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Ca312 04
Ca312 04
Christianity Is Personal
Christianity Is Historical
Christianity Is Supernatural
Christianity Is Redemptive
Christianity Is Relevatory
Christianity Is Exclusive
Christianity Is Authoritative
Christianity Is Representative
When the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, He came as our
representative. And this is one of these great characteristics of
biblical Christianity. He came as our representative. That’s why
the apostle Paul stated in Ephesians 2:5–6, “Even when we were
dead in sins, God hath quickened [the old English word quickened
means made alive] us together [notice that word together] with
Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together,
and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Notice that three times over we have the word together. That
refers to Christ and the believer, that when Christ was quickened
in the grave, in the mind and the eye of God all of us as believers
were quickened. When He was raised up in the resurrection, we
were all resurrected. And when He was seated at God’s right hand
in the heavenlies, all of us as believers were seated there at God’s
right hand. So Christ lived and died and was buried and rose again
and ascended as our representative. That’s a very important thing
to realize. It means that all of the representative work of the
Lord Jesus Christ is automatically written into the spiritual bank
account of all of those who believe upon Him as Savior and Lord.
We lived in Christ when Christ obeyed the law of God. We died
in Christ when Christ died under the penalty of our sin. We were
resurrected from the grave in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and we were seated with Christ in the heavenlies in His ascension
and in His exaltation. This is a comforting thing to understand,
so one of the important characteristics of Christianity is that it is
representative.
Christianity Is Covenantal
Jesus Christ is the source, the channel through whom all of the
blessings of the covenant and the provision of God flow into our
lives. Christ is that channel. He is the Mediator. He is not only the
one who’s made it possible. We receive all of the benefits through
Him through receiving Him into our lives. Having done that, we
understand in the Scripture that we are brought into a covenantal
relationship with God, so Christianity is covenantal.
Christianity Is Contemporaneous
Christianity Is Dynamic
Christianity Is Demanding
The twelfth and the last characteristic that I would present to you
in this lecture is that Christianity is demanding. It is demanding.
The revelation of God to us brings an obligation into our lives.
No one is neutral to this. A person may live as the avowed and
professional atheist. I doubt as to whether there are any genuine
atheists. Certainly people can adopt that type of intellectual
stance if they want to about religion. They can call themselves
an atheist, but we know from the Scripture that all people have
been created in the image and likeness of God. And a part of that
creation means that they have been inescapably related to God.
No person can plead neutrality about the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ or His work in history. We can deny the reality of the Lord
Jesus as the eternal Son of God and think of Him only as a Galilean
peasant. But that doesn’t mean that He’s not the Son of God. And
we can deny the authoritative and the historical atonement of the
Lord Jesus Christ, but that doesn’t deny its authority. The Lord
Jesus Christ did die. The resurrection is true. He did ascend. He
did send the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and that brings
an obligation into our lives. No person can live as though Christ
did not die. And no person can live as though He did not come
forth from the grave.