JOHN SMITH points out that anyone can claim they are born again but who's taking the pains to demonstrate it?

John Smith

Evangelical Christians have always taught that God saves us by his grace and I believe that without question. But they have tended to say if God saves us by grace, it is very dangerous to talk too much about the works that our life should express.

Rene Padilla, head of the Latin American Theological Commission, has said that in our eagerness to push the doctrine 'by grace are ye saved through faith', we have thrown out any doctrine of works. When I first heard him say that I went right through the New Testament and pulled out every verse that talks about works. I was stunned.

I found that even the favourite verse of fundamentalist Christians, the one about the Bible being inspired of God and profitable, says that the purpose for which it is inspired is that we might do every kind of good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). James says, "Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do" (2:18).

Evangelicals don't like that. I used to think it was a struggle over theology but now I think it's because they are like all the other coots in the theological pen: they're all troubled about their practice.

How do we know who is born of God and who is a child of the Devil? 1 John states, "Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother" (3:10).

John is aware of something that plagues the 20th century - the redefinition of 'love'. The Greeks were already into that at the time John wrote. The bane of our society is the confusion between romantic love and the love that really sustains relationship and changes the world. Now personally, I'm a hopeless romantic. I believe romance is a wonderful gift of God.

But our generation has confused romantic love and real love. Biblical love is a matter of deciding things in the interests of the other person. It has little to do with how you feel about it emotionally.

Many Christians are living what they think is a loving life, and therefore a Jesus life, because they get into a worshipping group where certain almost 'psycho-sexual' signals are constantly given off that make the heart feel 'loving feelings'. But biblically the 'heart' has to do with the mind and the will as well as the emotions. The tragedy is that you can feel tremendous emotional gooeyness towards someone and do nothing with respect to their needs.
John states, "We love because God first loved us. If someone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his us. If anyone says, "I love God", yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:19-20). "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death" (3:14). What kind of love? Psychosexual Greek, romantic love?

The kind of 'falling in love' we talk about is more hormonal than anything else. God has given us minds that can will ourselves to change our responses to our hormones. But if we let the hormones make the decisions, we get people walking round with wonderful mushy feelings while people are starving to death -and they couldn't care less.

In the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus wouldn't give the definition of 'neighbour' the lawyer wanted. He ended up saying, "Go and do likewise." Action, not theory. The world will know that Christians are children of God when they give their lives for the man or woman on the road.

A Christianity that does not encompass what we do is simply not up to scratch on a biblical definition. We have been taught in evangelical circles two things, one true, the other heretical. The true thing is that everything is a result of God's grace. The heresy is that you can call yourself a Christian simply because you have the right doctrine about the atonement, the Person of Jesus, the Book and so forth.

Biblically, a Christian isn't someone who believes the right bunch of forensic arguments but someone who follows Jesus. Tony Campolo points out that the 'new birth' is mentioned just once in the whole Gospels, but Jesus says "follow me" 88 times.

Don't be obsessed with fixing the date you were born again. Be obsessed with following Jesus. And if that makes you a bit afraid to call yourself a Christian, that mightn't be a bad thing. It might be better if the world saw fewer people making claims and more people going to pains to live the Gospel.