Christianity in the Holy Scriptures
CHRISTIANITY IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness." – 2 Timothy 3:16
The date was Monday, August 24th. The year was 1744. The location was the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on the campus of Oxford University. The occasion was a university chapel service. The preacher of the day was the Reverend Mr. John Wesley.
The title of Wesley’s sermon was simple: “Scriptural Christianity.” One of his main objectives for it was to paint a picture of what Christianity typically looked like in the life of a person in the times of the New Testament. As he put it, he sought to describe Christianity “in its rise, as beginning to exist in individuals.”[1] His sources of information for this were, of course, the Holy Scriptures themselves. According to them, Wesley wondered, what did a normal Christian life look like? What do the pages of Scripture reveal about the typical believer?
This question still has value nearly three hundred years after Wesley delivered his sermon, because churches today are populated with people whose understanding of the faith has been largely shaped by the culture around them. Unlike scriptural Christianity, cultural Christianity blends in with whatever happens to be currently trending in the contemporary world, regardless of whether such things align with the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Cultural Christianity makes its adherents feel more socially acceptable, validated, and relevant in the eyes of the world. It helps them fit in, which in almost every case feels better than not fitting in.
A generous assumption toward those who adopt cultural Christianity is that they are attempting to make the faith attractive to outsiders. That’s certainly no bad thing in and of itself. In fact, it’s a very good thing. It becomes problematic, however, when it results in cultural capitulation. Some Christians, even in their good faith attempts to share the good news with a nonbelieving world, end up compromising scriptural truth for the sake of cultural approval. They may make Christianity attractive, but it’s not the same Christianity revealed in the Holy Scriptures. It’s something else.
The Scriptures themselves declare that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Wesley’s basic message to his chapel audience at Oxford was that God really has no interest in any version of Christianity that does not align with the one portrayed in the Scriptures he has breathed into existence. God seeks flourishing Christian lives that are taught and trained in righteousness—and sometimes even corrected and rebuked in righteousness—by the truth found in the Scriptures. In other words, God wants people to embrace scriptural Christianity, not cultural Christianity.
So what does this mean? What does it mean to be a truly scriptural Christian? What does Christianity lived in step with the Christianity reflected in the pages of the New Testament look like? There may be several ways to answer that question. In his Oxford sermon, Wesley answered it by listing several qualities he believed characterized scriptural Christians. To keep the current sermon short, I highlight just six of them.
QUALITY 1 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: GENUINE FAITH
First, scriptural Christians are people of genuine faith. They possess earnest and sincere faith in God. Their faith is true. It is authentic. It is real. It is heartfelt. This is not to suggest that they always feel holy goosebumps or big feelings about Jesus. It simply means that they’ve allowed their faith to make its way to their heart, to the very center of their life. Scriptural Christians let the Holy Spirit use their faith to truly form, shape, ground, and inform their lives, just as the early Christians did in Christianity’s rise.
For scriptural Christians, faith in God goes far beyond mental assent to a set of propositional claims. It’s more than adherence to a creed or statement of doctrine. To be sure, those things matter, but the faith of a scriptural Christian does not stop there. It goes deeper. It combines solid beliefs with honest, real, genuine, life-impacting love for Jesus Christ. In other words, it is faith that they truly try to live by. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,” declared the apostle Paul, “but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Scriptural Christians live their lives by faith, genuine faith, in the Son of God.[2]
QUALITY 2 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'S LOVE
Second, Wesley preached that scriptural Christians know the love of God. They have experiential, first-hand knowledge of God’s great love for them. They depend on God’s love for their truest sense of identity. In the words of the first letter of John, they “know and rely on the love God has” for them. (1 John 4:16).
In his profound book Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, spiritual writer Brennan Manning insists that being loved by God is “the core of our existence” and “the foundation of the true self.” As opposed to our imposter selves who are overly concerned with winning the approval of others, Manning stresses that “our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.”[3] Scriptural Christians know this. They know they are loved by God. They have experienced God’s love firsthand. They hear messages like this one in Isaiah as a personal message from God to them: “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. You are precious in my eyes, because you are honored and I love you … the mountains may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken” (Isaiah 43:1, 4; 54:10).
QUALITY 3 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: A CONSISTENT SENSE OF PEACE
In addition to genuine faith and knowledge of God’s love, scriptural Christians also possess a consistent sense of peace in their heart. They are peace-filled, peace-experiencing, at-peace people.
Are they exempt from stress? No. Do they never feel any concerns whatsoever? Of course not. They experience and feel these things just like others do. But the difference is that their stresses and concerns are recognized for what they are: temporary. They are not permanent. They come, but only as moments, or perhaps seasons, to a person whose otherwise normal and dominant experience of life is one of peace and contentment.
The great hymn writer Horatio Spafford captured the essence of this in his stirring hymn It Is Well With My Soul. His famous lyrics express the sense of peace a scriptural Christian possesses: “When peace like a river attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’” Sorrows may roll from time to time, but scriptural Christians have been schooled to ultimately conclude that it will be well with their soul, whatever their lot in life.
The powerful words in the book of Philippians also come to mind here. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). Like a strapping soldier guarding a palace, God’s peace stands watch over the heart and the mind of a scriptural Christian. Concerns may come, but life is not permeated by concerns. Occasions for worry may come, but life is not marked by worries. It is marked by peace.
QUALITY 4 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: A HEART FILLED WITH JOY
Fourth, scriptural Christians possess a heart filled with joy. They are joy-filled people. They are “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8), or, as the King James Version puts it, with “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Scriptural Christians are full of joy.
True confession: The older I get, the more I would rather not spend time around certain types of people. It may come as a shock to hear a pastor say something like that, but it’s true. While I certainly aim to show kindness and patience to everyone, the older I grow, the more I want to steer clear of a certain type of person, and it is this type: the consistently grumpy, long-faced, cranky, negative, pessimistic, glass-half-empty person who identifies themselves as a follower of Jesus. And the main reason I want to avoid that type of person is because I simply do not want to become that type of person. And the main reason I do not want to become that type of person is because God does not want me to become that type of person.
God wants me to live with a heart full of joy. He wants me to live with the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart to stay. He wants my life to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy in all that he is, and in all he has done for me.
QUALITY 5 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: AN OUTLOOK OF HOPE
Fifth, scriptural Christians embrace an outlook of hope. They are what the Holy Scriptures refer to as “prisoners of hope” (Zechariah 9:12). They are locked into a belief in a good future for themselves, for the church, and for the world.
Christians are described elsewhere in Scripture as people who “boast in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). They have confidence in what God is up to. They believe something better is just over the horizon. So they wait in hope. The posture themselves toward hope. They lean into hope. And as they do that, they look for the good in people and in circumstances. They embrace optimism. They are not naïve or aloof to the real challenges of life, but they live with a tempered conviction that things will ultimately turn out for good.
Because they embrace an outlook of hope, scriptural Christians resist pessimism. They resist cynicism, and despair, and doom and gloom perspectives. Such acts of resistance require intentionality, because attitudes like cynicism and pessimism are commonplace in our world and, unfortunately, are also commonplace in churches. While we might expect them to be common in the world, they really should be much rarer among Christians. Scriptural Christians embrace an outlook of hope.
QUALITY 6 OF A SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIAN: LOVE FOR ALL PEOPLE
Finally, in addition to all these things, scriptural Christians show love for all people. They love everyone. They fully embrace the teaching of Jesus Christ to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (see Matthew 5:43–44). Scriptural Christians are intent on loving those who disagree with them, who make life difficult for them, and who bring accusations against them. They choose a posture of love toward those who vote differently, who worship differently, and who seem intent on not returning their love.
To posture oneself with love toward all people is no easy task. It takes a determined commitment to see the other person as a person—as a human being with hopes, dreams, fears, and feelings just like themselves. Loving others well takes a readiness both to apologize and to forgive. It takes sacrifice. It takes great patience. It takes humble strength. To love all people is to risk being misunderstood, mislabeled, and hurt. Scriptural Christians take this risk. They do this because, like Jesus, they love all people.[4]
CONCLUSION: A LIFE SHAPED BY SCRIPTURE
These six qualities—genuine faith, knowledge of God’s love, a consistent sense of peace, a heart filled with joy, an outlook of hope, and love for all people—are just a few of the qualities that characterize scriptural Christians. Others could be added, but perhaps the main point of naming them has less to do with the specific qualities themselves (important as they are) and more to do with encouraging us to make a habit of checking our Christian lives against the authority of the Holy Scriptures. As we do that, does our Christianity look more like it’s being formed by the consumeristic, me-first, anything-goes values of the culture around us? Or, alternatively, does it look like its being shaped by God’s God-breathed words?
My prayer is that you would not be a person whose faith is influenced primarily by cultural or pop Christianity. Too many Christians already live like that in our world. Instead, I pray that your faith would be shaped by the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, which contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living.
May your life and your faith be influenced by the words God has breathed.
May you be a scriptural Christian.
__________
A live version of this sermon was preached at Village Community Church in Kansas City, Kansas, on May 16, 2021.
[1] John Wesley, “Scriptural Christianity.” Wesley's sermon is available in many places, but the edition I consulted and recommend is in the Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, Volume 1: Sermons I, 1-33, edited by Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), 159-180.
[2] For more on heartfelt faith as the kind of faith through which a person is saved from their sins, see my sermon “Saved by Grace through Faith” (sermons.logos.comsermons963671-saved-by-grace-through-faith). For heartfelt faith a characteristic of an “altogether Christian,” see my sermon “Altogether Christian” (sermons.logos.comsermons968953-altogether-christian).
[3] Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, revised edition (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002), 52–53.
[4] For “love for others” as a characteristic of an “altogether Christian,” see my sermon “Altogether Christian” (sermons.logos.comsermons968953-altogether-christian).