A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. The Rev. J.H. (Hans) Kouwenberg is the minister of St. Giles’ Church in Prince George, B.C. and editor of Channels. Romans 10:5-21 (TEV) is used in this article.
A son of one of the member families of our congregation (who shall remain nameless) said a significant thing to me as he was studying for ministry in the Pentecostal Church. “Never in all my experience in the Presbyterian Church in Canada did I hear how one might become a Christian. But I did hear it and experience it in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and that is why I am and prefer just now to live and serve in the Pentecostal rather than the Presbyterian Church.”
On the one hand, it is good that this young man heard “the gospel” — as we usually term it — in any church at all; on the other hand, it is too bad that he didn’t hear it in a Presbyterian Church, the church of his father and mother. The Presbyterian Church has need of thinking and believing Christians like him. And the Presbyterian Church has a need — as do all Christian churches — to explain the gospel to its members and adherents.
Although it may sound a little too glib, too easy, too one-two-three steplike to tell someone “how to become and be a Christian,” I think it is important for people in a Christian church to know how to become and be Christians, because far too many people are too fuzzy about it. Too many people play at being Christians. And too many people have no idea whether they are Christians or not, both within as well as outside the church. And that saps the church’s strength.
Indeed, far too many people within the church are loosely connected to a congregation or a denomination but have little or no real connection, let alone priority of connection to Jesus Christ, “the author and finisher of our faith,” as the writer of the Revelation calls him. For Christian faith begins and ends with a loving, committed relationship to Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the way, one must come to grips with Jesus Christ. Who was he in history and who is he and what will he be for you today and tomorrow? These are the questions which thinking and believing Christians must come to terms with somewhere at the beginning or the deepening of their Christian journey.
To be a Christian, we need to believe in Jesus Christ.
One New Testament passage tells us that “if you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved. For it is by our faith that we are put right with God; it is by our confession that we are saved” (Romans 10:9-10 TEV).
Many people today, even outside of church, would admit to a belief in God. They are, strictly speaking, “theists,” that is, people who are not “atheists,” unbelieving in God. They believe in God. Perhaps you are among them. You believe in a God who is “out there somewhere” who occasionally “comes in” here or there but who for the main part is unknowable and inscrutable. Sometimes, we even admit this in a hymn like the well-known “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes ” There is, to be sure, a sense in which God can never be known, that is, boxed in by our knowledge and imagination. God is bigger and better than we can know. God is more majestic and mysterious than we can describe. After all, he is God. But if that were all there were to being a Christian then what is the use and meaning of Jesus Christ?
To be a Christian we need to move from being a mere believer in God to being a believer in what God has done and continues to do in Jesus Christ. To be a Christian we need to believe in Jesus Christ.
Now here is where a lot of folks get gummed up. If God is a mystery, Jesus Christ is even more mysterious. If believing in God is religious, believing in Jesus Christ is too religious. Fritz Ridenour put out a helpful little book some twenty-five years ago called How to be a Christian without being religious (1967). There are over 2 million copies in print. That means this book helped a lot of people right at this point. Fritz Ridenour’s book is a popular commentary on Kenneth Taylor’s readable “Living Bible” translation of the Book of Romans.
Let’s look at the Romans text again. In Romans 10:6 it suggests that many people try to make sense out of this religious Christian stuff by trying to “reach up” to God into heaven to bring him down to our level of understanding and experience. But that is not necessary, “You are not to ask yourself, ‘who will go up into heaven?’ (That is, to bring Christ down)” (Romans 10:6 TEV). Others try playing around with New Age stuff (which is really “old age” stuff) like astral travel, getting in touch with yourself, or your family — some of whom who have died — through seances and the like. But all this mumbo-jumbo stuff really does no good either. It’s no use reaching “down into the world below” to find out what a real spiritual Christian life might be all about. “Nor are you to ask, ‘who will go down into the world below?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from death)” (Romans 10:7).No, the matter of whatit takes to become and be a Christian is right before your eyes. You are not asked to believe the weird and farfetched; you are asked to believe something which is evident to sincere seekers after faith and truth, hope and love. “‘God’s message is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ — that is the message of faith that we preach” (Romans 10:8 TEV).
If you have a sincere encounter with Jesus Christ — as he is portrayed in the apostolic gospels, the only valid record and testimony we have of his life here on earth; if you have a sincere encounter with him as the Holy Spirit brings him alive, authoritative and risen from the dead — then you will discover that God is not only “immortal invisible, God only wise” but that he is a God of love and mercy, a God of forgiveness and longsuffering, a God of healing and help and hope.
You see, to “confess,” to admit, to say with love and gratitude and faith, that “Jesus is Lord” is to admit that you and I are not the Lord, but that he is; that you and I are not very good at running the moral machinery of our lives but that he is; that you and I are sinners and that he is the Saviour, that he is the one authoritative “head honcho,” in charge, the boss. I admit that this is not easy to do; we think we’re in control. We’d like to be in control. But we’re really not, are we? Otherwise why would we be making such a mess of it, time and time again? He’s really better at it than you and I are, isn’t he? He’s the Lord, isn’t he? You see, this message “God’s message, is near (us), on (our) lips and in (our) hearts” (Romans 10:8 TEV, adapted). Looking from Jesus to ourselves and back to Jesus again, we begin to see now, don’t we, where becoming and being a Christian begins and continues? He, not me. His way, his truth and life, not mine. His will, not mine. That’s it isn’t it?
Somewhere along the way we have to move into this. Somewhere along the way we have to commit ourselves to this knowingly, lovingly, wholeheartedly. Somewhere along the way we have to commit ourselves to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
And as the risen one. Interestingly enough, this is also mentioned as a tenet of basic Christian faith by the apostle Paul. Apart from making the earliest known and the simplest Christian confession of “Jesus as Lord” as a confession of our own, we need to “believe that God raised him from death” (Romans 10:9). This is more important than believing that he was born of the virgin Mary: “That God raised him from death.” What are we asked to believe here? Is this some more of this reaching “up into heaven” or “down into the world below” mumbo- jumbo stuff which we referred to earlier by way of verse 7? I think not It is simply to admit that Jesus is more than a figment of our imagination. He was real; he is real, and he will be real. It is to say that our faith is a thoroughly supernatural faith; God is a supernatural God. He can do more than appear to our ordinary common every-day senses. And in Jesus Christ the apostles saw this and we may see it demonstrated again and again.
One more thing: this believing and confessing about Jesus Christ cannot, I think, be a matter of the heart only; it must become a part of the mouth too. In the Revised Standard Edition of the biblical text, it says that becoming and being a Christian is a matter of “con- fess(ing)” with one’s “lips” as well as “believ(ing)” with one’s “heart” (Romans 10:9). Now many Christians balk at this. Their faith, they say, is a personal and private matter. Not so, according to this text! We should confess our faith not only formally in the Apostle’s Creed at church, but in our own unique words out on the street and in our neighbourhoods, at our work and in our play. A verbally unexpressed faith is an unexercised faith. A verbally unexpressed faith is an anemic, less than full-blooded faith. A verbally unexpressed faith is perhaps an unchristian faith. Belief and verbal expression of that belief go together.
Here is where I think the correct distinction between an evangelical and unevangelical expression of faith lies. Evangelical faith is not afraid to express the evangel, the good news of Jesus Christ and his saving death for us upon the cross. Evangelical faith knows how to come to Jesus Christ and how to lead someone to Jesus Christ by word as well as by deed. Evangelical faith is not afraid to lead someone to Jesus Christ. I prefer to identify with the evangelical expression of the faith. I need it. You need it. Isn’t that true?
One of the greatest joys we may have in our Christian walk is to lead someone else to Jesus Christ or to enable them to grow in their alliance and attachment to him. Just ask some of my elders what they’ve experienced in their annual leadership of St. Giles’. “Basic Christianity” studies. Ask another elder, who preached for me recently, what she experienced after that service as someone came to her convicted of her own need for faith in Jesus Christ. Just ask countless folk in our congregation and countless other congregations what it means to become and be a Christian! It is a thrilling step of faith, and an adventure, and a joy.