What is Christianity - Pt 1

Towards the end of September last year the students of Magee University held their annual Freshers’ Fair in one of their sports halls. All kinds of clubs and organisations were keen to advertise their wares and enlist new members. There were political groups representing different brands of unionism and nationalism. There were sports clubs and computer clubs and mindfulness groups and societies to help the students spend their spare time more or less wisely. Christians were on display too, from the Christian Union and the chaplaincy, to the Gideons with their Bibles to a group called Exodus, interested in discipling the young people. The chaplaincy reps were even handing out facsimile bank notes containing the million-pound question – “Will you go to Heaven?” From the rather dizzying experience of walking round the stalls, a new student could get the impression that Christianity is a kind of hobby, to be added to the list of other clubs you intend to join. It’s something you do on a Tuesday or a Thursday evening or a Wednesday lunch-time, when Gateway offers a simple tasty lunch and a Bible epilogue to those who come.

Towards a definition

We need to have in front of us a working definition of Christianity before we try to examine its parts. It is far from a hobby you can just add on to your life. Rather, it is something that reorders your life from top to bottom, with this person called Christ (his title) or Jesus (his given name) at the very centre. Something Jesus said only hours before his arrest points out just how important he is, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). A Galilean peasant in his thirties is saying that he – in his person and his work – is the exclusive means of access to the God of the universe. It is a breathtaking claim that must be accepted or denied. There’s no room for sitting on the fence here.

In light of this we can say that Christianity is not just a collection of ideas or abstract rules. It is intensely personal and practical. To reject Christ, and therefore Christianity, is not like parking on double yellow lines that God has put there. It’s more like parking on God’s foot. It’s a personal attack. As we in Gateway have spoken to people on their doorsteps we have often said we’re not talking about a religion. Instead we’re talking about a relationship. That’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. To borrow words from Greg Koukl, a winsome proclaimer of Jesus Christ, Christianity is ‘the story of reality’. It’s not a fairy tale or a fable. It’s not make- believe. It’s not just what I think, what’s true for me. It is objectively true. It is a complete world and life view that takes in everything in the known universe, from an absolute God down to the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. An additional element can be detected in the verse written by C.T. Studd, the pioneer missionary to the Congo as the 19th century turned into the 20th:

“Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”

Christianity is also a rescue mission. Let me introduce you to the One whose idea, whose reality, whose rescue mission Christianity is. We’ll look at him in this article and we’ll look at his shaping of the story of reality after this.

Some preliminaries

However, let me get some preliminary things straight here. I am making a couple of assumptions right off the bat. But these assumptions are necessary or else I can’t say anything helpful or meaningful. First of all, God exists. The Bible never tries to prove God’s existence but simply assumes it from its very first verse. For us to try to prove God’s existence would show that we are seeking to exercise authority over him instead of vice versa. It would also suggest, wrongly, that there is some neutral place we can take him to in order to examine him. It would be like a goldfish trying to prove the existence of the water it lives in, without which it cannot survive. We assume that God exists and seek to analyse all that is around us in the light of that. Secondly, we need to assume that God has spoken and that in the Bible we have a true, authoritative, final but not exhaustive account of him, of his work and of his purposes, sufficient for every situation we enter. Without assuming these things we would just be talking round in circles, exchanging ignorance. The all-powerful, absolute God of the Bible, who makes absolute demands of us, gives us the certainty and starting point we need. This God is a covenant-making God. By being born into his world we already know he exists. But we are related to the first Adam who tried to suppress that knowledge. We are biased against God by nature. It is only when, by the working of God’s Spirit through his Word, we come to own up to our rebellion and willingly submit to him as Saviour, king and covenant head, that this bias is overturned. Evil has come into the world but God has harnessed it for his own higher purposes. We must reject the theory of evolution as flawed and wrong-headed since it seeks to replace a thinking, reasoning God with an unthinking, random process. Let us examine a little more closely what God tells us about himself as the originator of Christianity.

God is great

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This first statement of all tells us how great God is. He’s not boasting here. He’s just telling it like it is. He is number one. And he wants you and me to put him first, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). That first verse sums up massive movements of matter and energy. ‘Heaven and earth’ is one of those phrases like ‘Jews and Gentiles’ that includes everything there is. Without God nothing has been made that has been made. This verse tells us that the universe had a beginning. And it tells us that the universe had a creator. It hasn’t always been there. And it didn’t suddenly pop into existence out of nowhere. God has always been there. And then one day – actually the very first day of all – God spoke the universe into existence out of nowhere. What power! What precision! For in that creation there was nothing, not even a blade of grass, nor a hair, nor an atom out of place. And frequently throughout the Bible God puts a chapter, or even a verse – Exodus 34:6-7; 1 Kings 8:22-30; Job chapters 38-41; Isaiah 40; Acts 17:24-31 – where he means us simply to pause and worship. God is the great reality we must all reckon with.

God is Trinity

Secondly, God is Trinity. Although there is only one God who is responsible for everything, meaning that we can go to him with everything, there are three persons who are God. It is immensely humble of the Father and of the Spirit to allow their central mission to be described as ‘Christianity’, not ‘Godianity’. Genesis 1:2 refers to the Spirit and his role of brooding and giving birth. Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” The Father speaks and the apostle John in his opening words tells us that the Word is Jesus, the Son. He communicates the Father’s plans to us. While much of who the Father, Son and Spirit are at their core remains hidden from us, this much is clear – unlike the false god of Islam, this God in three persons has always had someone to appreciate, to interact with, to co-operate with. He didn’t make the world because he was lonely. Love is of his eternal essence. Before the Father had a sin to hate he had a Son to love. That too has implications for the kind of world he is building beyond this one. As Jonathan Edwards, the American preacher and thinker, said, “Heaven is a world of love.”

God is distinct

 Thirdly, God is distinct. “God created the heavens and the earth” implies that God is not part of the heavens and the earth, in the same way as an artist is separate from his painting. That is why, when he broke free from earth’s atmosphere, the first man into space, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, did not find God. God exists in the sphere of his own. This means that God is not just a bigger version of ourselves with enhanced powers. According to the Bible, he does have attributes like our own, such as wisdom and strength. But he also has attributes just his own, like infinity, as the Lord of space, and eternality, as the Lord of time. This tells us that what happens on earth doesn’t threaten God’s throne. As Psalm 2 reassuringly puts it, God simply laughs at a concerted conspiracy against him and his Son, and carries on with his plans regardless. Because God is distinct from this world we could not know him in any meaningful way unless he chose to reveal himself to us. The world around us can show us something of God’s beauty and power, but we need his Word to learn of his mercy and his grace towards those who have broken his covenant.

God is central

 Fourthly, and lastly, God is central. He is the One doing the creating in the very first verse of the Bible. He is the one being summoned at the very end of the Bible. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10). “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Those who framed the questions and answers to the two best-known Reformed Catechisms are in full agreement. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism). “[My only comfort in life and in death is] That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ” (Heidelberg Catechism). This offers a stern challenge to all those in the 21st century who want to assert their freedom to act as they please and to do what they want with their own bodies. If God has made us all and gives us every good thing we enjoy down to the breath in our lungs and the neurons in our brains, does he not have the right to call the shots? Are his plans and purposes for what he has made not infinitely more wise and loving than anything we could dream up? When one of our boys was small his enthusiasm would sometimes run away with him. We encouraged him to say from time to time, “I don’t know everything. I have a lot to learn!” Perhaps such sentiments would help us to bow before the God who is there, who is great and loving and unshakeable and first and last. Every one of us needs to believe in him, to trust him with our lives and to dare to speak with respect and insight of his self-portrait in His Word – the very opposite of a selfie, actually!