A woman once told a crowded prayer meeting, “I was born a Christian. I’ve been one all my life.” The room nodded in agreement, but that statement didn’t sit right with me. Christianity, in its truest and most biblical sense, is not something one inherits like a surname. It is not passed down by bloodline, religion, or rituals—it is something that begins in the soul when the Holy Spirit uses the gospel to awaken it.
For far too long, Christianity has been considered a religion, merely one more denomination of the countless religions people list on forms and documents. However, the New Testament never described it as a religion. When Jesus Christ came, he did not invite men and women to join a religion. He did not establish a denomination. He came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). He made a call—a personal, redemptive relationship between a guilty sinner and a spotless savior. That call remains today, untouched by time or tradition.
The gospel heralds biblical Christianity. Not the prosperity gospel, the social justice gospel, or the gospel of good works, but the gospel of Christ crucified, buried, and raised. It is the story of the God who became flesh to absorb the punishment of sin on our behalf. That chronicle, when rightly understood, shatters man’s pride and stirs the heart to faith and repentance. It is not the emotion that leads to salvation, but a conscious recognition of guilt, a surrender to Christ’s work on the cross, and a trust so total that one no longer relies on his own righteousness.
Religion states, “Do.” Christ states, “Done.” That is Christianity. It is not church going, candle-burning, ritualized reciting of prayers, or religious playing games. It is believing with the heart that Jesus is Lord and confessing with the mouth that God has raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9). When a man does it from a position of knowledge and belief, that man is saved, not on merit, but by grace through faith.
Once that relationship has been established, it does not languish. It grows through constant companionship with Christ. Prayer is no longer a burden, but a source of power. The Bible is no longer a book, but a voice. Obedience is no longer law, but a joy instinct. There is no need to play—act for men, no need to gain an approving smile from a priest or pastor. The believer is dwelling in day-to-day talk with the same Christ who dwells in him. It is intimate, ongoing, and actively alive.
Such a Christianity is hard to counterfeit. It bears fruit. Not flashy things that receive their payoff in admiration, but subtle changes of disposition: patience rather than shortness of temper, humility where there was pride, cleanliness where there was filth, and care where there was hardness of heart. Christ in a man doesn’t merely alter his Sunday habit—He transforms his heart, his decisions, and even his worldview. He sees people not as obstacles or enemies but as souls in desperate need of the very same mercy that he received.
Because of that consciousness, a genuine Christian cannot hold his peace. Sharing the gospel is the inevitable overflow of that relationship. One does not preach out of obligation but out of necessity—because having seen what sin has done and what Christ has to give, one cannot bear to keep quiet. True evangelism is not recruitment into religion; it is presenting the savior to a sinful, hell-bound soul.
If this earth needs anything, it is a return to this primitive Christianity—uncompromising, unadorned, and founded upon Christ himself. Not on the modes of men, not on the forms of culture, but on the living intimacy between a sinner and the Savior. In a generation where churches are teaching comfort, community dependence, and reliance on group service, it is imperative for people to personally consider Calvary’s cross where blood was shed, sin was conquered, and love—pure, unmerited, and holy—was outpoured. Ushering this love into a personal relationship with Christ as savior and Lord allows biblical Christianity to exist.