The Mystery of Creation: Chapter 1: The Seven Basics of Christianity: The Three Basics of Christian Living

The Three Basics for Christian Living

                The remaining three Basics are actions that all Christians SHOULD take if they truly are sincere in making Jesus their Lord.  These remaining three are things God expects His followers to do.  If you are a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a Christian, you will prove it by doing the next three Basics. 

5.            Each person should confess that they have accepted Christ as Lord and King to others.  Being baptized in water is included in this and is commanded by Jesus that all Christians should do it. 

                By confessing you are showing that you truly mean what you said when you tell God you want to be His servant now.  Confessing to others is like a person who has just received citizenship in a nation going around and telling everyone that they are a citizen now.  Baptism, therefore, is like an inauguration ceremony. 

                When a person becomes a citizen of a nation they receive official papers and go through a swearing in ceremony.  Baptism is this ceremony for Christianity, and all Christians should be baptized as soon as they can.  It is symbolic of Jesus’ death and resurrection and that we are sharing in this act that He did for us.  We are swearing unto God, through baptism, that we are now Jesus’ representatives on Earth.  We are dying to our old selves and we are accepting Christ as our new nature within us.  We no longer want to be rebels but proud citizens of God’s Eternal Kingdom. 

                This is why it is called “being born again.”  When we are put under the water, it is symbolic of a person dying to their old way of life.  They are giving it up.  They want to live like a new person.  It is like saying, “I am starting over from this point.”  When you come up out of the water, it is symbolic of being reborn, of starting life anew.  Your old self is dead.  Your new self has been born.

                Some might say that you have to be baptized to be saved.  Catholics baptize babies for this reason.  If a child dies before they are baptized, they just want to make sure the child is saved.  However, I would like anyone who believes this to consider Christ’s sacrifice for a moment.  Put yourself in Christ’s shoes.  You are beaten and broken and nailed to a cross for the remission of all sins in the world, young and old, rich or poor, etc.  You go to Hell for three days and suffer there until your resurrection.  You do all this to save humans, whom you love so much.  That’s why you did this. 

                Why would you, then, if you were Christ, send a baby to Hell just because someone didn’t get a chance to baptize him/her?  Why would you send a man or woman to Hell just because they hadn’t received baptism when their heart was so sincere and they genuinely accepted Christ as their King?  If Christ went through all that because He SO loved the world, why would He allow a semantic to keep someone from eternal paradise with Him?  Does that seem right and good?

                Babies have no ability to repent.  If they die in the womb, they have no ability to be baptized.  God is not evil.  So why would He cast such a child to Hell?  It has done no wrong other than to be born human!  Likewise, if a man is dying after being shot in the head and all he has time for before he dies is a last final thought, “Jesus…please forgive me!”  Do you think that God would send that man to Hell even though in his heart he was crying out to God for forgiveness?  Just because he wasn’t baptized, would God send a repentant man to Hell?  Doesn’t that go against the scripture, “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”?  Doesn’t it go against many, many other scriptures, even in the Old Testament, that tell us that all God really wants is a man or woman to repent?

                The Bible teaches that God doesn’t want anyone to perish.  He wants to save everyone that He can.  He isn’t up there just longing to throw people into Hell and getting upset because someone accepted Christ’s forgiveness.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.”  God…not Christ…so loved the world.  If He SO loves the world then He is not up there just looking for an excuse to throw people in Hell.  In fact, it is quite the opposite.  He is looking for every excuse that He can to save people and stay within the confines of His Law and His character.  In other words, as long as He isn’t compromising His own integrity, He will save a person.

                That is why the only thing you have to do is accept Christ.  Baptism, therefore, is a command that is an official inauguration into Christian society.  If you can, every Christian should be baptized at once; the moment they are saved.  Just as every new citizen of a country should have an official inauguration ceremony at the time that they receive their citizenship papers, so every Christian should be baptized at the time that they are saved.  If this is not possible, because you accept Christ at work, in the car, at a church with no baptismal prepared, etc., then you should do it the first chance you get.

                Does the new citizen have their official papers already regardless of whether they attend the ceremony or not?  Yes!  If they miss the ceremony will they still get those papers by mail?  Yes!  However, the official ceremony is important because it provides that person with a connection to the new nation.  It builds their pride and confidence in their new role as citizen.  Now they can walk down the street and boldly proclaim, “I am an official citizen of my new country” instead of feeling like an illegal alien. 

                Therefore, it is not imperative to salvation that you are baptized, but it is a very important thing for a Christian to do.  Like getting married without having a wedding, if you don’t get baptized you will always feel as if something is missing in your Christian life (well…typically people feel this way if they get married without a wedding).  It will always feel like you haven’t really made it all official.

6.            Build a relationship with God and with others. 

                The entire point of creating us was that God wanted to have a relationship with us and that He wanted to create a family.  Again, God loves us so much that He is not content to have us be mere citizens in His Kingdom.  He wants us to be His Children…Royalty!  Therefore, if a person becomes a Christian they should desire to learn more about their King and Father so that they know how best to please Him and make Him happy.  Just as a new citizen in a country should learn all the rules and laws of that country, so a Christian should learn about God and His laws so that they can do everything in their power to obey.  Even more so, it is expected that every child of a king should learn ALL of the laws of the land so that he/she may be proper representatives of their Father, the King.

                However, it is more than this.  It is also about getting to know God as a friend gets to know another friend or as a fiancé gets to know his/her fiancé.  Remember, Jesus died to purchase us rebels, but instead of making us slaves He has set us free and made us His friends.  He had every right to make us slaves, for He paid the price for our crimes.  However, He loves us and WANTS us to be His closest companions. 

                He doesn’t care that we were rebels and He doesn’t care about all of the horrible things we once did or even what we will do.  He overlooks these things because He loves us.  To Him, it isn’t about sin anymore.  It’s all about you getting to know Him and about Him getting closer to you.  All He cares about is that we have turned away from that life of crime.  He wants US in His life. 

                God made all humans and loves all humans.  He wants a relationship with YOU.  Therefore, if you truly want God to be your King then you should want to get to know God more.  And trust me…the more you get to know God the more you will want to get to know God.  God is infinitely amazing, and when you serve Him, even the hardest things that you must endure in life will become bearable.  You will still go through hardships, but I can tell you through experience, if I didn’t have God, some of the things I’ve been through would have killed me or driven me insane.

                Because God wants a relationship with everyone, it is then also imperative that you build relationships with others as well.  In order to truly love God you must love what God loves.  This means you can’t just love God from the comfort of your own home.  You have to go out and meet people and get to know them as well and learn to love them.

                This is why going to church is so important (besides gathering to worship God as a community, which can be extremely powerful, and besides hearing the preaching from the pastor/priest so they can help you learn the truth about God).  God wants you to bond and unite with other Christians.  It not only builds you up and makes you a better person, but God also uses you to build up others and make them better people. 

                Church also provides you with a support system should something bad happen in your life.  People you build relationships with will help you overcome those hardships.  Likewise, God can use you to help others overcome their hardships.  Church isn’t just about you receiving what you need.  It’s about God using everyone in the church to help out everyone else.  This is the way church is supposed to be; a united community built with love.

7.            Jesus commanded all of His followers to go out and tell everyone about Him and the sacrifice He had made for everyone and to tell them all about who He is, His likes, His dislikes, etc.  Therefore, YOU should go out and tell everyone that you can about Him and all that He has done and who He is, and so forth.

                This doesn’t necessarily mean that you go out and bash people over the head with constant preaching and talking about Christ.  I’m not criticizing people who do this.  I’m not picking on them.  You can’t blame someone for talking about Christ and getting all excited about it if they have been through horrible things and Christ has delivered them from it.  Some people are just so excited about Jesus that they just can’t get enough talking about Him.  Their whole life is filled with Christ.  Hey!  If you were set free from some of the things some people have been set free from…I think you wouldn’t be able to get enough of talking about Him either.

                Please note, this is different from the Basic #5 in that Basic #5 is simply going around telling everyone that you are a Christian.  Basic #7 is when a person goes out and tries to recruit other Christians; to teach them what Christ did so that they can also become citizens of the Kingdom of God.  It is more than bringing in massive numbers of people and having them say a sinner’s prayer.  It is about guiding people and teaching them all you know about Christ; sharing your experiences and all that Christ has done for you so that THEY might also be saved and so that THEY might also build a relationship with God and so that THEY might then reach out to others to tell them about who Christ is.

                It should be thought of like a person who has escaped from a burning building who turns around and realizes his neighbors are still asleep inside that building.  (I’ve been through this.  Thank God my neighbors woke me up instead of just letting me sleep at 1:00 in the morning when my apartment complex was on fire!)  Should you just stand there and do nothing and watch them burn to death?...or should you knock on doors, scream and shout if you have to, and throw rocks through their windows and grab ladders and hoses and do everything in your power to help save them?  A Christian will do whatever it takes to help save the lives of everyone they come in contact with so that the people they meet, especially friends and family, do not get consumed by the flames of Hell and the Lake of Fire.  Yes… some Christians can go a bit overboard, and so they wind up turning people away.  (Sometimes less is more and only God can give people the wisdom to realize just what will be most effective to those they are trying to reach.)  However, again I do not criticize these people.  I would rather have people going overboard trying to reach their loved ones for Christ than people sitting in pews on Sunday falling asleep and not willing to even lift a finger to help their neighbor when their neighbor is going through something horrible.

                So if you are not a Christian and you are reading this, please keep this in mind from now on.  This is why Christians get up in people’s faces or why they preach about it all the time and bash people over the head about Christianity and being saved all the time.  They aren’t doing it because they are trying to push their beliefs on people.  They are excited about Jesus and they want you to join them and they want to save you from Hell and the Lake of Fire.  They are just like those neighbors who woke me up at 1:00 in the morning.  They see the fire, and they want to warn people before it is too late.  You may get tired of it and you may not like it, but please at least respect them for why they are doing it.  It is because of love that they try to “push their beliefs” on you and others.  It is not just some religious fanaticism.