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I recently bought a sports shirt for my son off the internet. It was a very good price, in some ways—too good, looking back. It promised that it was the real deal, but when it arrived, it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t authentic. I had not bought it from the official channels, and it proved, sadly, not to be genuine. It was disappointing and yet not particularly surprising.
It is one thing to buy inauthentic merchandise, but it is another thing entirely to be called inauthentic as a person. To be called inauthentic is never a compliment. To be described as someone who is fake, false, or phony is an enormous insult. It can mean the end of a political or business career, and it can have disastrous implications for a relationship.
When it comes to church, shockingly, there have always been those who are not the real deal. Judas was one of the twelve disciples, but he turned out not to be a true disciple. In the early church, Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 and Simon Magus in Acts 8 proved to be false. There are those who on the last day will say to Jesus that they did this or that in His name, and He will reply, “I never knew you; depart from me” (Matt. 7:21–23).
There are always those in the church who are not authentic, but one of the marks of the true Christian is this struggle and battle for authenticity. True Christians love God and trust in the Lord Jesus but are painfully aware of their battle with sin.
Every faithful Christian knows that within us there is this great contradiction. We love the Lord and are thankful for forgiveness, for adoption, for all His many blessings. Yet—and it is a big yet—we are aware of the gap in our lives: a gap between what we know and believe and how we behave. We know that there is sin in our lives; the natural bent of our hearts is away from the things of God. There are even times when we know that we are doing something wrong, but we do it anyway. It leads us to the questions: Am I the real deal? Am I an authentic Christian? What does an authentic Christian lifestyle look like?
John Newton famously said, “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.” We need that reality and perspective in addressing this issue of the pursuit of authentic Christianity.
In this pursuit of authenticity, the primary point to note is that the Christian life is lived out with others. The New Testament knows nothing of the solitary Christian. When we see the word “you” in Scripture, our first instinct is to interpret it as referring to the individual Christian. There are times when that is right. The Apostle Paul was able to say that Christ “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), “me” referring to both the author and the reader of the statement. But the primary way that the New Testament describes the Christian blessings that we enjoy is by addressing them to the church corporately. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament shows us that twenty-one of the twenty-seven books were addressed to churches and so should be read and applied first with that in mind.
The air we breathe in Western culture is suffused with individualism, and as Christians we need to recognize that dynamic and fight it. As Christians, we are called to play our role in the people of God. God has given each of us to the church as a gift, and He has given the church to each of us as a gift.
There are fifty-nine “one another” commands in the New Testament. “Love one another”; “forgive one another”; “be at peace with one another”; “care for one another”; “greet one another”; “be patient with one another”; “encourage one another”; “pray for one another”—I could go on. The call of the Christian life is to wholehearted commitment to Christ’s church. We are members of one body. The Scriptures use this beautiful picture of the church with each part of the body doing its work (Rom. 12:4–5; 1 Cor. 12:13–27). Some are eyes, some are feet, some are fingers—each one has its role, each is indispensable, and all are inseparable from Christ our Head. Tragically, there are Christians who keep themselves at arm’s length from the body.
This means that belonging to and being committed to one local church is just ordinary Christianity. It involves making use of the means that God has given to fuel our growth as Christians. People talk rightly of the ministry of “showing up” at church, putting yourself under the preaching of God’s life-giving Word, partaking of the sacraments, and giving yourself to prayer with the saints. Never underestimate the encouragement it is to others just for you to be present at worship or at a prayer meeting. In committing to one church, you are saying: “This is my family. I am going to submit myself to the God-given leadership of this church and serve my brothers and sisters wherever I can. I will strive to live a life of loving commitment to the Lord and to others.”
Jesus spoke of this kind of lifestyle when He said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). The authentic Christian life is a giving away of ourselves to others.
Of course, this doesn’t stop at the church door; we’re called to live out the Christian life in the various situations into which God has called us. In every Christian, there should be a loving concern for others, particularly caring for those who are in need. All of Jesus’ disciples are to care for the poor and needy. No Christian is exempt from showing love and compassion.
Second, God has put us in families, and in Scripture God gives clear instructions as to how we are to relate to one another in the Lord (see Eph. 5:22–6:4). Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and wives are to submit to their husbands as the church does to Jesus. Fathers are not to exasperate their children, and children are called to obey their parents in the Lord. There is no difficulty in understanding what we’re called to; the difficulty is in doing it. We recognize that on this side of glory, we will never do it perfectly, and we cannot do it in our own strength. We desperately need the gracious help of the Holy Spirit. It means that the authentic Christian home will be characterized by a humility that recognizes that it doesn’t live up to God’s standards, a dependence on Christ, and a reliance on the help of the Holy Spirit. The words “Please forgive me for . . .” will often be heard in a Christian home. There will be an atmosphere of the love of Christ and forgiveness given as Christ has forgiven us (see Eph. 4:32).
Third, God has given us vocations. Work is a creation ordinance, a good gift from God. Work has been spoiled by the fall and is full of frustrations, and yet we are to see the goodness in our work of creating and forming and bringing order into God’s good creation. The biblical worldview shows us that even our frustrating work is to be lived for the glory of God. This understanding of work will also keep us from making work too important in our lives. We are not defined by our work; our security and identity are not found in our jobs. An authentic Christian life will pay attention to God’s pattern of work and rest, for “six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Ex. 20:9–10).
All these areas are lived outward toward others. But there is also the bedrock of communion with God that underlies everything. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). We want to live the Christian life authentically out of a love for God. This will show itself in prayer and a love for God’s Word and a delight in His saving work. Psalm 116 expresses this beautifully; it focuses on the God who answers prayer, who rescues and delivers, who is gracious and righteous and merciful:
I love the Lord, because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!”Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful. (vv. 1–5)
Our desire to know Him and live for Him will lead us to loving His Word and desiring to know Him better. The true study of doctrine flows out of a heart of love for God, and its outcome is a life changed by Him.
The authentic Christian life is built on the authentic God. He is the Rock, and there is no other (Isa. 44:8). He is the Lord, and there is no other (45:5). As His people together pursue authentically loving and living for Him, in many ways it will look very ordinary. But it is utterly extraordinary. The outsider should see people who have struggles and are not perfect, and yet they know their God and do great exploits (Dan. 11:32).
In the end, our lives will tell the tale of our beliefs. Jesus constantly argued for authenticity, saying, for example, that what we do with our money will tell where our hearts are (Matt. 6:21) and that the words that come out of our mouths reflect what is going on in our hearts (Luke 6:45). Our life together as the church body will bear the marks of authenticity, saying, “Here are people who know and love God.” There could be no more powerful witness to a watching world.