What is it to be a Christian? What is that change which, wrought in a natural man, make him a Christian man? What are a Christian's new relations to God and to his fellow men? What is Christian character? How should a Christian live? What is the patter on which his life should be fashioned? If we would make our Christian life what it ought to be, we must find plain, clear answers to these questions.

A Christian is one who believes on Christ. He has entrusted his whole life, with its sin, its guilt, its ruin, its need its security for eternity, its redemption, cleansing and transformation, to the hands of the might Saviour, the strong Son of God. A Christian is therefore a saved one, a redeemed one - saved, redeemed, by Christ. He is no longer guilty and condemned: he is acquitted, justified, restored to such relations before God that he is as if he had never sinned, so fully are his sins put away. He is God's lost and wandering child brought home, received, reconciled, restored to all a child's privileges.

But this is not all; it is not merely a change of relations. Those who believe on Christ are born again, the Scriptures say - born form above, born of God; that is, there is a new, a divine life in the regenerated soul. Christ speaks of it as a well of water in the believer springing up into everlasting life. The result is shown in new affections, new desires, new hopes, and new aims. Forgiveness of sins is not enough. A man's lies and dishonesties may be forgiven; but, if that is all, he is still a liar and dishonest. God's forgiveness regenerates. A Christian life is the setting up of the kingdom of God in a human heart.

A child was troubled at the thought that heaven was so far away, and was perplexed to know how he could ever get up to that bright home. His mother explained to him that heaven must first come down to him - must first enter his heart. A Christian is one into whose heart the spirit of heaven has entered. The new life is like that they live in heaven. We are taught to pray, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." The one place in all the earth in which it most concerns each Christian to see that God's will is done as it is in heaven is in his own individual heart.

Used with permission by: The JR Miller Archive
Article Source: pamphlets.jr-miller.com/his-steps/3-christian-life-the-ideal.html

Hayden Andrews