If you’re not a Christian and you’re just browsing, this story will teach you a little bit about what it means to be a Christian. There are so many people, especially in the media, who call themselves Christians as they behave wholly without the love of Christ. This skews how the public views Christianity and Jesus.
To be Christian means to devote your life to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God, and God is love. Therefore, to be a Christian means to devote your life to love. And it’s not the sappy love of romance. It’s an all-giving, all-consuming, indiscriminate love that dominates your life and how you relate to others.
Love brings forth joy, and so this is a life of joy. To be devoted to Christ is to have a joyful life.
Christ invites everyone to have this life of joy with Him. And with Him, we are never alone. His presence fills our lives like water rushing in.
Christ explicitly says that in order to follow Him and show our devotion and love to Him, we must follow His commands. Jesus wrote the Bible. Therefore, we follow the Bible.
His two primary commands are summarized as firstly to love God wholly and second to love others as ourselves. If both of these commands are followed in the name of Jesus Christ, then you’re a Christian.
And being Christian means believing Jesus when He tells you things. We need to believe that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and rose from the dead three days later, conquering death and sin. We are all born with the taint of sin, because of what happened “In the beginning…” so we must be forgiven of our sins to be allowed to be with Christ. By believing Christ’s claims, we are forgiven of our sins.
By being forgiven of our sins and devoting our lives to Christ and love, we are saved and will spend eternity with Christ.