What does it mean to be a Christian? Charles Hodge, one of the great reformed theologians of the 19th century, found the answer in this text: “It is to be constrained by a feeling of love for our divine Lord, so that we dedicate our lives to him. “
Being a Christian does not simply mean believing, from the bottom of my heart, that Christ died for us. What does that mean, to be ashamed? For the love shown in this act. The truth is pushing us. Strength and appropriation; readers and orders. The truth surrounds us, it won’t let us escape. It sustains us in joy.
- How does this make the truth? Paul said that Christ’s love embarrassed him by a judgment he made about death: “To judge us thus: for all of us we die; soon.
- Are they all dead?Paul became a Christian not only by decision based on the fact that Christ died for sinners.
- But also by a wise perception that Christ’s death was also the death of all for whom he died.
In other words, becoming a Christian is to come to believe not only that Christ died for his people, but also that all his people died when he died. Becoming a Christian is first to ask this question: am I convinced that Christ died?for me and that I died in it? I am willing to die, to live in the power of his love and to show his glory. Secondly, being a Christian means answering yes, from the bottom of your heart.
Christ’s love compels us to answer yes. Do we feel so much love for Christ’s death that we discovered our death in His death?Our death to all rival loyalties. We are so dominated (“forced”) by the love of Christ that the world disappears, as before dead eyes. The future opens a broad field of love.
A Christian is a person who lives under the restriction of Christ’s love. Christianity is not simply a belief in a set of doctrines about Christ’s love. Is it an experience to be ashamed of this love? Future present past.
However, this restriction arises from a judgment we make about Christ’s death: “When he died, I died. “It’s a deep judgment. ” Just as Adam’s sin was, legally and effectively, the sin of the whole race, so the sin of Christ Death was, legally and effectively, the death of his people. Since our death has already happened, we no longer have a conviction (Romans 8. 1-3). This is the essence of Christ’s love for us. By his undeserved death, Christ died our well-deserved death and opened his future as our future.
Therefore, our judgment on his death ends up being constrained by his love. This was expressed by Charles Hodge: “A Christian is someone who recognizes Jesus as Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, who loved Is he also a person affected by the sense of love of this incarnate God, to the point of being forced to make Christ’s will the norm of his obedience and the glory of Christ the great target for which he lives??
How can we not live for the One who died our death, so that we may live for his life?To be a Christian is to be limited by the love of Christ.
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