His words are much more powerfully clear than that. When you look at Jesus, and really hear what He tells you in the Bible, what you see is often times a figure who stands in stark contrast to the version of Him you’ve been taught about. It almost seems like the Jesus you think you know is more like the altar ego of the Christ of Scripture.
For the Jesus of the Bible, uses strong, divisive language. He separates sheep from goats. He brings “not peace, but a sword”. He desires for you, above all else, unity with Him. His summation of the driving purpose to life is not simply morality, or that you would be a good person, but that you would know true love and live in that love. “For God is love” and Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment, the most important aspect of our Christian faith, is that you should “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.”
What is a Christian Really?
Love is not a fuzzy feeling or an ephemeral emotion. Love is the ultimate act of self-giving. Love is to give of yourself. “There is no greater love than this, to lay down ones life for ones friends.” Not to give warm hugs and smile all day long, but suffer and sacrifice. That your life be not about you and your feelings, but rather about your union with God and His people.
Intimacy with God and neighbor is what our faith and our entire existence hinge upon. Without it we get it all wrong, we fail. We cease to be what we claim to be. For a Christian is not just a good person. Or to go even further, a Christian is not just someone who goes to church, and helps the poor, and recites the Creed.
A Christian is someone who knows Christ intimately—in prayer, in others, in everything—and that relationship powerfully effects the world around him. For His faith in the One he loves sets him on fire and that light reaches out into lives of others embracing them, calling them, drawing them out of the darkness of themselves and into the same intimacy with the Lord. That is what real Christianity looks like.
“Christians have spent their whole lives mastering all sorts of principles, done their duty, carried on the programs of their church… and never known God intimately, heart to heart. There is that troubling passage Jesus gives us when he says that in the final account of our lives, some folks who did all sorts of Christian things will be genuinely surprised not to be invited into heaven. It reads, ‘Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not’ do all sorts of Christian things, amazing things? And Christ will say, ‘I never knew you’ (Mt 7:22-23). The point is not the activity-the point is intimacy with God. Attend a class and take in information; then use that information to change the way you live. None of that will bring you into intimacy with God, just as taking a course on anatomy won’t help you love your spouse. ‘You will find me,’ God says, ‘when you seek me with all your heart’ (Jer 29:13).”
~ John Eldredge, Waking the Dead, Ch. 3