1st Test of Christian Behavior
1 John 1:5-7 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 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[b] sin.
2 Co. 6:14-16 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial[a]? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
If the living, infinite God lives in us, we cannot still be living in the world. We cannot compartmentalize our lives and give some to God and some to the world, because the two do not mix. God cannot tolerate the things of the world (wickedness, false gods, idols). There is no commonality, harmony, or agreement between God and these things.
Someone recently said to me, "Not everyone who goes to church is a Christ follower". So, how do you know if you really are a Christ follower? According to the Apostle John, the first test of Christian behavior is this: Are you walking in the Light?
God is Light. The world, Satan, and your own sinful desires are darkness.
Walking in the light requires a total surrender of ourselves (heart, mind, body, and soul) to God and his ways. It means allowing yourself to be controlled by God's spirit and denying your natural self and shunning evil. When we allow God's purposes and love to lead us, we experience true commonality, harmony, and agreement with God. These things allow us then to be in complete fellowship with him and with other Christians (who are also walking in God's light).
Walking in God's light would also mean a desire to 'know' God intimately so that you would understand his precepts and purposes, and be able to fully understand the depth of love he has for you. Are you in God's Word and in conversation with him on a regular basis? How else will you be able to discern his will, his mind, and his spirit? We have to be diligent in getting to know the One we claim to follow! How can we call ourselves followers if we don't take the time to understand what and whom we claim to follow?
So, my challenge for you today is, to answer this question with sincere honesty.
Are you walking in the light?
If the answer is yes - Great - Keep doing so! If the answer is no - I challenge you to examine what it is that is holding you back from surrendering all to the Lord of the Universe. What part of yourself, or the world, is holding you back from that complete surrender?
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1 comment:
Brook -
You may have misunderstood the Bible text or maybe my words, but neither are saying not to be around unbelievers. It does say not to be 'in the world' or 'be yoked to an unbeliever'.
You are correct in saying even walking in the light their is still sin but as a believer you recognize it as such and are repenting and turning away from it very quickly. An unbeliever doesn't have God's ethical conscious to discern right behavior from wrong behavior - they may have a moral conscious based on what the world deems acceptable at the moment, but not an ethical one.
Christ follower, disciple, Christian are all words to describe a person who believes in Christ as the Son of God who died on the cross to forgive our sins, a believes in the teachings of Christ, and have made a personal decision to live their life according to those beliefs. A person who believes these things is a member of the universal Church of believers in which Jesus Christ is the head. They may fall under any number of religious denominations or affliations but they are all one in the body of Christ. I hope that answers your question.
Religion has been responsible for many misunderstandings in the world over time and has been corrupted, etc. Maybe those who seek to use a new term are just trying to distance themselves from perceived negative associations and want to be accepted as a positive influence. I don't claim to know.
I use the words Christ follower now because I grew up identifying myself not as a Christian but as a Lutheran. Family, having the same identification labels, tend to think I am not a christian anymore because I am not Lutheran. I could call myself Evangelical, which also is different than the Protestant or Catholic labeled faiths, and still stands outside what they know. So, I perfer to identify myself as a Christ Follower, and if you follow Christ and his Biblical teachiing, then no matter what relgious affliation you are, we are one in Christ.
I hope that makes sense and I hope that you do not group me in the category of those creating these videos you mention. I have not seen them but there is a strong emergent and emerging church movement out there that is not biblically sound and does some very off the wall stuff. Be discerning.
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