What it Means to be a Christian

What it Means to be a Christian asks what Christianity really means when the Christian life is viewed from God’s side rather than as a system of beliefs, practices, or religious activity. T. Austin-Sparks begins before human history, locating the meaning of the Christian in God’s eternal purpose in His Son. John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, and related passages present Jesus Christ as preexistent, the Agent and object of creation, and the One in whom all things hold together. Humanity was created for God’s purpose in Christ, and the fall is treated as a departure into selfhood, independence, and spiritual death. Redemption therefore restores people not merely from guilt or failure but to the purpose for which they were created.

The second major question is what actually happens when someone becomes a Christian. Sparks describes new birth as a movement from spiritual death into divine life. The believer becomes alive to God and receives a new inward capacity for spiritual response, perception, and fellowship. Spiritual seeing and hearing are used to describe the restored inward senses by which a person increasingly knows God as a living reality rather than only through outward religion. The indwelling Holy Spirit is essential to this new life. Christian living is therefore meant to be a walk in the Spirit, with growing sensitivity to His correction, leading, and witness. New birth is the beginning of this life, not its completed purpose.

Romans 8, Ephesians 1 and 3, and other New Testament passages lead into the book’s governing developmental emphasis: believers are called according to a divine purpose that moves toward the fullness of Christ. Spiritual growth is not natural self-improvement but an increasing measure and expression of Christ. Life, light, liberty, and love belong to Him and are progressively formed in His people. Salvation has past, present, and future dimensions because God not only begins a work in the believer but continues it toward maturity and an eternal end.

The Cross of Christ is presented as the first basic governing principle of that growth. Sparks distinguishes the finished work by which Christ opens the way to God from the inward application of the Cross to the believer’s natural life. The old creation and the old man cannot be perfected into God’s intended humanity. Romans 6, Galatians 2, and 2 Corinthians 5 are used to show the believer’s death and resurrection with Christ: the Cross sets aside what belongs to the old creation, while resurrection introduces the new creation and a life whose source is Christ Himself. This makes union with Christ practical rather than merely doctrinal.

A second governing principle is the relatedness of believers. God’s purpose is not fulfilled through isolated spirituality. The life of Christ creates fellowship, mutuality, and interdependence among His people, and the Church is presented as an organic expression of that shared life. A further principle is purity and openness of heart: growth requires responsiveness to the light God gives rather than resistance to His dealings.

The final chapter places present Christian experience under an eternal horizon. Trials, discipline, limitations, service, and spiritual formation acquire meaning because God is preparing people for an eternal calling and vocation. Hebrews is used to contrast mortality with the power of an endless life; 1 Corinthians and Revelation contribute the distinction between merely being saved and having spiritual capacity for future service. The coming of the Lord is treated as a decisive prospect that should produce purification and earnest spiritual growth, not merely curiosity about prophetic events. Sparks also uses the heavenly Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem as pictures of the Church in its mature corporate and eternal vocation.

The book therefore answers questions such as: What changes when I become a Christian? Why is new birth only the beginning? What is God ultimately seeking in the Christian life? How does the Cross deal with the old self? What does it mean to live from Christ’s resurrection life and by the Holy Spirit? Why do believers need one another? Why does God use discipline and suffering? And how should the Lord’s coming and eternity shape present spiritual growth? Its central answer is that the Christian life is God’s work of bringing people into Christ, enlarging Christ in them, and preparing them for the eternal purpose bound up with His Son.