Who and What a Christian Really Is Part 1 – Eternal Life

Okay, so let’s begin!

First and foremost, a huge shout of gratitude to everyone of you for tagging along with me on this epic journey in understanding who and what a Christian really is.

There are a few things that I’d love to bring to your mind concerning who and what a Christian really is. Now the reason for this is, I want to ensure that every one of us has this mentality and understands these things correctly because that’s really what will define your relationship with the LORD Jesus Christ.

Now I’m almost certain that I’m not the only one that’s come across people make statements such as “I don’t know whether I want to be a Christian” or “I used to be a Christian…” or perhaps the one that saddens me the most “I’m part of the Christian religion”; like they consider it a religion and I just wonder whether people really do understand what it means to be a Christian.

Well, the questions to ask then should be “Who is a Christian”? What does it mean to be a Christian?
The obvious answer will probably sound something like “Well, isn’t a Christian a follower of Jesus Christ?” That’s not entirely true; that’s an inconclusive truth and you’re limiting your understanding to thinking in a specific line that the master himself Jesus Christ never even as much as implied.

A Christian isn’t just a follower of Jesus Christ, rather something far much larger in scope than just that.
I’m sure it should shock a lot of people to admit that the term “Christian” wasn’t given to us by Jesus Christ. It was actually unbelievers that labelled us “Christians” who observed the believers at a city called Antioch in Bible days and called all the believers “Christians” because as far as they understood that was all they knew about them; to be “followers of Jesus Christ” and nothing more really. Yet we are far more than that description!

If everyone knew who a Christian really is, it would change so many things about their perspectives and outlook on life.
So then what is a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? Who really is a Christian?
Here are six concrete elements I believe to be the true definition.

A CHRISTIAN IS ONE WHO HAS ETERNAL LIFE

So what does that mean, to have eternal life?

Well first thing’s first, I should point out that what we mean by “eternal life” isn’t necessarily “life that never ends” even though the description directly suggests it. Now we’ll jump over into scripture in just a moment and I’ll give you a step by step analogy of what we mean exactly.

Eternal life is the life of God. It’s the nature; the characteristic of God himself! Sounds big, doesn’t it? Well it should. Now I’m sure some overly religious Christians are probably drawing a red light already just by virtue of the first statement, and truly I wouldn’t blame you at all for it because that’s an enormous statement I’ve made just there: Christians? Having the life of God? Impossible! God is perfect and we are not, right? Well…take a moment and let me show you a few things from the scripture so as you may judge for yourself whether my statement really is true or false.

“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
—1st John 5:11

Now perhaps one of the most significant and simply dumbfounding things about this portion of scripture is the tenses used. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that it’s in the past tense.

Notice he says “This IS the record (the evidence, proof, documentation, confirmation, verification) that God HAS (past tense meaning He has already) given to US ETERNAL LIFE!”

Decipher carefully; you know sometimes we look at so many glorious things in the Bible and when we compare it to our own lives and what we really are in the “real world” we think perhaps there was some kind of miscommunication and we try boiling the truths down to sort of fit our current description. I love the “let’s be real” mentality that the world has, it marvels me how we refuse to believe even the scripture for the purpose of “being real”.
So let’s proceed “being real” with this scripture right here. Now we’ve established that the writer is claiming that God has already given to us eternal life and that his writings are the solid evidence that God really has given to us eternal life.

Now the scripture says “…God has given to us…” right? A curious question might be “when did he do it?” But that’s an explanation for another book.

The reason I’m dwelling so much on the tenses is because of an experience I once had with some evangelists a few years ago. I was on my way to campus and I was stopped by a group of three evangelists and they started preaching to me and I was listening as best as I could. Now the evangelist was explaining to me concerning the subject of humility and made a statement that raised my eyebrows. He said “If we obey God then we are assured of having eternal life when we die”

I was marveled at his statement. Back then I wasn’t the most mature Christian yet even then I knew that he hadn’t really understood this portion of scripture fully.

For those that are curious about how the story ended I kept silent and let them carry out their ministry in respect of the evangelical job they were doing and never questioned or got involved in any unnecessary arguments with them.
So just in case there are some that are still having misgivings about that truth and whether or not we have eternal life now or we are expecting to have it in the next life we can take a look at the very next verse:

“He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
—1st John 5:12

If that doesn’t get you to believe it now then I honestly don’t know what will. Because it’s clear that the writer is putting it in the past tense.

Okay so enough about tenses, I’m sure you get it by now. So let’s move on to the next point.

THE MEANING OF ETERNAL LIFE

So both the writer of the scripture we were reading and I have explicitly used the term “eternal life” so much and so carelessly it seems we have no idea the impact it carries, haven’t we? Well, not exactly! You see, both John and I have a perfectly good and super awesome understanding of the strength of the word “eternal life”
So I mentioned earlier that eternal life isn’t necessarily life that goes on forever, No! Let’s have another look at that scripture once more

“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
—1st John 5:11

Now the New Testament’s initial Greek text uses the key word “Zoe” to translate the word “life” in that portion of scripture. “Zoe” is Greek meaning “of the absolute fullness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God”. Zoe is the very life and nature of God himself.

For instance, here on earth science suggests we have plant life, and animal life. Well consider this more like God life. This life is what makes God who He is: God. It imbibes all of His personality and potency and ability and overall nature—this is Zoe: The God kind of life.

So when John says “God has given to us eternal life” it means God has given us His kind of life: Zoe. So we no longer operate at the basis of animal life. We are now far much higher than that!

DOES EVERYONE HAVE ZOE

Short answer: No. Not everyone on earth has Zoe; rather everyone has the same ability to obtain Zoe.
It’s important to note that this kind of life is the kind that only Christians have—it’s not for everyone.
Think I’m making it up? Let’s read verse 12

“He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
—1st John 5:12

The scripture has made it explicitly clear that only those that have received the Son of God (Jesus Christ) have this kind of life. What it means to have the Son of God is having accepted Jesus Christ as LORD over your life. Now accepting him and confessing his lordship over your life is important because when a man is born into this world, he is born with Satan as lord over his life because of the result of Adam’s transgression against God in the garden thus the kind of life you will live will be dependent on the standards set by Satan and his cohorts. So when you accept and confess the lordship of Jesus Christ he automatically takes the place of LORD over your life and thus the standards at which you
function in life change from functioning by worldly principles set up by Satan to heavenly principles. Now I’ll cover that topic on its own in greater detail in my later book “Principles of the Kingdom of God” where I discus further principles such as grace, fasting, faith, seeding, death and the like.

WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE ZOE

Zoe is awesome, and to give you a picture of just how super awesome Zoe is we’ll do a quick comparison of the characteristics of God versus the characteristics of natural men.

So at this point even I would be wondering why it is that even though I’m a Christian and thus have Zoe, why I’m constantly sick, or why I sometimes experience good luck and bad luck, like why this doesn’t seem to work for me or why it doesn’t seem work for me consistently. Well I’m happy to brag that personally 2015 marks nine years so far that I haven’t fallen sick for even something as minor as a headache. You probably think I’m exaggerating, and honestly I wouldn’t blame you for it. So in case you think I truly am exaggerating then ask yourself this: which point in the Bible had it ever recorded that Jesus ever fell sick?

In fact that’s one of the largest reasons why some still fall sick of ailments and the like: because of the beliefs they imbibe. They believe it’s normal to fall sick and truly that’s so sad how far down our thinking has been forced to conform to.

“Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
—Proverbs 4:23

That means be careful the information you allow into your mind and into your heart, because your life will be dictated by the information you allow into your heart.

Again, I will cover this teaching in more detail in my later book “Principles of the Kingdom of God”.
So that’s the first one of Who and What a Christian really is: someone that has received eternal life (Zoe), and now we can move on to the next one.