What Is Christianity?
For far too many people, Christians and unbelievers alike, Christianity is best defined in negative terms. But historically speaking, God was first and through Him, everything that He created was ‘good’. Man invoked the first negativity into the world when Adam acted unrighteously by treasuring something that cannot really exist, independence, above what is really only best to be treasured, God Himself.
The point about independence is only secondary to the major purpose of my writing this article so don’t get sidetracked – you will only lose the argument with God because it’s based on a scriptural principle. Okay, if you really want to argue it, then fly. Seriously, stand up and fly. You won’t because you can’t and you can’t because you aren’t free. You are bound by gravity. If however, you somehow break gravity’s law and flee into space then….stand. Seriously, stand up by yourself, wholly free from anything, any planet, any platform and any device other than your own “free-will” and stand straight and tall in a single place. But you can’t. Now you’re under the law of no gravity and are compelled to obey its rule. You weren’t free on earth and you aren’t free in space. Oh, by the way, when you left the earth and flew into space you did so in bondage to the rocket that blasted off of the earth thrusting you into space. With all those G’s pulling at you, you were once again bound, this time to the very thing you thought could offer you freedom. See, you’re never really free. (Oh, by the way, this principle about freedom and bondage works for everything and in everything that concerns humanity) Independence is an ideal that was rather American of Mr. Jefferson and we who now live in the United States. It works in time but it’s not a biblical concept at all and has no bearing or power whatsoever on/in eternity where reality is truly defined.
(Now back to the original discussion) You see, real righteousness is treasuring what is truly valuable and unrighteousness is substituting what is worthless for what is really valuable. That’s why God alone is wholly Righteous. Only He alone knows the true value of His intrinsic Self and constantly lives accordingly. Humans, on the other hand, are constantly tossed between what we know is really valuable and what Hollywood and Madison Avenue make us think possesses some value. In the end we always know the difference but getting to the end is the process the Bible calls ‘sin’. So what is Christianity? (here’s the point) It is the majestic revelation of God Who, out of Triune love expressed within the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, created a people in a place, on whom He could bestow that divine love and express Himself to their unending and unbounded joy. His highest glory would be the consummation of their greatest joy and their greatest joy would be consummated in the expression of His highest glory. This foolish people rebelled against their Creator desiring His glory for themselves and in so doing, thrust themselves and that glorious creation into disarray resulting in separation from the very God Who intended them only good. Still, this did not alter or deter His plan to possess a people for whom their knowledge of Him would be the inexpressible wonders of eternal life. After all, He (by the very nature of Godness) and He alone was forever, is now and will eternally be the one, true and only God.
And so the history of mankind has been the outworking in time of this Triune God’s eternal decrees as the Father consummates His divine plan in mankind down through the human ages, displaying its ultimate expression of love and intent in a shameful, despicable, cross through which this benevolent God exchanged His own life as epitomized by the Son, on behalf of His rebellious creatures, thereby assuring that divine justice was satisfied in exacting the ultimate penalty for their sin, which is death, but also simultaneously and equally insuring that His mercy toward them could be forever expressed in the full satisfaction of that penalty by the sacrifice of His own sinless, ever-living, never-dying Son, Whom He then graciously exalted and ultimately rewarded, by the Spirit’s equally efficacious work, with the treasure of the very people for Whom this Son once died and now ever lives. This is Christianity.
To be Christians then, is to exclaim with the Old and New Testament saints along with “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13). Nothing more can be expected, nothing less is required and nothing else will glorify God or satisfy your soul!