselves as being spiritually “dead in trespasses and sin, have exercised “repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” and been saved and sealed eternally as a child of God (Eph. 2:1, 8-10; Acts 20:21; Eph. 1:12-14). The second simultaneously occurring thing is progressive sanctification; that which exists wherever saved people are consistently demonstrating their desire to be “conformed to the image of Christ” in terms of His mind and His manner of life (Rom. 8:29; Phil. 2:5; 1 Pet. 2:1; Tit. 2:11-15).

Christianity, by definition is not represented by those who, though believers, have no problem being selectively “conformed to this world.” These are those who “shall be saved, yet so as by fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). Second Timothy 2:19 says, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” But they, rather than depart from the iniquity of worldliness and carnality, choose instead to defend, argue and advocate for it. They love the world (James 2:4; 1 John 2:15-17), and the more worldliness they see in the family of God or in a church, the better they like it and the more comfortable, superior and triumphant they feel. They brand anyone or anything that opposes them as being “legalistic.”

The very concept of Christianity, as defined in the Bible and described above is suffering from the false teaching, the “you have your truth and I have my truth” mentality and the willful ignorance that is epidemic in churches today. Thank God for those who exemplify real Christianity; those who are the “salt of the earth,” and who are “an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). But it’s getting harder and harder to find real Christianity; someone has suggested that a bloodhound with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount held under its nose to help him sniff it out would have a hard time doing it. I think they might be right.