What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?

Why did God create?

Was there some lack in God that moved Him to create the universe and man in it?

Was God lonely?

 

We can't fully answer these questions, but we can look into the Bible for clues to their answer.

1. 1 John 4:8 says that God is love. John 3:16 says that "...God so loved the world He gave..." The nature of love is to give. It is "others" centered. It focuses on another. Read 1 Corinthians 13 for confirmation of this. That is why God gave His Son. We believe that is why God created us: to love us and to give us Himself which is the very best thing in the universe. But sin entered the picture and God, in His loving mercy, sent His Son into the world to save the world.
2. Love is not a doctrine, it is an experience, an action. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked with God. They actually WALKED with the creator of the universe. and fellowshipped with Him. Fellowship is an intimate communion between two or more persons. Adam and Eve had this intimate communion with the Lord. But when they sinned, that fellowship was broken. God then shed blood by killing an animal for its skin, and covered Adam and Eve. Incidentally, Jesus said in John 6:46, "no one has ever seen the Father...". If Adam and Eve were walking with God in the Garden of Eden, but it wasn't the Father, then who was it. It must have been Jesus.
3. So God sought Adam and Eve, remember they hid themselves from Him. In Exodus 25:8, God told the Israelites to build a sanctuary so that He might dwell among His people. In John 1:14, Jesus, God in flesh, dwelt again among His people. In 1 Corinthians 1:9 we are called by God to be in fellowship with Jesus. In these statements are profound clues. We are called to have a personal relationship, the way it was in the Garden of Eden, with Jesus. This can only be done through Jesus.
4. Additionally, the word for ‘fellowship' in the Greek is the same word used for ‘communion.' When we partake of communion, we are partaking in fellowship with the Lord. Communion is a covenantal sign of the promise of God to give us eternal life and it is representative in that sense of God's promises to be with His people. But the real communion, the real fellowship with the Lord, is through the indwelling Holy Spirit who always bears witness of Jesus (John 15:26). Therefore, the Christian, the true Christian, will have an intimate and real personal relationship with the Lord Jesus.
5. The cultist cannot have this intimate personal relationship with Jesus; first, because their Jesus is false (Matthew 24:24); second, because their Jesus is not prayed to the way Jesus of the Bible is (Zechariah 13:9 & 1 Corinthians 1:1-2; Acts 7:55-60); third, because their Jesus is not worshiped equally with the Father (John 5:22-23; Mathew 2:2,11; 14:33; 28:9; John 9:35-38; Hebrews 1:6); and fourth, because their Jesus is not their Lord and God (John 20:28; Hebrews 1:8).
6. The Jesus of the cultist is not God (he might be one god among many, or he might be a lesser god). Therefore, he is not to be sought in a personal and intimate way.
7. The Christian, on the other hand, has a real relationship with the real Lord Jesus. This is accomplished only through the real Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible.

To be a Christian is to experience the Lord, to have a sweet and real fellowship with Jesus, to be able to pray to Him, and seek Him. "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord," (1 Corinthians 1:9).