The Disciple is a Christian

Have ushers hand out brochures to congregation.

Ask people to keep them in their Bible - bring each week to refer to.

Two weeks ago: The Vision for a Dynamic Church - what does Jesus expect us to be doing as a church? Winning… Building… Equipping disciples.

The vision of FBC is to become a training center that produces fully-equipped followers of Jesus Christ.

But what does a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ look like? Can we describe such a person? That’s where this brochure comes in.

Look at your brochure - it highlights six characteristics of a fully-equipped follower (responsible disciple) of Jesus Christ:

1. is a Christian - has trusted Christ as personal Savior

2. is in Communion w. God - is maintaining a personal, growing r’ship w. Christ

3. is growing in Character - is building a strong foundation of integrity by obedience to the commands of Christ

4. is Caring - is a loving individual and committed to meeting the needs of others.

5. is Contributing - gives of himself, his time, his talent, and his treasure to further the kingdom of God.

6. is Commissioned - has a heart for Great Commission ministry and is active in sharing his faith with others.

These are the qualities of a responsible disciple; a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ. And over the next six weeks, we are going to look at each one of them. And you’ll notice that there is a checklist in the brochure that you can use to measure the kind of progress you are making in each of these categories.

But today we want to look at the first one - the Disciple is a Christian.

Once upon a time, there was a Christian youth ministry which organized a rally for high schoolers. They invited a popular Christian athlete, an NFL football player, to come and give his testimony. Over a thousand young people showed up.

The huge football player stepped up to the microphone. He was a hero in the eyes of most of the kids. He talked to them about life on the playing field and in the locker room. He told them funny stories that made them laugh.

Then he spoke simply but eloquently of his faith in Jesus Christ. He described how Christ had given him the strength to live and to overcome his problems. At the end of his talk, he asked the students if they would like to commit their lives to Jesus Christ, too.

At the beginning of the rally, the organizers had given a 3x5 card to every young person. On the card was a place for their name, address, and telephone number. There was also a little square box in one corner of the card. The football player asked the kids to bow their heads. He encouraged them to make their own private decision about Jesus Christ, and if they wanted to commit their lives to him, to put an “X” in the box.

The auditorium was quiet as the young people filled in their cards. Then they folded them and placed them in baskets that were passed around. After the meeting , when the cards were tallied, the organizers found to their excitement that an overwhelming majority of the young people present had indicated that they wanted to commit their lives to Christ. The leaders were ecstatic! They praised God for all these decisions for Christ.

But then, over the next few days, as they sought to follow up all these contacts, the youth ministry people began to see things in a different light. They began to find that, of the hundreds of young people who had indicated on the card a decision to follow Christ, only a few were even willing to talk on the phone to someone about that decision.

Fewer still were open to the possibility of actually getting together with the youth leaders to discuss their new faith in Christ. To make a long story short, out of the hundreds of kids at the rally who responded to the invitation, only a handful actually ended up becoming involved in a Bible study for new believers.

What happened to all the rest? When they responded to the invitation to commit their life to Christ, what were they really doing? Were they responding to Jesus, or were they responding to the football player? Was their decision a spiritual decision, or did it have more to do with group psychology or hero-worship?

And that raises a very important question that we need to consider today. What does it mean to be a Christian? What causes a person to go from being an uncommitted spiritual bystander to a committed follower of Jesus Christ?

We need a clear answer to that question if we’re going to be a disciple-making church because conversion is the first step in the process of becoming a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ.

It’s not enough for us to assume that because someone walked an aisle or raised their hand in response to an invitation that they are a Christian. There needs to be some clear indication, some evidence that a real spiritual change has taken place.

There are a lot of people who call themselves Christians but who show absolutely no signs of it. And we do not want that to be true of anyone in our congregation—being a Christian in name only.

If you were asked to define the word Christian, what would you say? As I thought about that this week, I came up with the following definition:

A Christian is someone who has decided to put his life and destiny in the hands of Jesus Christ—an act of trust proven by his willingness to accept and obey Christ’s teachings.

It’s a decision. And it’s a decision with life-consequences. You’re not deciding to follow Jesus Christ because you want to get rich, or become successful, or have power or popularity or position in the church. You’re following Christ because you are convinced that He is the Son of God, that he has the power to save you for all eternity, and that he has the total right to run your life.

The Bible says that there are four things involved in becoming a Christian:

Conversion —> Change —> Confession —> Confidence

1. Conversion:

Conversion involves two things—repentance and faith. A person who is a Christian is a person who has turned. He has turned away from sin. That’s repentance. And he has turned to the person of Jesus Christ. That’s faith. Let’s look at these two concepts.

It may surprise you to know this, but the very first word of the very first sermon that Jesus preached when he began his public ministry was the word “Repent.”

The idea of repentance is a major element in Jesus’ ministry. In Mark 1 we hear Jesus saying “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” In Luke 5:32, Jesus said “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

At the end of his ministry, when he was commissioning his disciples, he said “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

But what does repentance mean? There are a lot of misconceptions about it. The word “repent” conjures up images of wild-eyed street preachers wearing sandwich boards declaring that the end of the world is at hand. People often snicker when they hear the word “repent”.

But repentance is a simple concept. It simply means to turn away from sin. The word for repent in Greek is metanoia. It comes from two words: meta, which means after; and noeo, which means to think, or to understand. So, literally, metanoia means to think after, or to think again; in other words, to change your mind about the way you’ve been going.

Repentance is when you purposefully decide to forsake your own way and pursue God’s way instead. You are changing your mind about sin, you’re changing the way you feel about a life of sin, and you’re ready to do something about it. That’s what true repentance is.

Repentance is one of the two basic things involved in becoming a Christian. The other one is faith. Repentance is when you turn away from your sin; faith is when you turn toward Jesus Christ. You cannot have one without the other.

If you have repentance without faith in Jesus Christ, you are no better off than a Hindu holy man who spends his life trying to overcome his own sin. But if you have faith in Christ without repentance, you are like the hypocrites who call themselves Christians while they live like the devil.

Faith can mean one of two things. First, it can mean believing that something is factually true. For example, if I were to say that I believe that this chair can hold my weight because I know that it has been designed and engineered properly to support up to 400 lbs., that would be one kind of faith. A mental agreement.

But if I were to actually go over and sit down in the chair, that would be another kind of faith—a deeper, more significant kind of faith. You see, now I am translating my mental agreement, my factual knowledge, into personal trust. I am taking a risk. I am saying “I trust that this chair will support my weight, and so I am going to sit in it.”

That’s personal trust, and that‘s the kind of faith in Jesus you need to become a Christian. It’s when you put your personal trust in Him, not just when you agree to certain facts you know about Him. That’s what the Bible means when it says…

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Acts 10:43 …everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

So there are two things involved in conversion:

- repentance - which is turning away from your own way

- personal trust - faith in Jesus Christ

2. Change:

The moment you are converted, many changes take place in your life. The Bible says that there are all kinds of spiritual blessings that God bestows on you the moment you put your trust in Jesus Christ.

1. Your sins are forgiven

2. You enter into fellowship with God

3. You are born again and become a child of God

4. You are adopted into God’s family

5. You become a new creature

6. You are justified in God’s sight - that is, you are no longer considered guilty of sin

7. You are reconciled to God - you become God’s friend

8. You have peace with God

9. You are given the righteousness of Christ

10. You are given eternal life

11. You have access to God through Jesus Christ

12. You are indwelt by the Holy Spirit

13. You receive from Him the power to live a life that pleases God

14. You are sanctified - set apart for God’s special use

15. You receive a new nature

And the list goes on an on! And as you become conscious of these changes that God has accomplished in your life, that leads to…

3. Confession.

When you become a Christian, the reality of your conversion, and the dawning reality of these changes that God has wrought in your life is something that you want to talk about! In fact, the Bible closely ties confession with conversion.

Romans 10:9-10 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

In other words, you will be able to explain to other people that Jesus Christ has turned your life around. You probably won’t know all the right words to use, and you may not be able to explain it in a very sophisticated way.

You may be like the blind man whom Jesus healed in John 9. He didn’t have answers for all the theological questions the Pharisees were throwing at him, but he just kept saying “All I know is this: Once I was blind but now I can see.”

A real born-again Christian has a testimony. And if you don’t have a testimony—if you can’t explain how you received Jesus Christ and what he means to you and what changes he has wrought in your life—then you aren’t a Christian.

One of the best opportunities you have to share your testimony is when you are baptized. And being baptized itself is a tremendous way to publically confess that you are standing with Jesus Christ—you are identifying yourself with him. Have you been baptized?

4. Confidence

A born-again Christian is sure of his salvation. He has that assurance that he belongs to God. Look at 1 John 5:11–13:

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

If you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, God doesn’t want you to be in the dark about where you stand. You have eternal life. “He who has the son has life”. No if’s, and’s, but’s, or maybe’s. If you’ve trusted Jesus Christ, you belong to God, and you are going to heaven.

Now does that mean that we’ll never have doubts about our salvation? No. But when we have doubts, we can be so thankful that we have the Holy Spirit living within us—that spirit of sonship whereby we call God “Daddy”.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

So what have we learned today? We have learned that a real Christian is one who has been converted by repenting and placing his personal trust in Jesus Christ. And that conversion has brought about many exciting changes in his life. And those changes make it possible for him to confess Christ to others. And he has confidence that he belongs to God.

Now as you look at the center section of your brochure, you’ll see where it says: Step #1 - Life Evaluation. And as you look under the heading entitled “The Christian Disciple”, I want you to take a moment to evaluate yourself on these questions. Rate yourself on a scale of 1–10 (10 being strongest and 1 being weakest) on each of those areas.

1. Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior?

2. Have you been baptized?

3. Can you explain your conversion and the Gospel clearly?

4. Can you list at least 8 things that God did for you at your conversion and state why they are important?

5. Do you have positive self-esteem that is rooted in your identity as a child of God?

6. Are you sure of your salvation?

If you aren’t sure about any of these, or if you are aware of a real weakness in your life in one of these areas, would you let me know about it? I’d like to talk to you after the service and help you to find answers and build strength in that area of weakness.