Be Christian Where You Are

The motivation behind one’s decision to accept Christ as Saviour always bears scrutiny. It seems that in the first century the people in Corinth who made such a decision viewed it as a means of escape. With a sigh of relief they began divorce proceedings against the non-Christian husband or wife. Withdrawal from society protected them from further exposure to cruelty, drunkenness, immorality, perversion, and debauchery. The slave felt that he should no longer be subject to his master.

But Paul said, “Wait! Stand where you are! Stay in the condition in which you were when you accepted Christ” (1 Cor. 7:20 ff.). In other words, be Christian where you are. If you are a slave, as the Phillips translation indicates, never mind. If you’re a Jew, stay a Jew, if you’re a Gentile, stay a Gentile. Don’t let your outward condition or status worry you.

The Main Thing In Life

Here is a great lesson. The main thing in life is not the outside condition, but rather the inner spiritual reality. In other words, it’s not the material things that count most; it’s the spiritual. A Christian is a new man under the same old conditions. Salvation is the old life made new. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). After conversion you live on the same street. You hold the same job. You go to the same school. You have the same wife or the same husband. But you are a new person in Jesus Christ.

The Apostle is not indifferent to the status of people and to their daily problems. He advises that if they get a chance to be free, they should by all means do so. But if you are a slave, recognize that there is a divine Master in your life; if you are free, know that you are a bondslave to Jesus Christ. It was possible for the slave to become free. On his own time, when he wasn’t busy serving his master, he could earn extra money. The results of this moonlighting were deposited, not in the local bank, but rather in the temple. After almost a whole lifetime of saving a few pennies here and a few pennies there, the slave would meet his master in the temple on an appointed day. The priest would bring the cash savings (twenty pieces of silver in those days) and present the money to the master. The slave would then be free, as far as men were concerned; but he now was literally owned by his god. Not until the day he died would he forget that he owed his freedom to his god.

Paul is saying: “Don’t you know that you have been bought with a price? you’re not your own? Therefore, glorify the one who has purchased you.” The Christian, purchased by Christ, is the property of Christ and should be subject to the Master. The Christian should not “kick over the traces” but should remain under God in his daily responsibility.

Sometimes people say to me, “I once had a call to be a missionary,” or “I once felt that I should be a preacher.” Don’t you know that you are a missionary? That you are a preacher? Every person purchased by Jesus Christ must now serve him. It’s not a question of taking ordination vows. Your ordination, your commission, comes from Jesus Christ. God expects us to be Christian right where we are. This takes courage. It takes very little courage to withdraw, but much to stay put and let your light shine where you are.

The Courage To Serve

Think, for example, what it means to be a Christian in East Germany today! At the time of the clanging shut of the gates in the Wall of Shame dividing East and West Berlin, many Christians from East Germany were on vacation. Should they return? Some stayed, but many of them went back to the place where they felt they could serve Jesus Christ more fully—behind the wall! Some of the parents sent their children to school in West Berlin, but they themselves stayed under Communism. There they felt they should be Christian. Thank God for a man such as Otto Dibelius who, as the Bishop of the Evangelical and Reformed Church of the Brandenburg Diocese in East Germany, not only stood up to Hitler, but today takes his stand with the Christians on the east side of the Wall of Shame. He is being Christian where he is.

Think of Dag Hammerskjold, the late secretary general of the United Nations. That man of massive mind, massive charity, and massive patience, gave his life as he stood at the crossroads of rising and falling nations. This man was a Christian, an able, courageous, dedicated, and noble soul of vast mind and lofty spirit. He had a Christian mother and father. His butler, who ministered to his needs as he lived in Manhattan, gives this testimony: “Mr. Hammerskjold was a saved man, a Christian.” In his luggage after the fatal plane crash there was found the devotional book, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis. Thank God for a man who would be Christian where he was, in the midst of the United Nations.

Some of you have heard of Mrs. Eleanor Searle Whitney, one of the most beautiful women of our nation. Wealthy, charming, intelligent, she is part of Long Island society, with her home on the north shore. In 1957 she went to Madison Square Garden to hear Billy Graham. She went forward, dedicated herself to Jesus Christ, and for five years, in many other countries, but especially here in America, she has been used of God in witnessing to the social set. It takes courage to be Christian among the Four Hundred.

Donn Moomaw, one of the ten greatest football players, the All-American center and linebacker from UCLA, said, “I want to be an All-American for Christ.” When he became a Christian, he stayed on the gridiron. He fought a noble battle as a football player, giving his testimony not from the sidelines, but from the line. This takes courage.

Bob Richards—what a switch he made! Bob was pastor of a large church in Long Beach, California, but felt he could be a more effective witness by getting back into the sports world. Every time you see him, the World Olympic pole vault champion, clean-living and speaking for Wheaties, he is also speaking a word for Christ. That takes courage.

There is also Wally Moon of the Dodgers. And Bobby Richardson of the Yankees of World Series fame, who signed a contract when he was seventeen years of age. Homesick and lonely, away from home, arriving at his first camp at four o’clock in the morning, he found waiting for him a letter from his high school baseball coach, who wrote, “Undoubtedly, you wish you were home. Stay where you are and stay as a Christian. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” Then there is Ty Cobb, that all-time great who played 3,033 games and for 12 years led the American League in batting average. For four years, he batted over 400. On his death bed, July 17, 1961, he accepted Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He said, “You tell the boys I’m sorry it was the last part of the ninth that I came to know Christ. I wish it had taken place in the first half of the first.” Now is the time to be Christian! And to be Christian where you are.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, rather than leaving the entertainment world, stay in it and are Christians where they are. Jerome Hines of the Metropolitan Opera and Mahalia Jackson are Christians where they are. Be Christian where you are. “Wherever God has put you,” Paul said, “stay in that state.

We thank God for Governor Mark Hatfield. This man came to a point of decision when three careers opened up before him: education, the ministry, and politics. He has said to a massive convention in assembly, “Laymen should bear the responsibility of giving witness to their faith by their lives, deeds, and words, seeking not to Christianize institutions, but to bring the individual within the institution into the family of God.” This takes courage.

What About You?

John Glenn, the astronaut, is giving simple witness to his faith in Jesus Christ. But what about you? Certainly, you say, it is good to hear about these famous people. But what about your being Christian where you are? Vance Packard, in his provocative book entitled The Status Seekers, says most people want to be well accepted by the right crowd. Christians, for example, want to be thought of highly by church people. But isn’t that a low standard? Is social acceptance to be our greatest concern? Isn’t it far more important to be in good standing with God? To be “okay” with our Heavenly Father, right with our Creator?

Paul is saying to the Corinthians, in the midst of the quagmire of iniquity which shriveled and seared the soul of sensitive people, “Now that you are right with God and know the difference between right and wrong, be Christian where you are. Don’t get out. Stay.” Anybody can run. Anybody can withdraw from a denomination marked by modernism. Anybody can resign from the club where worldliness is the order of the day. This will preserve your spotless reputation with your fellow church member, but it takes courage to be Christian in that club. The Bible urges you to say, “To me to live is Christ.” To really live—in the locker room, on the nineteenth hole, in the smoke-filled room, at the office, when the cocktails are clinking and the dirty stories are rolling, when a crooked transaction looms—be Christian! As a young person on a date, be Christian where you are! In that examination, in your profession, as a leader in your community, be Christian!

Christians must not be content with vague generalities of religiosity worn as a cloak. We must not be content with the fringe benefits of a secularized Christianity. We must not surrender to the pride of our particular closed order. We must not be satisfied with the abrasion of our modernity. Jesus became so involved with the common things of life that the religious leaders charged, “He eats with publicans, associates with wine-bibbers!” He wasn’t an Essene. He didn’t live in caves of the mountains. He was in the market place where people desperately needed him. He was identified with the common ventures of men. He was moved with love to such a degree of identification with people and was so surrendered daily to his Heavenly Father’s will on earth that he rebelled against oppression. He accepted man’s guilt and died for man’s salvation. He came to bear the burden and the brunt of the hate and the rejection that were the common lot of man. Jesus brought God’s grace at the point of man’s despair. Jesus is there when man comes to the end of himself, when man needs him the most. We must love as Christ loved, in the framework of man’s extremity. We must love Him because he first loved us. We who are justified with God must associate with and help the unjustified. We who have received spiritual life must share this life even to the point of losing physical life.

We must be Christians in our homes, therefore, even with a husband or wife who is a non-Christian. This is the place to be Christian. As a wife you may be concerned about the spiritual welfare of a non-Christian husband. You have talked and talked and it doesn’t seem to do any good—right? Try being Christian in your living. Student, be Christian at school; man, in your work. Be Christian in your lodge life, in your race relations, in your politics, in your business, in your recreation, in your sports. Love your enemies. Go the second mile. Turn the other cheek. Be truthful, honest, helpful, loyal, kind, trustworthy. Reach out to the underprivileged, the minorities, the poor, the lonely, the unloved, and the forgotten, and share Jesus Christ and his love.

For The Whole Of Life

It is easy to be Christian in church for an hour each week, but we must be Christians in all of life. Booker T. Washington, the Negro born a slave on a Virginia plantation of unknown parentage (though he often said he thought his father was a white man), never knew what it was to sleep in a bed until emancipation took place. He slept on the dirt floor of a 14′ × 16′ log cabin which had no windows, only holes in the wall. He lived like an animal, scavenging for food and seldom having enough. He was ignorant and friendless. This young man was led to Christ by his slave mother. As a slave, he loved Jesus Christ. As a slave, he sought knowledge. As a slave, he became a friend to every Negro and an advisor to presidents. This is the man who lifted his race and founded Tuskegee Institute, which now has 1,500 students and an endowment of over $2,000,000. He did not say, “If I had a different place to live, if I were not a slave, if I had enough to eat, if I had better education—then I could be an effective Christian.” He was Christian under adverse circumstances.

For Times Like Ours

Paul said to the slave of Rome, “Be Christian where you are.” He is saying to the twentieth-century slave to materialism, “Be Christian where you are.” To the Space Age man probing outer space and neglecting inner space, the Apostle says, “Be Christian where you are.” To Christians caught in a world of fear because of a bearded bandit on a tiny island, the word of the living Lord urges, “Be Christians where you are.” To little people shaken by N bomb testings set off by big people, the God of history counsels, “Be my royal subjects where you are.” To the children of God vicariously identified with suffering, divided humanity, the Heavenly Father says, “Be sons of mine where you are, and enter the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”—A sermon by Dr. J. LESTER HARNISH, Minister, First Baptist Church, Portland, Oregon.

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