Are Christians Really So Different from Non-Christians?

30 Jul Are Christians Really So Different from Non-Christians?

The wildly popular Disney movie, Finding Nemo, tells the story of an overprotective clownfish father named Marlin, who searches for his son, Nemo, who has been captured by humans to put in an aquarium. The dad has to travel from near-disaster to near-disaster, all the way from the barrier reef to Sydney Harbor to eventually find Nemo.

As in a proper Disney movie, all ends well. But as Marlin, along with his accidental traveling companion, Dory – a regal blue tang fish – search through the deepest recesses of the ocean to find Nemo, they encounter some sharks who have decided to become vegetarian! But it’s a stretch… and it’s very hard for them… so they have to go to AA-type meetings to get the support they need to keep from backsliding.

As the AA meeting begins, the sharks say their opening pledge together: “I am a nice shark.  I am not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I have to first change myself. Fish are friends, not food.”

But as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the sharks are hanging by a thread in their commitment to vegetarianism, and when an accident gives Dory a nosebleed, the blood causes Bruce, one of the sharks, to snap!  Throwing all pretense to the wind, it goes berserk and attacks Marlin and Dory, desperately trying to eat them.

Marlin and Dory escape, of course, and continue their eventually successful journey to find Nemo. But the pledge that “fish are friends, not food” was not enough to overcome Bruce’s basic nature.

I bring up this fantasized fish story to make the point that Christians are not like those sharks.

Christians are fundamentally different from non-Christians

Christians are not merely people who have turned over a new leaf and are trying their dead-level best to make good on their commitment.  Rather, Christians are people who have been born again. Our essential nature has changed. We are not what we once were, and our great challenge is to understand that and to live like who we have become.

Before, we really were spiritually dead!

We have not merely turned over a new leaf. We have been born again.  Before we became a Christian, Scripture says of us:

• There is none righteous, not even one. (Romans 3:10)
• All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
• The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)
• Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12)

So, we were unrighteous, had fallen short of the glory of God, were spiritually dead, separate from Christ, with no hope, without God!

After, we really are spiritually alive! 

But after we become a Christian, Scripture says:

• I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)
• Put on the new self which, in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. (Ephesians 4:24)

So, our new birth in Christ results in our old self dying and our being born again, to a living hope – in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Conclusion

You are who God says you are, regardless of how you feel. 

Therefore, you must rise to your true spiritual character.  Otherwise a Christian may see himself merely as someone who has turned over a new leaf, trying desperately – like the Disney sharks – to change his behavior by his own power, rather than someone who has been born again and who is spiritually different from someone who is not a Christian.  And without this understanding of your true new self, you may fail to become all that you can become in Christ because you underestimate your potential.

This automatically raises the question of why Christians still sin… and why we are not condemned by God when we do.  We’ll look more closely at that issue next week.  

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