What in the World Is a Christian?

Many Christians are spiritually impoverished because they fail to understand and appreciate their true spiritual identity. John Blanchard explains why grasping the Bible's definitions of a Christian points the way to producing spiritually healthy, balanced, maturing and effective believers. From the author's introduction: Basic biblical truth, clearly understood and resolutely applied, sets the Christian free from errors, excesses and eccentricities. Whether the issue is one of doctrine or practice, theology or morality, public worship or private living, the Christian's invariable starting-point should be 'What does the Scripture say?' (Romans 4:3) To come at the issue from another angle, too many Christians are suffering from homiletical shell-shock. They have been blasted and blistered, flogged and flayed, challenged and charged by one preacher after another to improve their spiritual standard of living, but often without a biblical explanation of what a Christian already is. Yet, surely, this is the only proper place to begin. To put it in a nutshell, the Bible's moral teaching amounts to this: we are to become what we are. It is my conviction that if Christians could get a firm grasp of this, then follow through its implications, their lives would be immeasurably enriched, and it is this conviction that led to the series of studies contained in this little book. First published in 1982, this is a brand-new 2014 edition with revised text, using the ESV.