The Authentic Christian

The runners crouched. The Korean starter looked over the field and slowly called “Set”. Then the gun. The runners exploded from the blocks. It was a fair start. The men’s 100 meter dash - the centerpiece of the Olympics - was underway. It was a race to decide the world’s fastest human. People around the world had been eagerly awaiting the confrontation between two men; Ben Johnson of Canada and Carl Lewis of the United States. Bitter rivals, these two had met before and the results were always spectacular. Two billion people around the globe crowded in front of their television screens to watch 10 seconds of history in the making.

In lane 6, Johnson came out of his crouch like a rocket. He surged into the lead. The rest of the runners felt his power and they knew they had to catch him. Over in lane 3, Carl Lewis, who was never a great starter, knew he would need to accelerate all the way down the track if he were to win. But Johnson ran like a man possessed. By 50 meters, he was a meter ahead of the pack; by 80 meters, he was two. He was untouchable. He crossed the finish line with his fist triumphantly raised. He had broken the world record and run the 100 in 9.79 sec., something no one had ever done before.

But it was all a sham. Two days later, Johnson was stripped of his gold medal and sent home in disgrace. He had tested positive for steroids. It was the drug that had given him his superhuman speed. His unbelievable performance was just that - unbelievable, because it had come out of a bottle. It was not real. It was not authentic.

We live in a day when the authentic is in short supply. We’re no longer sure what is real anymore. We watch two presidential candidates carefully cultivate image. They and their handlers have discovered that the voters react more to style than substance. But we come away asking the troubling question: “Who is the real Mike Dukakis? Who is the real George Bush?”

That question comes down hard on the church. It always has and it always will. “Who is the real Christian?” people ask. And they have a right to ask it. If we claim to have the answers to life, if we claim to know the truth, we had better be prepared to prove that we do by the way that we live. We’d better be real. We’d better be authentic.

That is exactly what the book of 1 John is all about: Christianity that is authentic. Christianity that is the genuine article.

We learned last week in the first four verses of 1 John ch.1 that God is real.

You can know Jesus Christ as a person by believing what the Bible says about him. By believing that he came. By believing that he is the Son of God. By believing that he died for your sins as your substitute. And by believing that he rose again and lives forever as your Lord and Savior. That’s the Gospel. You need merely to believe it in order to enter into a personal relationship with God.

But what proves that you really are a Christian? What proves that you really know God? What proves that you are authentic? Very simple: John tells us in the next few verses of his letter. What proves that you really know God is the way that you deal with sin in your life. Christians who are authentic are Christians who deal biblically with sin in their life.

Sin is a problem to us all. The Bible says

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned

Sin is when we do our own thing instead of God’s thing. I know of no better definition of sin than that which is found in

Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way

Wanting your own way and going your own way instead of God’s way is the essence of sin. And we are wired to do this as human beings from the day we are born til the day we die. We want to go our own way, independent from God, autonomous from his leading, unaccountable to his standards. Sin is what separates us from God. And this is why Jesus died on the cross. He died to pay the legal penalty for our sin; he died to take the rap for us because we had broken God’s law. And because he did so, he makes it possible for us to come into a relationship with God. Sin no longer separates us from God.

But the problem of sinning doesn’t go away when you become a Christian. We still have within us a sin nature which wants to make us go our own way. And the way we deal with that problem is one of the things that proves whether or not we are authentic Christians.

In the passage before us, which runs from verse 5 of ch. 1 to verse 2 of ch. 2, there is a very interesting literary structure. It is very clear and very informative when you lay it out in diagram form, as I have done for you on the back of your Scripture insert. You will see that, beginning with v.6, there are six “if” sentences in this passage. Each one of them introduces a condition and then goes on to tell us the result of that condition. Notice that they alternate from bad to good: the first one is bad, the second one is good, the third one is bad, the fourth one is good, and so on.

John uses this elegant little arrangement to show us that if you’re authentic as a Christian, it’s going to show up in the way you think about and deal with the problem of sinning.

The whole passage begins in verse 5 with the words

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

All the way through this little book, we’re going to see that the character of God determines the character of the authentic Christian. It is almost like the idea “like Father, like son or like daughter”. Not surprising, since we are his children. God is in the process of changing us into the image of his Son, and when his Son returns, that process will be completed.

1 John 3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

So more and more, as we grow and mature in Christ, the character of God will determine the character of the Christian. The way that he is will reflect in the way that we are. John says

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

So as Christians, we ought to reflect that. Later on, John tells us that

1 John 2:29 …he is righteous

and then he goes on to say

everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

Still later, he says

1 John 4:16 God is love.

and then he goes on to say…

Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

You see? The way that he is reflects in the way that we are. Our character as Christians is built on the character of God. To the extent that we know him and have fellowship with him, we will mirror his character in our own lives. But…

1 John 1:6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

The last two years have been pretty grim for the cause of Christ in America. Highly visible Christian leaders and preachers have fallen into scandal and sin. And you can bet that for every one you hear about, there are a hundred you don’t. Now I am not saying that Christian leaders should be perfect. They are human like everyone else. They have a sin nature like everyone else. But when they sin, how do they deal with it? Do they cover it up? Do they live with it for years in a dark corner of their lives? Do they present one face in public and another in private? Are they authentic? And when they are caught, and their sin is revealed, how do they deal with it? Do they glibly claim forgiveness and seek to go on as though nothing happened? Do they really know God? Or do they just claim to know God?

Two years ago, Rev. Gordon MacDonald, the former pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Mass. and then president of IVCF, resigned the ministry because he had committed adultery. He recognized that what he had done was sin and he knew that he had forfeited the right to be a leader in the Christian community. Over the next two years, MacDonald and his wife Gail worked to rebuild their marriage relationship. They submitted to the accountability of their church elders. They stayed out of public view. They spent time in the Word recovering from the devastating effects of sin. They rebuilt the fellowship with God that had been lost. And recently, after two hard years of pain, repentance, and growth, Gordon and Gail MacDonald were recommissioned to the ministry of the Gospel. I believe that Gordon MacDonald knows God. He proved it by dealing biblically with the sin in his life.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Are you an authentic Christian? Three things will show it:

1. you walk in the light

- don’t listen to the way people talk; just look at how they walk

2. you have fellowship with other Christians

- if your version of spirituality cuts you off from other Christians and makes you feel that you are superior to them, then you are following the devil’s religion, not God’s. Authentic Christianity leads to fellowship.

3. the blood of Jesus is continually purifying you from sin.

- when you walk in the light, you are not immune to sin. But when you walk in the light, you will receive moment by moment cleansing from sin by the blood of Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

There were so-called Christians in John’s day who claimed to be without sin. As a matter of fact, one of them, a fellow named Cerinthus, was one of those Gnostic “know it alls” I told you about last week. Polycarp, one of the early church fathers, used to tell a story about the day that the Apostle John and Cerinthus almost ran into each other. John was about to enter a public bath-house in Ephesus, when he happened to notice Cerinthus already inside. John rushed out, saying “Let us flee before the baths fall in, for Cerinthus the enemy of the truth is inside.” It’s pretty hard to be in the presence of someone who thinks they’re perfect.

And yet some Christians today evidently think that they are perfect. You know them. They’re the ones who have all sorts of criticism about the church, about the people in the church, and about the way things are done in the church. In fact, to hear them tell it, they’re the only ones who know the score, who have it all together. Usually these perfect Christians bounce around from church to church, looking for a place that will be worthy of their presence. Perfection must be a heavy burden to bear!

But believe me, these people will never find a perfect church, because a church is made up of sinners. One of the marks of maturity in Christ is how well you can love people in spite of their sin. Anybody can love something that has no flaws. Doesn’t take supernatural love to love perfection. Remember, though, that if we are authentic Christians, we are to mirror the character of God in our own lives. The Bible says

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So next time you go to criticizing someone, just remember that verse and be thankful that God didn’t have the same attitude toward you. The Bible says that if you think you are without sin, the only person you are fooling is yourself.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

The word “confess” means literally “to say the same thing as”. When we confess our sins, we are actually agreeing with God that what we did is sin. We are saying the same thing as he says about it. We’re seeing our sin through his eyes. And the act of confession must be accompanied by an attitude of confession.

Dr. Harry Ironside used to tell a story about the time one of his sons got into trouble at home. He sent the boy upstairs and told him not to come down to supper until he confessed the thing he had done wrong. The boy wouldn’t admit anything at all. Finally the boy called for Dr. Ironside to come upstairs and asked him if he could go down to supper. His father said, “It depends on you.” The boy said, “Okay, if you think I have done something wrong, I am sorry.” His father said, “That won’t do.” Later, the boy called him upstairs again, and this time he changed the story a bit. He said, “Well, since you and mother both think I have done something wrong, I guess I have. Can I come down to supper now?” Once again, his father told him that that wasn’t good enough. Dr. Ironside went downstairs, and later on he heard the boy weeping. The boy said “Dad please forgive me. I know I have done wrong. Please forgive me.” Then the lad came downstairs and they had a wonderful supper together. That’s confession with the proper attitude.

Confession of sin includes two things: repentance and cleansing. When the Prodigal Son came back from the far country, where he had been living with the pigs, I’m sure that the first thing his father did was to give him a bath. He smelled awful. He was dirty. Before he put that fine robe on, he had to take a bath.

The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from sin when we confess our sin. God gives us a bath. But what happens next? Do you think that the prodigal son woke up the next morning and said to his father “So long Dad. I’m going back to the pigpen today. See you later.” Of course not. He had had enough of the pigpen. He had turned his back on it. That’s why he had come home.

That’s repentance, and without it, confession isn’t really confession. If you confess your sin without sincerely desiring to forsake it, you haven’t really confessed it at all. You’re like the dog that returns to its vomit, or the washed sow that returns to the mud. There’s been no inner change of heart that is the hallmark of confession.

This is not to say that you may not sin the same way again in the future. There are some sins in our lives which are so ingrown that we have the toughest time getting rid of them. It’s a battle. They keep coming back. They plague us. They have become habits, and old habits die hard. But don’t give up the struggle against sin. Walking in the light means never being satisfied to let that sin have a place in our lives. Wherever we see it, we must confess it to God and trust him to cleanse us of it. And he will. Maybe sooner, maybe later, depending on how deep-rooted it is. But he will give us victory as long as we keep confessing.

I thank God that 1 John 2:1 is in the Bible:

…if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

We are going to sin as Christians. Like Paul, we often say…

Romans 7:18-19 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

But thank God that when I do sin, and Satan says to God “There. See what that McKnight character did? He’s supposed to be one of yours isn’t he? But he’s behaving more like one of mine.” Jesus Christ is there as my advocate -my defense lawyer - in the presence of God. And Jesus says “No. He is one of mine. I bought him with my own blood, and I already paid for what he just did.”

When Jesus died, he died for the sins of the whole world: past, present, and future. His death was sufficient. It covered everything. That’s what the word “atonement” means in v.2. It means “the covering”.

David was a man after God’s own heart. He certainly wasn’t a perfect man. He sinned grievously. But he understood how to deal with sin in his life. It took him awhile, but he finally learned. Listen to what he says…

Psalm 32:1-5 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Christians who are authentic are Christians who deal with sin in their life this way. Are you authentic? Or are you living one life on the outside and another on the inside? Is there unconfessed sin in your life today?