Introduction: Christianity uncovered

Some while ago, I was asked a question that I found somewhat difficult to answer, even though if I would of thought about this question prior to being asked it, I probably would of said to myself "Yes, that's an easy one." None the less, after realizing this to be a somewhat challenging question for myself, I thought it essential that I explain to my fellow brother and sister's in christ, and hopefully to some that don't know much about God, the answer to this complex question. The question that I was asked was "What does it mean to be a christian?" It is very possible that if I was asked a theological question, I would find less difficulty in answering that than in answering the actual asked question. Often times, I find that, I myself, get too focused on theological ideas of the bible that I forget to get back to what really matters, forget to get back to the basics.


Throughout this series, we will study subjects such as: different denominations of christianity, the role of a christian, spiritual gifts, and acceptance of Christ. These are divine truth's that I feel are not studied or looked upon often enough. I will do my best to remain away from strong theological points but let us remember that I am imperfect and I would expect that some will unknowingly slip into this series.

My hope for this series is that the people reading them would become stronger in their faith with Christ and that possibly some people, by God's grace, may come to know him. I ask for prayer during this series from fellow christian's so that I would not make the mistake of getting hung up on theological ideas. I am by no means against theology or deep thinking of the bible, for that is the reason I even started the blogs. But for this series, I feel it is important that we focus on God's amazing grace and how to worship and come to know such an awesome God. God bless all of you and I hope God speaks to you during this series.

God, Sin, and Man Parable.

I had a trip to go on today for my band class at my high school and God gave me a, what seemed to mundane at first, but was in truth, a miraculous experience. It was not actually on the band trip that this experience occured. It occured while I was walking home after me and my band had arrived at school. I was walking home due to lack of my family's ability to pick me up, everyone in my family, at the time, was preoccupied. So, without arguing, I told my dad I would simply walk home (it wasn't that far of a walk anyways). And as I was walking home and I had reached the street I live on, God presented me with an experience, that very well may be with me the rest of my life. I continued walking down my street, and after I had reached just a quarter of the streets length, I saw a crack in the pavement on the road (as you may know, there are cracks all over the roads in Klamath Falls). I obviously have seen plenty of cracks in plenty of roads. But, i'm am honestly not sure why I did what I did next. I walked up to the crack on the other side of the street and stood there for a second on one side of it without crossing over to the other side of the crack. Something in my head told me to think of the crack as God, and I, of course, represented a human. I then went on to imagine that a car (but there was not one there at the time) coming towards me, on the opposite side of the crack, would represent sin. And I thought of this to be somewhat of a pointless thought, because, in this case, the sin would not be able to reach me because God was intervening and would be blocking the sin from reaching me. And since we all sin, this felt somewhat rediculous for the time being. I then continued to walk down my street, not really thinking about what I was just imagining. I saw a rock that looked like it would be fun to kick, so I walked up to it and swung my foot at it, unfortunately, I missed. And after I missed, my foot tumbled and I fell. What I realized right as I was stumbling was that I was on one side of a crack when I had kicked the rock, and I was on the other side of the crack after I had fallen. I realized that if a car (sin) would have been on the other side of that crack, I would have (litterally) fallen into it. After this experience, I realized that it is not so much the sin that bashes through our belief in God and enters into our life, it is us that bashes through our belief in God in order to fall into sin. Perhaps a better example of this (that I also thought of on my walk home) is imagining us (humans) standing on one side of a door (God) and another man (sin) standing on the other side of the same door knocking. Now, the man who represents sin cannot reach us unless we open the door and, in doing so, push God aside and accept that sin enters into our life. Therefore, we are the sinners and God is our defense.

Good Works

Let me start off by saying that this blog, although it may seem like it at first, does not contradict my last post. In my last post, I meant to be speeking of the result of the holy spirit being in you; which is doing good works. But in this post, I will be talking about whether or not good works can save you apart from belief in Jesus Christ, as this seems to be a popular belief amongst human beings today.
The idea that good works apart from belief in Jesus christ is by no means being set from a biblical point of view. In the book of Galations, Paul adresses this issue:
Galations 2:16 "yet we know that a person in not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified."
This states quite clearly that a person is saved by the belief in God and not by good works or "works of the law." Not only this, but it impossible for someone who does not accept God as their savior and Lord to please him:
Romans 8:8 "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
Therefore, if we cannot please God if we don't accept him as our savior, then a person who lives a life full of good works but doesn't love God will fail carelessly to please him. Like I talked about in my last post, good works is the evidence of our salvation, not the cause:
Ephesians 2:10 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
As you can see in ephesians, God planned out and prepared beforehand what good works his followers were going to perform. Hence, why it is the evidence of our salvation. Furthermore, when something is our workmanship, it is the representation of what we are able to create. Therefore, if we are God's workmanship, then we have a responsibility to do good works so that others will see that we are honoring God. For it is dishonoring to God if we do not do good works, because as his creation, we are responsible to honor God in everything we do.
Titus 2:7 "Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works and in your teaching, show integrity, dignity."
Not only are we dishonoring God when we don't do good works as he commands, but we also dishonor ourselves. We should show dignity when teaching and doing good works so that no noe can condemn us or judge us when they see us do something that is against God's law. So, although works are not what make us recieve salvation, we are still commanded to commit them. How will others know that we are regenerated by Christ if we are not walking in good works. In order to honor God, we must be living a life where we are attempting to live for him with our best ability. We are not expected to live like Jesus did, but we are expected to try.