Something Tangible

I had a friend ask me the other day what I would consider to be tangible evidence that a person is a Christian. This question intrigues me on many different levels. In order to answer it, though, we have to ask: What does it mean to be a Christian?

I've started reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and it is an amazing book. I'd already read Life Together by Bonhoeffer and was blown away by his insights, but the first two chapters of this book are astonishingly profound. The first chapter is entitled Costly Grace. Bonhoeffer proposes that much of Western Christianity has bought into a doctrine of "cheap grace." In other words: I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior and I will go to heaven when I die. Then end. There is no need for me to respond in any way except to say that I believe. It's cheap as free, as StrongBad would say. Thus, being a Christian under cheap grace requires only that I make a profession of belief.

Costly grace, on the other hand, affects every aspect of my life. Jesus gave everything for me. Everything. And then He turns and invites me to come follow Him. Now it is my turn to give up everything. I have to submit everything to Him and live actively following Him in every single aspect and relationship of my life. And it costs me something. Just as it cost God something. Being a Christian under costly grace requires my life, my soul, my all.

Bonhoeffer writes:

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.

I recently made a decision to pursue membership at my church (finally!). In order to do that, I had to take a class on what my church believes about various issues. As part of the class, they asked which of the following words each person in the class most identified with: explore, transform, connect, celebrate, healthy, real, mission. The words I really identified with were "real" and "transform." I've heard the phrase "real transformation" used at my church before, and I think that's the key.

If you read Jesus' sermon on the mount carefully, taking every word He says at face value, it's a revolutionary piece of doctrine. The Gospel story is world-shattering. Life-shattering. To me, becoming and living as a Christian means living a life of real transformation. If you are exactly the same person spiritually that you were when you became a Christian, something is wrong. Peter writes: "like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation." God wants us to grow. I wrote a little while ago about how He is never content to let us stay in one place and stagnate. Because "we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory..." (II Corinthians 3:18a)

Being a Christian is more than just checking a box on your life's to-do list. It's more than a "Get out of Hell free" card. Being a Christian is costly. It costs everything. It requires you to give up your self. Every part of it. You don't get to keep anything. But the amazing reward of giving up your self, giving up your rights, giving up who you are to God, is that He begins to break you free from your past. He begins to teach you new lessons about the present. You have the assurance that He holds the future in His hands. And as you grow in Him, He begins to transform you from the broken wreck of a person that you are into the beautiful, healthy person He created you to be. He doesn't change you into someone else. He just reveals more of who you truly are under all the junk.

We will, of course, never be perfect on this earth, but to me, tangible evidence of being a Christian is when a person experiences real transformation in his or her life. When relationships are healed, and old wounds are healed, and patterns of sin are broken. You may only be able to take one small step at a time down the path to which God has called you, yet every step you take generates growth and transformation that will affect the lives of everyone around you. More importantly, every tiny step you take will bring you a little bit closer to God and to being one with Him, just as Jesus is one with the Father.