Glossary of Christian Code

Bible (Scripture) – The Bible is a collection of 66 books written over about a 1400 year period by authors enabled by God to write, and thus preserve, what God wants mankind to know. More copies of the Bible were made within a few years of the original texts than any other ancient manuscript – 25,000 copies are known, with the next-best ancient manuscript having fewer than 100 copies, many of which were made hundreds of years after the originals. The veracity of the physical copies of the Bible is further attested by ancient documents and other evidence discovered by archaeologists in recent years. Just search for Dead Sea Scrolls to get plenty of info on this topic.

Christians believe that God made sure that all the concepts and words in the Bible were precisely as He intended, even if we don’t agree with or fully comprehend them. The Bible is divided into two big divisions – The Hebrew Scriptures, also called the Old Testament, which were written prior to 400 B.C., and the New Testament, written near and after the time of Jesus Christ (30 A.D. to about 120 A.D.) Each book is divided by translators, for convenience, into a scheme of chapters (a number of paragraphs) and numbered verses (usually one sentence or short paragraph). This scheme results in Biblical “addresses” for specific portions of Scripture, such as John 5:24 points to the book authored by John, the 5th chapter, and 24th verse. The original manuscripts did not have these chapters and verses, but when the printing press came along, enterprising folk added these little numbers so that one can easily locate and refer to parts of the text. There is nothing inspired about the numbers.

Born Again or Saved – The term “born again” has been muddied pretty thoroughly over the years, and has now acquired unintended political overtones in the United States. “Born again” refers to a spiritual condition. The story in which “born again” originates is in the Gospel of John in the New Testament (back half) of the Bible, Chapter (section) 3. In this section, Jesus is addressing a famous teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus, who met with Jesus to talk with him about spiritual things. Jesus challenges him by talking about the necessity of being “born again.” Jesus tells him that “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus was a well-known member of the ruling group of rabbis in Jesus’ time, and he was incredibly confused. Jesus was describing a complete spiritual reorientation, as abrupt as the dislocation from the womb to the outside world that confronts us when we are born physically.

This new spiritual birth takes place instantly in a person when he or she hears and believes (trusts) the account of how Jesus who was at the same time both God and man, lived, suffered, died, was buried, and rose from the dead to pay the complete penalty required by God for that individual person’s sin. The application of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ for a person, and the resulting forgiveness and restored relationship with God, is called “salvation.” The person is then considered “saved” and receives the gift of “eternal life,” life with God which never ends. That life, which begins instantly, extends beyond death out into eternity. Without this life, the person would be eternally separated from God upon the person’s natural death and spend eternity in “hell” separated from God and all who love Him. So the idea of being SAVED is literal – who wants to go to hell? God does not desire that any person be separated from Him in hell. Quite the contrary, Jesus was sent for the specific purpose of making possible the salvation of every person.

At that moment, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit is given to help the person live a more and more complete and abundant life on earth. In this section one of the most famous quotations of John is stated, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish (be separated from God), but have eternal life.” John 3:16. (John 3: 4-21)

Christian (Christ-Follower) – A person who has decided to trust Christ alone for salvation and who gratefully receives the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, who enables the person to live in the way Christ described. The “fruit” (result) of the Holy Spirit’s work in a person’s life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, and self-control.

From a very rudimentary state when the person has just become a Christ-follower to spiritual maturity, the person makes progress in all areas of life because their behavior becomes more other-centered and less self-centered. They still have all the trials of life – we are not promised riches or fame or ease – but they have spiritual resources they have never had before that make it possible to endure whatever comes. Christ-followers have peace with God. Christ-followers (Believers, Christians) worship God, pray for others, read and learn from the Bible, live gently, and perform services to those who are needy. All Christians have variety in the diligence with which they practice these things – sometimes we are less devoted to God and each other than we should be. We ask God for forgiveness and, in 1 John 1:9 we are promised that believers who confess their sins to God will be forgiven.

Church – The Church is the collection of all the Christians of all time wherever they are now and eternally – all in the Kingdom of God. Also taken to mean a place where people worship, a building especially for that purpose, or a worship service outside, or anywhere that Christians gather to worship God. The Church with a big “C” is not a single denomination, institution, or organization, it is the entire “body of Christ,” all who love and trust Christ for their salvation. (1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Hebrews 2:14-18)

Eternal Life – The extension of a human life beyond human death into eternity; the gift of “eternal life,” or life which never ends. The Bible teaches that all people have life after death, but not all will enjoy it! If not “born again,” see above Born Again, the person will spend their eternal life suffering as a penalty for unforgiven sins. This would be a shame, actually, because the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus for the person’s sins offers the same chance to live forever in heaven to every person who will believe in that life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

God (also God the Father, Jehovah) – Christians believe there is only One God (See the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, chapter 6, verse 4). The Bible does not debate the existence of God. The Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) presents God in the first paragraph of the Bible as one who exists and is active. God is a Spirit, and this means that God has no body in his essential existence. God is the Father and originator of all creation.

In Scripture, God is revealed to be a unique God, different from all heathen gods. He is revealed as being a Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God has attributes that only He can have, such as changelessness, omnipotence (having power over all things at all times in all places), omnicience (knowing all things), is the Truth, existence that is eternal (having no beginning or end).

Grace – Unmerited blessing or favor given to one by another. Between God and a person, it covers the entire range of blessings (life, breath, all His beautiful creation, the means to make a living, salvation from the effects and results of sin, loving relationships, strength, the power to change, etc.) given by God to human beings.

“Common” or “General” Grace is the always good impulse of God toward all people whether they believe in Him or not that provides rain, the earth, life, and all creation. We receive this Grace in lots of forms, and it is always good, always true, and nothing we do can earn it. We cannot make a watermelon, for example. We can plant a seed, but the watermelon’s spark of life, oh, that is a different story. As Dr. Erwin Lutzer (The Moody Church, Chicago) says, “You’d better take your lunch if you think you could go into the lab and make an orange from scratch. Nobody can make an orange. You can work a long time, but you’re just not going to get it done. God makes an orange. ”

Saving Grace is the kind of grace we receive that makes it possible for us to listen to the good news of Jesus and respond to it, thus receiving our salvation. We receive that salvation, even though God is completely holy and we are so ungrateful, careless, and self-centered about all He gives us that He could reasonably take the position that we are not worth any of His attention. And He would be 100% right, as usual. For example, by ourselves we cannot restore our relationship with a holy God because we are decidedly un-holy – we needed a mediator (Jesus) to restore that relationship. No Jesus, no relationship with God. (Psalm 86, Psalm 103; Luke 15:11-31; Romans 5; Ephesians 2)

Jesus (Christ, Savior, Son of God) –- The name of the person of the Trinity who became a human being while still God in order to perform a function as Messiah (Savior) of mankind (Read Hebrews 1:2-3). Some non-Christians think that Jesus was the product of some strange actual physical union of his mother, Mary, and God, but this certainly is NOT the Christian’s belief. On the contrary, God, who miraculously created all things, was certainly capable of spiritually causing the miraculous incarnation (human-making) of Jesus.

“Christ” is not Jesus’ last name! The word “Christ” means ‘savior.’

Salvation – Salvation is the solution to mankind’s sin problem, solved by Jesus for all mankind. This is a sophisticated concept covered by a single word, so listen up. (Acts 16:16-34, Ephesians 2:1-10).

Three theological terms are used to explain what happened when Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead:

Redemption – this term means that Jesus’ death and resurrection “redeemed” or “bought,” us from the penalty we should have justly received for our own sins (see Sin).

Atonement (also Propitiation) – Click here for Jesus’ story. Jesus satisfied God’s righteous and just demand for judgment upon us for our sins, and paid it (atoned for it) through the specific sacrifice of his life.

Reconciliation – in which, through Christ’s death and resurrection our relationship to God is completely restored, our sins forgiven, and eternal life given as a free gift.

Sin – Sin is any action or omission of action that offends God. These actions might be rebellion against laws that God passed to us through Bible writings, but the sin may also be a quite original unrecorded horror invented by an individual!

The difference between the way the world treats a felony and God treats a sin is really simple. one is “paid for” by the perpetrator by serving a prison term. The law will be upheld by the state and a penalty exacted for a felony. In the case of sin, only God and the sinner may know that the sin has been committed and the only permanent solution to eliminate the sin is the forgiveness of God. We recognize sins by the convenient hint that these actions typically hurt us, our family, friends, and often even the world around us. Some actions are, in fact, so self-destructive that people who have no religious concepts whatsoever have created taboos to avoid them.

A felony certainly is a sin, but a sin may not be anything close to a felony in terms of degree of lawlessness. Regardless of the degree of seriousness that we might put upon a sin, God has a different view of sin. To God, who is perfect and holy, any sin is so disgusting that the sinner must be banished from His presence. That banishment is not so much punishment as it is an expression of the nature of God. The net effect, however, is final.

If there is no forgiveness by God, the sin will be in existence forever, thus preventing the sinner from having any relationship with God whatsoever. Harsh? Not really. That is just the nature of a Perfect God – only perfect creatures may be near him. Sin is the problem that Jesus came to solve. Christians believe that Jesus did solve the sin problem once and for all. See Salvation. Also Sinner (one who sins).

Trinity (also Holy Trinity) — The great creeds of the church state the belief of Christians that God is a Triune (One in Three) God. First let me say that the truth of the Trinity of God is a very difficult, mind-stretching concept more at home in our hearts than in our heads! There is supreme logic there, for which I’m very grateful. But, still, some things can only be understood a bit by thinking of God deeply. Sometimes we can see that God operates in this way – Father, Son, Spirit together – and sometimes one or the other Person is more evident, as when Jesus came to earth, or when the Spirit of God manifests Himself in a person’s life.

A theologian named A. W. Tozer once said, “Some persons who reject all they cannot explain have denied that God is a Trinity…These forget that their whole life is enshrouded in mystery….Every man lives by faith, the nonbeliever as well as the saint; the one by faith in natural laws and the other by faith in God. So, too, in thinking about the concept of a God that is three “persons” in that act in ‘harmonious unity.’ Our God is a plural God of Christ, the Son, The Father, and the Spirit. God is unified, each of the Persons is eternal, together, and equal. The Bible tells us that when Jesus came to earth he was “fully God and fully man.” This is because, as God he could never be anything less than he has always been.