Today I’ve got a four-point test for you. You know how people argue about religion and often the debate is about what makes a Christian and what doesn’t. You’ve heard people say, ‘Well if that’s Christianity I want none of it, and others who seem to think that Christianity is a kind of examination in being good.
Of course it’s not. It’s being spiritually restored into a personal friendship with God, and that’s what Jesus Christ came to do.
Now the question is this, how do you know? How can you be sure? How can you be certain you are a Christian?
Well, here’s where the four-point test comes in.
1. Your centre is in Christ, Jesus is Lord, He is the
Boss. He gives the orders. That’s the number one test- Jesus Christ is the centre.
2. Your confidence is in what Christ has done. You know you are forgiven, you have assurance; you know He’s forgiven you your sin.
3. Your conscience is shaped by what Christ has said and your personal standard of what is right and wrong have now been shaped by the Bible. They’ve suddenly become alive.
4. Your continual power supply is the Holy Spirit, a living power within you that helps you to love people and go on growing into a more mature Christian.
Ah! Yes, but this involves fellowship and a thousand other things, you say, but then there’s the four point test.
Jesus puts it all very much more simply in John Chapter 3, where He described a Christian as someone who’s been born all over again; permanently changed into a new relationship in which everything is different. That is the transforming friendship of Christ.