WHY AM I A CHRISTIAN

[Randy Smith]

WHY AM I A CHRISTIAN
The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He heth anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive,and to recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised (LUKE 18:4).
As thou has sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world(ST.JOHN 17:18).

The story of Jesus' return to His home town to preach strikes a reponve note in the heart of every preacher and every layman, for most of us have been in the pulpit or pew on similar occassions. While our experiences have not been as violent as that morning service in Nazareth many years ago, we have felt the tensions and recognize the problems. It does not take too much imagination to enter into this experience of our Lord.At the beginning, everything went well, no doubt, He was a fine young man with an excelllent voice and most pleasing personality. He had a great text-one of the most familiar, from one of the greatest of the prophets. One can almost see the congregation settling down for a good sermon and a pleasant period of quiet. This they said unto themselves this is going to be all right. Then everything went wrong. For the young preacher did not come to the usual conclusion, but shook them awake with His quiet comment: This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears(LUKE 4:11). And as He went on to explain what He meant, they became even more angry until they would have thrown Him over a cliff if He had not escaped from them.
They could not believe the Spirit of the LORD would be on someone they knew. This young man who had grown up among them and was the son of their neighbors must be suffering from delusions of grandeur if He thought Isaiah was talking meant Him. We can hardly ever believe the boy next door is a genius or that the man on the next block may be a leader in his field. But the main cause of their anger was Jesus' announcement that He intended something definite. His teaching was not to remain vague and general, which meant that He had come to waken people to their specific obligations to God. If this kept up, then people would be uncomfortable and perhaps they might even be driven to sacrifice. There was a good chance that such a religion would upset established orders. They took what seemed the easy way to a solution-they became angry and drove Him from their midst
We have not changed very much in 2000 years. For the vast majority of Christians, religion remains a hopelessly vague affair. Ask the average church member what it means to be a Christian and you will soon see that it does not mean anything precise. They will probably murmur something about the golden rule, or list a few negative virtues, but they will show no sense of mission. We argue definitions and we ask academic questions about conscience, but we seldom proclaim that as Christians we have been sent to do specific things. Science needs more Spiritual guidance and Christians needs more scientific exactness.
It is time we asked what it means to be a Christian and why we are Christians. We must turn back to Jesus and find out what He conceived His task to be. There is no clearer statement than the program that He announced in Nazareth when He read from Isaiah. It must follow then that we are to imitate Him or, as the Fourth Gospel says it, He expects us to send us forth to do what God had sent Him to do. After all when we say we are Christians it means to be Christ like. Let us then think about these things(continued in part 2 next week).