NOW THAT I AM A CHRISTIAN WHAT’S NEXT?

Once a person has accepted Christ into his life, generally his mind becomes filled with all sorts of questions.  I know that was true for me because I probably knew as little about God, the church, the Bible, and religion as anyone ever. And suddenly I was immersed in this new world and culture that was all unfamiliar to me.  I was like a babe in the woods.  I didn’t know how or where to begin.  And much of what other Christians told me didn’t mean much because much of what they said was in religious terms which I did not yet understand.

My purpose in this brief article is to try to help you get a handle on your new life in Christ.  The rest of your entire life will continue to be a learning experience for you.  And the whole of Christian knowledge cannot be condensed into a short article such as this.  However, hopefully this will provide some basic concepts of truth that will help you to establish a solid platform on which you can begin to form this new life which is now in you.  The format will be that of questions and answers.

 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SAVED?

You will hear many terms used, which all refer to this.  You may hear people speak of being born again, saved, regenerated, redeemed, and a new creature.  These terms are used many times in the Bible and all refer to being saved.  They all refer to different aspects of what it means to be saved or to put your trust in Jesus.  To be saved means that God has forgiven all your sin and has made you his child, which he will take to heaven to be with him eternally at the end of your life.

 

Getting saved is what transpires when a person without God, now turns toward him and opens up his heart to believe and trust in him.  Getting saved happens much like getting married, and the Bible uses this comparison to illustrate it for us.  When a person gets married, he agrees to take this other person as a part and partner into his own life.  And getting saved is much the same.  Before, you had been living your own life your own way.  But now, you are asking someone to share their life with you and you with them. The Apostle John said in John 1, “To as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God.  Even to as many as believed on him.”  Being save means believing in Christ and receiving him into your life.

 

WHAT CAN I EXPECT NOW?

It certainly would be nice if there was a specific blueprint in the Bible of what to expect next.  However, there is not.  New believers are like new babies in a family.  If you are a parent or sibling and you realize that no two babies are exactly alike, not even “identical” twins.  And because people are different then their experiences will also appear differently to them.  The Bible gives accounts of several different people who trusted Christ and none of them responded in the same manner.  Their reactions vary from that of leaping into the air and shouting, to that of just quietly walking away and following Jesus.

 

Many people will try to convince you that you should experience this or that, or that you should act in this way or that.  However, Luke tells us that the kingdom of God does not come with observations.  That is, there is no visual sign or distinguishing outward mark or action that distinctly identifies one person as lost and another as saved.  Because you may feel something or not feel something is not an indicator that you are saved.  The Bible plainly declares that if you believe in Jesus, then you are saved, no matter how you may feel or not feel. You are not saved by what you feel, but rather by what you believed and in whom you put your trust.  The Bible says anyone who believes in Jesus and what he has done to save people, is saved because of his belief, not his feelings.

 

So, am I saying that when a person accepts Christ into his life, there is no difference at all?  No!  I am just saying that it may not appear as you may have been predispositioned to expect.  Many people do feel joy.  Some people do experience a sense of relief.  Some people do experience peace.  These usually differ because of where you’re coming from before trusting Jesus, or because of differing personality types.  However, something you may experience is a new awareness of God.  Whereas before, you may have gone days, weeks, or even months without any thought of God at all.  And now, you may find it hard to get him out of your thoughts.  Before, you may have thought little about how you act or what you do. Now you might find yourself being more concerned about loved ones and how what you do affects them. You may find thoughts and questions about God, just sort of popping up in your mind.  This is one of the ways God communicates with believers.  God’s Holy Spirit now lives in the believer and he often causes unprovoked thoughts to just pop into your thinking.  This is how God reveals to you that you now have a living relationship with him.

 

WHAT IS BAPTISM ABOUT?

There is much talk about baptism in some religious circles that just doesn’t hold water when compared to what the Bible actually teaches (no pun intended).  I will just say a word or two about it and then move on.  First, baptism does not save anyone, although this is taught by several churches.  The Bible teaches that baptism is an outward action which portrays an inward change that has already taken place in the heart of the believer.  The Bible gives no account of anyone who was ever saved by baptism.  And no one in the Bible was ever baptized with Christian baptism until after professing a belief in Christ.  The Bible teaches that baptism is a way of publicly declaring your new life in Christ.  Just as a wedding ring is a symbol of being joined in life to another, so also is baptism a symbol of being joined to Christ. You can put on a wedding ring and still not be married, you can be baptized and still not be a believer.  It’s not the symbolism that saves you, it is what the symbol represents that saves you.  Baptism is also somewhat of an initiation rite for becoming a member of the local church.  For the church does not receive people into its membership who refuse to publicly confess Christ.  The local church receives into her membership only those who are already members of God’s family.

 

SHOULD I BECOME A MEMBER OF A LOCAL CHURCH?

Salvation does not require church membership.  However, the church was instituted by Jesus himself as a family of believers to care for one another.  It is a place where believers gather regularly for instruction and encouragement in their Christian walk.  The church also provides the avenue for corporate worship and service in God’s program.  The church provides the best avenue for the giving of your time, financial support, and service to God’s kingdom work.  The local church provides you with a sense of belonging and is the family that gathers around you and helps to support you in times of need.  Being a part of a local church body is vital to the proper growth and development in the way Christ desires you to.  As a general rule, you will be much more, and accomplish much more as a member of a church than you will without it.

 

WHAT’S THE BIBLE ABOUT?

The Bible is God’s handbook for the believer’s life.  The Bible was given by God, over a period of time, to provide us with information about himself.  It was written down for us by men to whom God personally revealed himself and his will for man.  The Bible contains a wealth of vital information.  It gives us the truth about creation and how all things came into existence.  It gives us much history about God’s people and the development and population of the world.  It contains a record of some of the songs, worship, prayers, and experiences of God’s people.  It provides the truths that form the doctrines of the church.  It gives the instructions needed to live a godly of life.  But best of all, it gives us the truth we need to become a child of God.  It gives the account of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ and giving himself as a sacrifice for humanity to provide a way for man to be forgiven in the sight of God.  It tells us how to have our sins fully and freely forgiven so we can spend all eternity with God in heaven as members of his beloved family.

 

If at all possible, every believer should own a copy of the Scriptures and read from it regularly.  I personally would suggest a copy of the Bible in a modern day translation or paraphrase.  These provide the Scriptures for you in a language and format that is more familiar to you today.  However, when you become a more mature believer and should want to study the Scriptures in greater depth, then there are more technical translations and study aides available to help you in that endeavor.  Don’t worry or lose any sleep over some religious zealot that wants to criticize a particular translation you may choose as not being acceptable.  This is a thing of pretty recent days from some extreme fundamentalists.  The church in past history did not view different translations in that way.

 

If you are a new believer and have never read the Bible before, then there are places that are better than others for a new reader to begin other than at the beginning.  With most other books, the natural place to begin is at the beginning.  However, although the Bible begins at the beginning, it does not begin at the beginning where you entered in.  Seeing first the practical and common sense things of the Bible will probably encourage you more to continue seeking its truths, than learning about its history.  Therefore, I would recommend beginning in Proverbs or the Gospel of John.  To the new believer, to begin in certain places in the Bible could seem too tedious and technical to hold your attention and keep drawing you back for more.  I just think you might find it more interesting if you begin at the point where the Bible first connects with you in a practical way.

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I SIN AGAIN?

When inviting people to come to Christ, I have had many people respond to me, “Oh! I’m just afraid I can’t live it!  What if I mess up after I get saved?”  That is a common and very practical concern for honest and sincere people.  One of the main things that causes this type of concern is the fact that most opinions and misinformed teaching we have heard, previous to coming to Christ, ties salvation to some sort of human performance.  And most of it boils down to a belief that salvation is a reward to be earned by exemplary human performance.  This is, more likely than not, a conclusion arrived at by people misinformed about the Bible and the laws contained in the Old Testament.  And they, in turn, pass this misinformation on to other misinformed people.  And most people know how quickly and effectively misinformation can spread.

 

The clear facts of the Bible are that all men are sinners because of the fall (sin) of Adam in the Garden of Eden.  The Bible explains in Romans 5 that this fallen nature of man was passed down to Adam’s children because a fallen father cannot reproduce unfallen children.  But because God loved man, whom he had created, he took it upon himself to affect a remedy for the problem facing men who had been separated from him by Adam’s deed.  The wages of sin had been proclaimed as death.  Therefore, God became a human in the person of Jesus, so he could, as a human, pay the death penalty imposed upon sin.  This he did upon the cross, when the innocent died in the place of the guilty.  Since that has been done and the penalty for sin has been executed in a class-action settlement, God is now free to offer salvation and forgiveness of sin, freely and fully to all who chose to sign on to the class-action settlement rendered by God himself.  And God can now offer salvation to men as a free gift because it has already been paid for.  For by grace are you saved through faith.  It is the gift of God. Not of works.

 

It’s not a matter of “If I sin again”.  It’s more a matter of “When I sin again”, because you will sin again.  It’s in the DNA of human flesh.  And until Jesus relieves us of this earthly human body at death or the rapture, then men will continue to sin in spite of their best efforts.  John says if a man says he has no sin (has fully escaped the pull and effect of human nature), he is a liar.

 

So what about sin and the believer?  Sin does not separate a child of God from him, his love, or his fellowship.  Sin does not diminish your standing or acceptance in God’s sight or favor in any way, because he has already covered all sin you may commit for the rest of your life.  God’s forgiveness is all inclusive and forever.  God, knowing all things, factored in everything he knew you would do in the future, and included it in the one sacrifice on your behalf.  His one sacrifice paid for it all… past, present, and future.  There is nothing more to be done about sin.  That is not to say, however, that doing your own thing and ignoring God’s guidance does not have certain negative consequences.  Being saved does not mean that you can ignore right instructions or natural laws with impunity.  For example, if you try to defy the laws of gravity by jumping off a tall building in the hopes of flying, you may die instead.  Does this make sense to anyone but me?  All sin does produce some amount of suffering of some kind.  But it is not God punishing you.  It is just the negative result of a negative act.

 

When I sin now, it does not cause God a problem with me.  It does not cause him to abandon me, break fellowship with me, deny me, shun me, or turn his back to me.  It does not cause him to treat me any way other than as his much loved child, for God resolved all his problem with sin at the cross of Jesus Christ.  Now, as I just said, sin may cause me a problem with me, because all negative actions produce certain negative consequences.  However, my sin does not cause God a problem with me.  The work of the cross resolved God’s problem with sin and has permanently fixed my relationship with God as far as he is concerned.

 

WHAT’S UP WITH ALL THE RULES MOST CHURCHES HAVE?

Many churches have a set of bylaws that are several pages long and spell out in pretty strict detail, the things members are expected to do and not do.  Why is that?  You will discover that many churches preach grace out of one side of their mouth, and then preach human performance out of the other side of their mouth, as a means of currying God’s favor and acceptance.  As a general rule, the more rules and laws a church has, then the less spiritual and biblical they really are in their ministry to people.  God’s grace is not about rules, laws, and Christian performance.  God’s grace is about God condescending to man to form a living and vital relationship with him and about him nurturing us to our full potential in him.  God only wants the best for us and is constantly nurturing and encouraging us closer to himself.  He does this by his loving actions toward us.  God does not push people around, but as a Good Shepherd, he gently and lovingly leads us to peaceful paths, refreshing streams, and plenty of green pastures.

 

So don’t become overly concerned up front, about trying to “measure up” to someone’s standard of expectation that they might try and impose upon you.  Just keep your focus on Jesus and seek to know him better.  Love him, talk with him, talk about him, listen to good conversations about him, read about him, and seek closeness to him, and everything else will just seem to fall in place in due time.

 

Welcome to the family.