Am I a disciple?

When I was growing up, it was pretty simple to be able to tell whether you were a Christian or not.  Actually, it boiled down to a simple yes/no question:  “Have you ever been baptized?”  If yes, congrats!  Go bask in the warm glow of eternal life.  If no… so sorry, not yet – but we can fix that with little fuss.  It was quick, simple, easy, and you could go on with your daily life uninterrupted.  In essence, we humans could make God save anyone we wanted just by doing one quick ritual.

Jesus never said that being a follower of him was easy, and he also made it clear that not everyone who claimed to follow him would truly be saved.  

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus speaks of these people:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7: 21-23)

Unless you take Christ’s words and twist them, it’s clear that there will be people who merely believe that they are Christians but in actuality are nothing of the sort.  If that is the case, then how do we know we will not be those clueless people on the last day?  How do we know we are true disciples? 

Is it our works? 

Our thoughts? 

Our hearts? 

Is it a belief that God is who He says he is? 

Or is it nothing that we do at all, and that God makes us Christian regardless of what we do and who we are? 

To kick things off with Mature Manhood of Christ, I’m going to jump into a topic that personally means a lot to me – knowing you’re a real disciple of Christ.  The Bible states that Christians will look different and act differently from the world, and gives a great amount of information both on the actions and attributes of Christ-like people and of the pretenders.  And while salvation is not based on works, the deeds of a man are the largest indicator of his heart.

Join me every Tuesday as I explore this topic!

for His glory,
Mark