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"Not Christianity - but Christ"
I wonder if you agree with me that when we meet some people, we know immediately and instinctively that there is something about them which is different. They appear to have a secret which is not immediately apparent, and a secret which arouses within us a desire to have it too. It's something that makes them what they are. It isn't the way they talk, or the way they dress, or the way they behave, although to be sure it affects all those things. It isn't that they have affixed a label to themselves and proclaim that they are the adherent of some particular religion or ideology. It isn't even that they have a strict moral code to which they faithfully adhere. It isn't any of those things. So what is it?

What is different about them is that they know Jesus Christ and that he is a living reality to them. They dwell in him and he dwells in them. He is the source of their life and of course it shows in everything they say and do.

Do you know this old poem? It must be at least a quarter century old.

Not merely in the words you say
Not only in your deeds confessed
But in the most unconscious way
Is Christ expressed.

Is it a beatific smile
A holy light upon your brow?
Oh no, I felt his presence
When you laughed just now.

To me, it was not the truth you taught
To you so clear - to me still dim
But when you came
You brought a sense of Him.

And from your eyes, he beckons me
And from your heart, his love is shared
Till I lose sight of you
And see the Christ instead.

It is in consequence of knowing Christ that the people I am talking about have an inner serenity that adversity cannot disturb. It is the peace of Christ. They have a spiritual power which physical weakness cannot destroy. It is the power of Christ.

They have a hidden vitality which even dying and death cannot quench. It is the life of Christ. Or, if instead, I may use three New Testament expressions, we may say that “the peace of Christ rules in their hearts,” “the power of Christ is made perfect in their weakness,” and “the life of Christ is made manifest in their bodies.”

Do you know that the commonest description of a follower of Jesus in the New Testament is that he or she is a person “in Christ?” The word “Christian” only occurs three times in the New Testament and we could profitably dispense with it altogether. The expression to be “in Christ” however, or “in the Lord” or “in Him” occurs 164 times in the letters of Paul alone. And it is indispensable to the New Testament.

Now to be “in Christ” does not mean to be inside Christ as your tools are in a chest or your clothes are in a closet. To be “in Christ” means to be organically united to Christ as a branch is united to the tree or as our limbs are united to the body. And this personal relationship to Jesus Christ is the distinctive of his authentic followers. What distinguishes the followers of Jesus is neither their creed, nor their moral code, nor their ceremonies, nor their culture but Christ. What is sometimes, and rather mistakenly called Christianity, is in its essence neither a religion nor a system, but a person, Jesus Christ himself. It is not Christianity - it's Christ.

Let me call three witnesses to confirm this: one from Africa, one from Europe, and one from Asia. Professor John Mbiti from Kenya writes, “The uniqueness of Christianity is in Jesus Christ.” Or here is Bishop Stephen Neill, “The old saying that Christianity is Christ is almost exactly true. The historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth is the criterion by which every Christian affirmation has to be judged and in the light of which it stands or falls.” But better, I think, even than those two testimonies is one of that great Indian mystic, Sadhu Sundar Singh who had been a Sikh and then became a follower of Jesus. He was asked once by a Hindu professor what it was that he had found in Christianity, as he put it, that he had not found in his old religion. “I have found Christ,” said Sadhu Sundar Singh. “Oh yes, I know,” said the professor rather impatiently. “But what particular doctrine have you found or principle that you did not have before?”

“The particular thing I have found,” replied Sadhu Sundar Shingh, “is Christ!” It's Jesus Christ himself and our personal knowledge of him that is the distinctive mark of the followers of Jesus.

So for the rest of our thinking together, I want to pursue the implications of being in Christ. The first is this: to be in Christ brings personal fulfillment. Now all around us are people who are feeling alienated and unfulfilled. They are asking what it means to be a human being, how they can find satisfaction, or happiness. Where would you advise them to find it?

Not in the Chinese way. Do you know the old Chinese proverb, “If you want to be happy for one hour, get drunk. If you want to be happy for three days, get married. If you want to be happy for eight days, kill your pig and eat it. But if you want to be happy forever, become a gardener.”

Well, I'm not recommending that to you today. I want to say to you, “If you want to be happy forever, become a follower of Jesus.”

My friend, there is a hunger in the human heart that none but Christ can satisfy, there is a thirst that none but he can quench, there is an inner loneliness and emptiness that only he can fill. “I am the bread of life,” he said, “...whoever comes to me shall never hunger,” and again, “...whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, will never thirst.”

One person who has expressed this beautifully in the modern world is Malcolm Muggeridge. I don't know if you have come across this quotation from one of his books. He says, “I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the street. That's fame,” he says. “I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the highest slopes of inland revenue. That's success. Furnished with money and a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to,” he says, “may partake of trendy diversions. That's pleasure. it might happen once in a while that something I said or read was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself it represented a serious impact on our time. That's fulfillment.” Now listen: “And yet this I say to you and beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million and add them all together, and they are nothing, less than nothing, a positive impediment, measured against one draught of that living water which Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.”

Yes, he has found the secret in Jesus Christ. So, to be “in Christ” brings personal fulfillment.

Secondly, to be “in Christ” brings brotherly unity with one another. Because actually the expression “in Christ” in the New Testament has not only a personal meaning for the individual united to Jesus, it has a collective meaning. It means that we belong not only to the Christ, the Messiah, but to the Messianic community, to the new society that Jesus founded when he came
into the world.

Now, in this new community, Jesus has abolished all the barriers of race, and rank, and nationality, and class, and sex, which normally divide men and women from one another. And in their place he has created what the Apostle Paul calls a single new humanity. And he goes on “...that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. You are all one in Christ Jesus.”

So when you are united to Christ, you are united to one another. This unity was a sensational fact in the first century A.D. In days when women were despised, when children were abandoned, when slaves had no rights, and Jews and Gentiles were not on speaking terms with one another, they found reconciliation in Jesus Christ.

But today, well alas, to claim brotherly unity between the followers of Jesus may sound like a rather sick joke when so-called Christians are fighting one another in Northern Ireland, and segregated from one another in southern Africa and in other parts of the world. When the church of Jesus Christ is split into Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant; when Protestantism is further splintered into five main ecumenical families and thousands of smaller denominations and house churches, and in Africa there are 6,000 African independent churches, you may say how can you claim brotherly unity in Christ?

Well only, I think, in this way. That although every follower of Jesus must blush with shame over the fights and the factions that divide his followers from one another, yet still, you know, those who are truly in Christ, who are united to Jesus Christ by personal faith, whatever their nation or denomination, their race or rank, their class or culture, find that they are beautifully united as brothers and sisters in the world-wide family of God.

Our reunion schemes I think are important. It seems to me that the visible unity of the church in some sense is a proper goal for our endeavor. But far more important than ecclesiastical structures is this spiritual unity that we can enjoy in Jesus Christ.

So, are you with me so far? To be “in Christ,” united to him, brings personal fulfillment and it brings brotherly unity with one another.

Now thirdly, to be “in Christ” brings radical transformation of our character. I believe that one of the sad things in the church today is that we constantly trivialize what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Of course, the great thing there in the United States is to claim to be “born again,” and sometimes people talk about being born again as if all it meant were to subscribe to some theological formula, or to get a religious experience, or to join an evangelical sub-culture. Then you scratch the surface or crack the veneer of this “born again” person, and you find that he or she is the same old pagan underneath. There doesn't seem to be any radical transformation of our character and conduct.

But, no, emphatically to be a Christian is to be a new person. Paul wrote in II Corinthians, “If anybody is in Christ, there is a new creation.” And he goes on, “If we are in Christ, we have died to the old life and risen again to something new.”

Did you notice creation language and resurrection language because nothing else can do justice to the newness of being “in Christ?”

Well, I think we need to go on from there to say that this new life inevitably leads to a new life style with a new value system and new moral standards. That becomes abundantly plain if you read “The Sermon on the Mount.” For in “The Sermon on the Mount” Jesus sets before us a choice between the way of the world on the one hand, and his way which is radically different, on the other.

For example, the world admires the powerful, the successful, the tough, the brash, the achievers, and the go-getters. But Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit (that is, those who are humble before God), and blessed are the meek (those who are humble before others).”

The world's model has been taken from Nietzsche, the German philosopher. It's the model of the superman again tough and brash and masculine. But the model of Jesus is the little child in all his or her humility and simplicity.

The world is concerned with appearances, with external conformity to rules and regulations, and keeping up with the Joneses. But not Jesus! Jesus kept referring not to external appearances but to the heart, “the pure in heart,” and “Where your heart is, there your treasure is also.”

The world says that sex is for fun, and it's enjoyment without commitment. Jesus says, “Sex is for love - it's enjoyment within commitment.”

Again, the world's philosophy is “to give as good as you get,” “to love those who love you,” and “pay back evil to those who have done evil to you.” But Jesus still says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you, and overcome evil with good.”

Again, the world takes it for granted that we shall store up treasures on earth, greedy for consumer goods. But Jesus says that our treasures are to be in heaven and we are to be generous in our use of whatever worldly wealth we may have. And so I could go on.

You see, there is a fundamental difference between the way of the world and the way of Jesus and we have no liberty to dismiss the teaching of Jesus as if it was unrealistic, or to substitute for the teaching of Jesus a prudential little middle-class respectability. No, Jesus calls us to be radically transformed in our character and conduct, and he still says to us that we have to choose because we cannot serve two masters. There is a broad road that leads to destruction and there is a narrow way that leads to life, and between those two it is necessary to choose. If we disregard his teaching, we are fools and build our lives on sand. But if we follow the teaching of Jesus, we will build our lives on rock and the house of our life will withstand the storms of life and indeed of the judgment day.

So let me sum up where we have got to so far: to be “in Christ” brings personal fulfillment, it brings brotherly unity with one another, and it brings a radical transformation.

But you may say, and I hope you are, if you are following me, “What about the world outside that Marshall McLuhan taught us to refer to as the global village? Are the followers of Jesus interested only in themselves and in each other and do they want to let the rest of humankind go hang?” No, Jesus expected his followers to be like salt and light in the community. He means us to permeate the secular community and influence it for him, arresting its decay like salt and illuminating its darkness like light.

Some of the followers of Jesus are much too pessimistic. They think there is nothing they can do in this wicked world to change it. But on the contrary Jesus expected us to have an influence in the world as salt hindering decay and light dispelling darkness.

Jesus also commissioned his followers to go into all the world, proclaim the Good News, and make disciples of all the nations. Because he said, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and in earth.” God has super-exalted Jesus, given him at his right hand the place that is above every other honor, given him the place of supreme executive authority in the universe, that every knee should bow to Jesus and every tongue confess that he is Lord.

But I want at this point to add a caution: to proclaim Jesus Christ and his uniqueness is one thing, to proclaim the superiority of Western culture and civilization is another.

We honor 19th century missionaries very much for their self-sacrifice and courage, but we have to be honest and say some of them made a mistake in confusing the Good News of Jesus with Western culture. I myself have been several times in West Africa and have seen with my own eyes Gothic spires rising above the coconut palms; I've seen Episcopal bishops sweating profusely in medieval European robes; and I've heard African tongues trying to articulate Jacobean and Elizabethan English. It's absurd! But this is what we did. We didn't only take the Good News of Jesus, we took some of the baggage of Western culture with us.

Stanley Jones, the great American Methodist missionary, put this beautifully when he was talking about the need for Jesus Christ to become “naturalized” in every country. He ends his book, The Christ of the India Road in this way. He says there is a beautiful Indian marriage custom that dimly illustrates our task in India and where it ends. At the Indian wedding ceremony, the women friends of the bride accompany her with music to the home of the bridegroom. They usher the bride into the presence of the bridegroom and then they retire. That is as far as they are allowed to go, and they then leave the bride with her husband. “That,” says Stanley Jones, “is our joyous task in India—to know Jesus, to introduce him to India, and then to retire, not necessarily geographically, but to trust India with Christ and trust Christ with India. We can go so far. He and India must go the rest of the way.”

So let me conclude. Our concern as the followers of Jesus is neither with a religion called Christianity, nor with a culture called western civilization, but with a person called Jesus Christ, the one and only God-Man, who died for our sins on the cross and rose again. And who is the only media for between God and man, and who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Our concern with Christ is a concern to be “in Christ,” united personally to him. In him ourselves in an increasingly intimate and satisfying relationship, closely united in love with others who are “in Christ” too, irrespective of race and rank and nationality, in him in such a way as to become like him, radically transformed into his likeness, and in him so as to become the world's salt and light, sharing his good news with others and making an impact on society.

My dear friend, if you and I can only be “in Christ” in this way, then in God's goodness, we shall bring glory to Jesus Christ, the glory that is due to his name.

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