What's in a Name?

Thank you again, Mr. Bledsoe.

I'll get myself all situated around here.

Shakespeare wrote the words, What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Does anybody recognize what that's from?

Well, from Shakespeare, it's actually from the most famous monologue within Romeo and Juliet. That's the part where at the beginning, Juliet is up on the balcony and he's saying, Oh Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? I heard that many, many times and I always assumed she was looking for him, asking, Where are you, Romeo? But actually, it's not a comment on that. It's, Why Romeo? In other words, why do you have to have that name? And that's how the attachment to the idea that a rose by another name would smell just as sweet. She's making the case that what a thing is is much more important than what it's called. But I want to also look at the other side of this. Names are very useful. And some psychologists would argue that they're actually vital. That if we don't have a word for something, we have difficulty thinking about that something. And there had been some speculation that we would even lose track of it. I believe that was part of the George Orwell's thinking in 1984, unless I'm getting it confused with another one of his books. But, you know, middle school literature class was a long time ago. But when we think about that, yeah, a rose is a label for what a rose is. It doesn't make the rose what it is. You know, a rose is known for its smell, but a nice perfume is known for its smell. A rose might be known for its beautiful red color, but if it's a pink or yellow or white rose, it's still a rose. A rose is known for its beauty. And I've been speculating on, if you had a high-def picture of a rose, would it be just as beautiful? And I keep saying, well, probably not. But roses are known for being temporary. That's one of the things that makes fresh-cut flowers so special that they're fleeting. But a lot of other things last only a short time. So we can break down all these various characteristics of a rose, and any one of them might be shared by something else that's not a rose at all. But if you put all of them together, then you have a rose. Whether or not we call it that, I could call it some flower thingamabob type thing. Now, what about us? You might be wondering, where is he going with this? Surely someone asked you the question, what religion are you? What church do you go to? And when you answer, they might often make some incorrect assumptions based on what answer you give. And of course, we might struggle with what answer should I give. We know there are a lot of other groups out there with similar names that don't have the same characteristics. I was inspired on this line of thinking, actually a little while ago, when I've been turning it over in my mind, and visiting members in the hospital and doing funerals, I found that in dealing with friends and family of members, when the family and friends are not, they often have an interesting view of us. They might look at any one of you and say, well, this person doesn't go to church on Sunday in our little town, so they're probably not a Christian. And that starts making them fearful, not a Christian. That means if they die, they're probably going to that real hot place. On the other hand, if I stand up in a funeral and say, this person was a Christian, and I begin reading from 1 Corinthians where it says, this mortal must put on immortality, a large number of people in the audience assume that I'm teaching that their immortal soul has gone to heaven.

I want to come back to that filling in gaps and how people put things together. But for now, I don't need to worry about that. Sometimes you need to correct those misunderstandings, but a lot of times in a setting like that, you don't need to. But I think it's important for us to think about the different names or labels that apply to us and consider what they mean.

Mostly because I think it's important for us to think about the characteristics that those names are supposed to define. So let's look at some names. Now, I'm going to warn you up. I'm going to look at names and labels for a little bit first, but it's going to all tie together later on. So bear with me if it seems like I'm being a little pedantic going through some of these. I already started off with a pretty general term. I use the term church members. Now, that term has a little room for misunderstanding, but it's a pretty good starting place. Most of us have studied into the name of the church. We're sitting here in a congregation of the United Church of God. We only added that term united because when we went to incorporate, we had to have something to distinguish us from other churches that already had that same name, Church of God. There are 12 occasions in the New Testament that the church is called Church of God. I'm not going to turn to all of them. I'll just mention Acts 20, verse 28, where it says, Take heed to shepherd the Church of God. And some of the places, there's an adjective in front of it. As I said, united Church of God. The united is just an adjective. In 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 2, Paul is writing a letter and he says, To the Church of God, which is at Corinth. So if people ask us, what are you? If you weren't very imaginative, you could say, well, I'm a Church of Godite. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, though. But it's accurate. I thought we could come up with some other names if we wanted to analyze what the word church means. There are some people in some groups that might object to using the word God and say we should use some Hebrew name instead. But we know church, at least, is derived from the Greek, Ecclesia, which means invited or called out ones. We focused on that before. Wouldn't it be something if someone asked, what religion are you? And you say, I'm one of the called out ones. Or, I'm an invited one. They might look at you a little funny. Sometimes we'll use phrases like that to make a point when we're explaining what we are. But generally, we're only doing that to make a point. Plus, we don't find precedent in Scripture for that. We do find Scriptural basis for calling ourselves members of the church. Let's look at some of those, because I think when we say we're a member of God's church, that is saying something pretty important. We'll start with Colossians 1 and verse 18. Colossians 1, 18.

It says, He, referring to Jesus Christ, is the head of the body, the church. Who is at the beginning of the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. But the body is the church, and Jesus Christ is the head. Which we can see further if we go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. A few pages over towards the front. 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 12.

We'll get a little more description about this. For as the body is one and has many members, so it's one church, but we're all members of it. All the members of that body, being many, are one body. So also is Christ. This is saying we're a part of Christ, in a sense. Let's go down to verse 27. You are the body of Christ and members individually. So all of us, not just all of us, but all of those who are called out by God the Father, are members of the body of Christ. Each one of us is a member. That's not a bad term. As I said, it doesn't exactly roll over the tongue, off the tongue. It does sound a little better than saying, I'm a body part of Christ.

I thought I'd get more chuckles than that. Sometimes if I wait long enough.

But I want to stop here, because as much as I like playing with words, many of you probably think this is starting to get a little silly. And besides that, we already have a perfectly good English word that's in common usage that means members of the body of Christ. That word is Christian. And that's true. We really are Christians. I talked about how, you know, if I go to a funeral and say someone was a Christian, people might come to a misunderstanding. But I think sometimes we've avoided saying that, and people don't necessarily think we're Christian. And that surprised me sometimes when people say, why didn't you think you were Christian? Well, why not? Well, you go to church on a Jewish day, and you're always talking about the Father. And we don't use phrases like, give your heart to Jesus, or come to the Lord Jesus so much. And so people think we aren't Christians. Sometimes some people do. I don't mean to make that a blanket stereotype. But we are Christians. Accepting that, though, would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? Does calling something that doesn't look, smell, or feel like a rose make it a rose? No, of course not. So the question is, does calling someone a Christian who does not have all the characteristics that define a Christian actually make him a Christian? You'd say, that's silly. Of course not. It's not the label. I couldn't put a name tag on that says Christian, and that's all there is to it. You have to have the characteristics. But what does the Bible tell us about what a Christian is? I was actually surprised. It doesn't say much. It doesn't appear very often. Now, I thought you could actually look for an alternate term, but it doesn't tell us a lot about that. I realized that Christ was the Greek for anointed one, the Christos, or Christian. So in Hebrew it was Messiah. So instead of Christians, we could be calling ourselves Messiahites. Actually, this morning I finally figured out Messianic is the term they would use, and some people do go by that. I don't think we need to go there. But I was surprised, and I used my concordance a fair bit putting this together. And I noticed there are only three times in the whole Bible where the word Christian appears. I'm not going to turn to the first tool, but I'll mention them. In 1 Peter 4, 16, he says, If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but glorify God. I'll keep that in mind when we get to our talking about some of those characteristics. Christian is something you can suffer as, but it's not necessarily that you have to. There's another case in Acts 26 where Paul was on one of several trials you see described. Remember, he went to the temple and was arrested, and the Jews wanted to kill him, so the Romans took him into custody, and he peeled the Caesar rather than go be judged at Jerusalem because he knew he wouldn't get a fair trial. And so he's brought before the regional king, King Agrippa, who wants to hear what he has to say. Paul gives him his full talk, and at the end, in Acts 26-28, Agrippa says to Paul, you almost persuade me to become a Christian. There's something to that label, then. Like I said, Paul had to give that long talk, but Agrippa said that's pretty convincing. And if you'll turn to Acts 11 and verse 26, this story is a little more brief, but we'll get to the bottom of this term that we use very commonly in our society, but which doesn't appear much in the Bible.

It's another case where Paul is entering the scene. This is as the Gospel is being spread throughout Asia, and when the apostles in Jerusalem hear that there's a colony up in Antioch of people learning, they send Barnabas, and he goes up there and starts working with them, and he says, oh, basically he says, I need some help. So he goes to Tarsus to find Saul, which I'll pick up there. In verse 26, when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people.

And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. So there was a time when that was first used. And as I said, maybe they thought, well, we're not speaking Hebrew around here, so we're not going to call ourselves Messianic, but they were first called Christians. But what's interesting is now we see clearly that a clear synonym that means the same exact thing as Christian is disciple. A disciple of Jesus Christ is a Christian.

That's a good religious-sounding word. It doesn't sound weird or cultish or anything. As a matter of fact, it's actually the part of... It's in the name of a number of churches around. Just to be sure, because I think so, I went on the Internet and did a Google and found that one of the most prominent ones is called the Christian Church and then parentheses disciples of Christ. I think the parentheses are saying... This is another way of saying the exact same thing. I thought, I like that. The Christian Church, disciples of Christ. Now, that's not us. It wouldn't be a bad label for us except we follow the biblical example of calling ourselves Church of God. I think that's a much better way to do it. Still, aside from naming the Church as a label for us as individuals, disciple is very biblical and very descriptive. Throughout the Gospel accounts, especially Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, the term disciple is often used to represent a small number of people. And, of course, it will expand later. At first, it's often synonymous with just the apostles. We can see that in Matthew 5. Matthew 5...we'll start in verse 1. This is leading into what we call the Sermon on the Mount. It says, "...and seeing the multitudes he..." that is Jesus, "...went up on the mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them." And he goes into that sermon. But it's interesting. He sees the multitudes, withdraws from them, and then disciples come. So we presume disciples and multitudes are not the same. If you'll go over a few pages to chapter 10, though we'll see that sometimes the term is applied to a very narrow group. Matthew 10, verses 1 and 2. So, "...when he had called his twelve disciples to him, he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. And the names of the twelve apostles are these." And it goes down the list. So here we see twelve disciples and twelve apostles listed as synonymous. So it makes me wonder, were they the only ones that were truly disciples at that time? Well, whether they were or not, the number would grow. We find, and as I said, I had my concordance out, so there's something I like to count sometimes just to see. And I found, of times where the word disciples is used to describe more than just the twelve, usually a larger number. There's about twenty-five times. And we already read one of those. Remember, we saw in Acts 11, 26, where it says, the disciples were first called Christians. That wasn't referring to the twelve apostles. Also, let's turn to John, chapter 6, if you will. John 6 and verse 66. So there aren't too many chapters in the Bible that have 66 verses, and quite a story that we have in this one. As a matter of fact, if you remember, this is the chapter where Christ talks about, he's speaking symbolically, but he says, to have life, you've got to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And a lot of people say, this is a pretty hard saying, and so they were offended by it. And verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more.

And Jesus said to the twelve, do you want to go away? And of course, Peter then answers, where are we going to go? You've got the words of eternal life. But in this case, disciples is distinctly different from the twelve. So we've seen some places where it's the same, some where it's different. Remember, I'm examining words here. I'm going to tie this together a little bit later. I see some of you starting to get that glazed look. Surprisingly, I used to get that in history classes on occasion.

Let's turn it over to Acts 6 to look at one more case of this term being used.

As I said, right now I'm sort of showing who can be or is, maybe or may not be disciples. We'll get into some of the characteristics later.

Acts 6 and verse 6... Actually, I was wrong. I've got two other places in Acts I want to go to.

Well, or not right now. Acts 6 verse 1... Now, in those days when the number of disciples was multiplied, there was a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the twelve summoned the multitudes of disciples. And of course, they said it's not desirable for us to leave the word of God to serve tables, and that's when the office of Deacon was ordained. But we see that there were a multitude of disciples, and there were the apostles. So you can have a lot of disciples. It's a good alternate term for church members or Christians.

But then, okay, we've established a term. I keep coming back to that question from Shakespeare, though. What's in a name? Does calling someone disciple make them a true Christian? Not necessarily.

Could someone be a member of the body of Christ and not know the term disciple? Well, especially if they don't speak English, right? So as our discussion of roses, or even of Romeo himself, shows, it's the characteristics of a person that matters the most. Those characteristics that make something what it is. Now, we can find some interesting passages in the Bible that describe what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I'm going to look at some of those in a bit, but before we do that, I want to consider one more term. I'm only going to give you one more here that we'll find in Scriptures, and it's another synonym that's useful for us to know. And as I said, I'll bring this together shortly. Now, Acts 11 and verse 26 pretty much told us. We read that and said, the disciples were first called Christians. The Bible makes it very clear those two mean the same thing. We won't find another Scripture that says, you know, disciples are also this, but if we understand the meaning of the word disciple, we will. What does disciple mean? It means a student, a pupil, someone who's learning from someone else.

In the Greek, by the way, it's mithites, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Strong's number 3101. I wanted to write it down because I thought, with my bad vision, without my glasses, it looks like it says machete, but it's not. It's machete's. But a pupil learns from a teacher. And if you go to Matthew 23 and verse 8, we'll see that Christ makes it very clear who the teacher is and what everyone else is, what the disciples are.

Matthew 23 and verse 8. And by the way, I should mention another word for teacher that you see in the Bible sometimes is rabbi. And here he says, do not be called rabbi, for one is your teacher. And my Bible, the one, is capitalized because he's speaking about himself. One is your teacher, the Christ, and you are all the disciples. It doesn't say that. It says, you are all brethren.

Now, they obviously were disciples if he was the teacher and they weren't. But then he turns and says, you are all brethren, as well as disciples. So we've got these synonyms here. A Christian is a disciple, is a brother. Brothers in Christ, we often use the term. And I read that and I said, well, of course. We call each other brethren all the time. Everybody that stands up here says, greetings, brother. Matter of fact, I think when I was a kid growing up, it took a long time before I realized brethren is the plural of brothers. Because I knew what brothers were. I thought brethren was something specifically in the church. And it sort of is.

And brethren is, brethren or brothers, is the term that's most often used in the Bible for disciples, Christians. Well, I was in accounting mode and I got tired of counting after this one because I found it was used more than 225 times. So that's the grand champ, if you're comparing, which most of you won't be. But, okay, we're brethren, brothers. Let's turn to Acts 12, if you will. Acts 12 and verse 17. I want to see just two or three examples that this term, how this term is used.

Without reading this whole story, this is one of the times when Peter was put in prison. This is as James had been killed by Herod. He had Peter in prison intending to kill him after Passover. And of course, God sent a miracle to free Peter. I'm tempted to read the story, but I'll just tell it. I find it most amusing that Peter didn't realize what was really happening. Angel comes and slaps him on the side and says, Get up! Chains fall off. He walks through one door, another door opens.

And Peter, the whole time, is thinking, Oh, I'm sleeping. This is kind of a nice dream. Then the angel disappears and he's standing in the street. He's like, Oh, that's not a dream. I'm really out here. So he goes to Mary's house, the mother of Mark, because he knows there are members of the church there. Or we could say, disciples. Or as we see in Acts 12-17, after he finally gets Rhoda to open the door so they'll find out that he's there, he says, Motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.

And he said, Go tell these things to James and to the brethren. Now James was the pastor of the congregation in Jerusalem, so one of the news to get to James, his pastor, and to all the brethren. So do that. Let's go over a couple pages to Acts 15 to see another use of that term.

There's another chapter full of an interesting story. I'm not going to recount all the story, but this is the story of the Jerusalem Conference, one of the first major disagreements within the church after the church was founded, where there were some who were Jewish that said, Well, you can't be saved unless you're circumcised. In other words, they were saying, You've got to be naturalized as an Israelite before you can be a true Christian.

And others were saying, Well, that's not right. And so they gathered together all the elders in Jerusalem to discuss it, and actually, they decided that the latter were correct. You don't have to become an Israelite to become a Christian. And so they sent a summary of what they decided and the recommendations out to the church, and we begin in verse 23. They wrote this letter by them, and this is who it's from.

The apostles, the elders, and the brethren. So we've got three types of people here listed. Apostles, elders, and brethren. Now, I would say that this is sort of declining from more specific to broader, because all the apostles were elders. And I would say that all the apostles and the elders were brethren, but not all the brethren had been ordained as elders. It's funny, when I think about it, by the time we get into God's kingdom, we'll all be the equivalent of elders or higher. Probably considerably higher. But at the church at that time, not all the brethren were elders.

And who were they writing to? To the brethren who were of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Silesia. So it's from brethren to brethren. This tells us something else, just in case anyone had doubt. The term brethren is not relating to people who were related to each other.

That term often does mean that, and that's its original meaning. But since we know a lot of the brethren who were writing the letter were Jewish, because that's the source of the controversy, but they were writing to the Gentiles who were brethren. It's a spiritual brotherhood that they were a part of and that we're a part of.

Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot this was in my notes. But the word brothers or brethren is not uncommon as names of churches that consider themselves Christian as well. I discovered one of those that goes back to about the mid-1800s. It's called The Church of the United Brethren in Christ, which I thought was interesting, because if you take the initials of that, it's C-O-T-U-B-I-C, or katubic, which is actually where the camp that we rent, how it originated, it's named for that church.

I learned this past summer that the church is not affiliated with the camp any longer. The fellow we call Uncle Dave, who runs the camp, said, well, yeah, about 15 or 20 years ago, he said the church decided it didn't want to be in the camp business. So they told him, set yourself up a nonprofit organization, and we're just going to give you the camp, as long as you promise to keep doing programs for youth.

And at the time I thought, wow, it'd be nice if someone would come to United and say, here, we're going to give you a camp, as long as you'll use it for youth. There are some others. You might have heard there's a group that started in England, and they've got members in all the English-speaking world and perhaps others, they're often known as the Plymouth Brethren.

But they call themselves just the Brethren. They say, what church are you? They'll say, we're Brethren. And I've actually heard reference to them since then, but I first came in contact when a number of them live up in Columbus, and they decided they wanted to start a private school to send their kids to.

And within a year after Sue and I were married, they hired her to be one of their teachers. And so there's a group, they just call themselves the Brethren. Very biblical. So it's accurate for what they want to be. But, coming back to Shakespeare, would a rose by any other name smell the same? Does me saying that I'm among the Brethren that make up the church make it so? Well, I hope that I am, but it's not the label that makes it that way.

And people could be ignorant of the term, but still have the traits. So I want to transition our thinking here to making assumptions, how you look at part of a label, and our minds tend to fill in the gaps.

And I came up with a tool for doing this, and hopefully this will work. It worked this morning. I don't do props a whole lot, but there's sort of a... I'm not sure if they call it a word game. I couldn't find the origin of it. I went online looking for it, but I first heard this in college, where people use certain letters to portray a conversation. Like, if you see this, and the way it goes...

it starts out this way. Now, yeah, it's M.R. Dux. M.R. Dux? The other person says... A.R. Naught. Oh, I'm out of order. The other person says... O.S.A.R. C.M. Wings. And the other person says... Oh, I see! L.I.B. M.R. Dux. Now, after I'd made this all up, using Connor's flashcards that he's learning the alphabet with, I discovered there's actually one more line you could use after you say C.M.

Wings is C.M.E.D.B.D.I.I. Or I.D.E.B.D.I.s. I thought that might be a little amusing, but you might say, Well, what in the world are you getting at with all this? Well, the idea is, using mere letters, one word, and a couple pictures, I could portray a conversation. Now, the question is, if I only gave you the visual, how long would it take to get it? Now, if you'd heard it before, I'm sure Mr. Shoemaker in the front row got it right off, so I don't know if he's heard it before or if he just thinks that way. As soon as you...

No, I didn't mean that in a bad way. I meant that in a good way. When I'm getting...as soon as you sounded out, it starts sounding like something. M.R. sounds like them are. Them are...and I couldn't resist the picture of the fuzzy yellow ducklings.

And then, A.R. not sounds like they are not. And you go from there. Our brains will fill in. And of course, when you add the vocal inflection, we just fill in on the bare minimum.

I've seen other things where somebody will print words and the letters are all transposed around, and if just two or three of them are in the right place, our brain reads it the way it's meant to be. It's kind of amazing how that works. Now, you might say, what does that have to do with anything you've been talking about?

Well, it leads me into a couple of things that I want to discuss. One is that it lets me lead into explaining that Christians, disciples, brethren, or whatever term you want to use, we have to discuss, as I said, the traits. We can follow the old adage. If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. And I'll say, I've been waiting for an excuse for a couple years to bring one of my rubber ducks up here.

Actually, this one belongs to Connor. You might not have guessed that. But, right, it has to fit all those criteria. Similarly, if a person looks like a Christian, and he walks like a Christian, and he quacks like a Christian, then he might be a duck. No, let me rephrase that. If a person presents himself in a Christian way, if he behaves like a Christian, he speaks like a Christian, and most of all, he thinks like a Christian, then I think we could say he's a Christian, regardless of whether he's calling himself a disciple, a called-out one, a Messiahite, or a Christian.

Now, the second thing I want to add to this, of course, is the point I was making with this is we tend to hear what we expect to hear, and we tend to see what we expect to see. People can see sometimes one character trait, or hear one name, and in their mind fill in everything else they expect. I say, M-R, and I hold this up, M-R wings. I'm not sure I've still got the exclamation point up here. But that's all it took to get, like I said, that one character trait.

Now, this is a fictional conversation, and as I said, I have no idea where it came from, but I discovered there's a restaurant bar in Maryland called M-R Wings, and they sell T-shirts. I was tempted to order one, but I discovered it too late, and I wouldn't have ordered a T-shirt up here. Anyways, think of this, when I show up at a funeral wearing my black suit and tie and carrying the Bible, all I have to do in my funeral message often is say, this person was a Christian, and many people in the audience hear me say, he's in heaven.

As I said, the mind fills in the gaps. And, like I said, we don't have to correct that. When God calls someone and opens their mind, then it's the time to educate and learn those things. But we may allow ourselves to make unsubstantiated assumptions, both about others and, more importantly, about ourselves. What if we see someone who shows up at services regular, Sabbath services?

We might assume his whole life is ordered according to the Bible, and he's a good Christian. But that's just one characteristic. I might attend Sabbath services. Here's the most important thing. Me coming to Sabbath services, well, I say, okay, I'm doing that.

That's enough. But, like I said, that's one characteristic. You might see a person pray or hear him pray and say, oh, he's got a good close relationship with God. But that's one characteristic. If all I do is go through the motion of saying my prayers, and I use that term, Sue and I, we've always prayed with Connor over meals, but now as part of his bedtime routine we've started the prayer before bed, so he gets that into his head.

And it's sort of a formalized ritual. Could I do that for myself and think, it's all okay? I said those words. Well, I hope not, because what if I were just... I don't want to find years down the road that I'm just playing at church, that I'm doing some of the motions and have some of the traits, but not really following through.

Now, I don't think that I'm doing that. Of course, I wouldn't be up here if that were the case. But it's worth all of us looking at ourselves and thinking, what is it? Where am I at with this? We can make mistakes about a lot of things. As I said, we see people and make sometimes a mistake in assumptions. I've known people who, if they heard somebody mispronounce a word or say something with not proper grammar, say, oh, that stupid person, he's uneducated, he doesn't know anything.

But that's making an assumption based on one little thing that's often untrue. It's good for us to know it. It takes more than a pair of wings to make a duck. You know, that bird had better walk like a duck and quack like a duck and so on. Now, as I said, we don't have to fuss and fret a great deal over mistaken conclusions that other people make about us. We'll probably never escape that. But we should be concerned about mistakes we might... or mistaken conclusions we can make about others. And as I was saying, most of all about the mistakes we can make about ourselves. I don't want to learn to say quack, quack, and assume that I've become a duck.

Even if I had a name tag that said duck and I could get people to come up, read that duck. Well, you're a duck. Similarly, if I get the label Christian, I say, I'm a Christian, and I go around saying, boy, I love Jesus. You know, that doesn't alone make me a Christian. You know, I need to have all the traits. I need to walk, talk, look, and think like one.

Okay, so knowing that, this is where looking into all those words starts to come together. Does the Bible tell us what those character traits are? I've avoided that so far. I've been telling you, you've got to walk the walk and talk the talk. But what is that? Well, I mentioned the Bible doesn't tell us many of the traits of a Christian. Word only appears three times. But it does tell us a lot about disciples and about brothers of Christ. So, let's take a little look at what does it really mean to be a disciple of Christ. One thing I already said, a disciple is a learner. That's part of the definition.

Now, the Scripture mentions a number of teachers who have disciples. John the Baptist had disciples, and many of them then switched teachers when Jesus came along. Well, you're in Acts. Go back to Acts 4. Acts 4 and verse 13. This is one of those many times when the apostles had been arrested, and they're being questioned by the Pharisees and authority. And it says, When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, here they filled in a gap and made that assumption.

These guys don't know anything. They're not saying the right words. They don't have the right letters behind their name for a degree. But then they realized they'd been with Jesus. So, it turns out they weren't untrained and uneducated. They were trained and educated by the best teacher there was, and it made them stand out. They were very noticeable. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What more distinguishes disciples of Jesus Christ? Let's turn to John 9. I want to look at a dialogue that occurred between the Pharisees and Christ. I'm going to cut in part way. Well, actually, not the dialogue between the Pharisees and Christ, but the Pharisees and a man that Christ healed. There's a story where a man had been blind from his birth. He'd never been able to see. Jesus heals him, and it becomes widely known. People are, hey, this guy's been healed.

That's amazing. He's been blind his whole life. It's getting back to it's attributed to Jesus, whom the Pharisees don't like. So they bring the guy in to question him and get to the bottom of this. So let's begin reading in verse 26. They said to him, What did he say to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them, I told you already, and you didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?

They reviled him and said, You're his disciple, but we're Moses' disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses. As for this fellow, we don't know where he's from. The man answered and said to them, This is a marvelous thing that you don't know where he's from, yet he has opened my eyes. Now we know God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is a worshipper of God and does his will, he hears him. Since the world began, it's unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind.

The man were not from God. He could do nothing. They answered and said, You are completely born in sins. Are you teaching us? And they cast him out, or they just fellowshiped him. And it says, Later Jesus found him and made sure he understood who he was.

But it's interesting that the Pharisees mistakenly believed that Jesus' teaching was contrary to that of Moses. They thought he's coming along and teaching something that doesn't match with our teaching from what they considered the Bible, which we call the Old Testament.

And many professing Christians today think that. Well, let's go back a few pages to John 5. John 5 beginning in verse 37. We'll see what Jesus has to say about that. John 5 in verse 37. And Jesus here is having a confrontation with the Pharisees. And he says, The Father himself who sent me has testified of me. You neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form. But you do not have his word abiding in you, because whom he sent you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. These are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to me that you might have life.

I want to skip over to verse 45. Verse 45, Do not think that I accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you'd believe me. He wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

Here Jesus is pointing out a fundamental requirement to be his disciple. Sorry, now I'm confusing the terms. He says we have to believe Jesus' words. You have to believe. Have faith in the things that he taught. And furthermore, believe him when he said, my teachings don't contradict Moses'. The New Testament is not undoing the old. Matter of fact, we should believe him when he said, don't think I've come to destroy the law and the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill. A disciple of Christ can at the same time be a disciple of Moses. And not because Christ was a disciple of Moses, but the other way around.

Christ is the one who spoke to Moses on the mountain and gave him the law. So if you're following Moses properly, you're also following the one who became Jesus Christ. You have to believe. But there's something more to that. Let's go over to John 8. Because we know in James it says that the demons believe and they tremble, but they don't live according to what they know to be true. So we'll go over to John 8 and verse 31. And Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, you're my disciple indeed. And then you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free.

So how do you become a disciple of Jesus? Well, if only you have to believe his word and you have to abide in it. That's... abiding in his word means do it. Do what Christ quoted to Satan when he was tempting him. He stoned into bread and he said, no, no. Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Live by God's word. That's saying the same thing as abide in my word.

And when you do that, you'll be free. Free from misunderstanding. And because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, free from the penalty of sin. I want to make it clear, obeying God's law doesn't free us from the penalty of sin. Only Christ's sacrifice could do that.

But when we repent and we accept that sacrifice, we live by the law because we want to be like him. There we go. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's likely to be a duck. And if a person lives by God's word, if they obey God's law, it's probably because he is a disciple of Jesus Christ. Let's look at another passage to see that those who are disciples were also called by another term for doing that very thing in Matthew 12. Matthew 12 and verse 46.

This is one of the cases where Jesus is teaching and crowds of people are coming in. And as we'll read, While he was still talking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside seeking to speak with him. I think another account says that they thought he was crazy. They wanted to get him out of there. And one said to him, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you. And he answered and he says, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And he stretched out his hand to the disciples and said, here are my mother and my brothers. So here, brothers is equivalent to disciples, another place connecting them. But he says, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. You'll do God's will. You abide in his word. That makes you Christ's brother. If we're brothers of Christ, then of course we're brethren of each other. The parallel account in Luke 8 verse 21, I won't turn there, but it says it a little more succinctly. He said, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

Now, think about it. I probably could have read that about 20 minutes ago and the sermon would have been done. But it's pretty simple. You want to be a brother of Christ. You want to be a disciple. Hear his word and do it.

From this we see that Christ's brethren are the same as his disciples. They live by God's word. But it's important for us to understand that it's only possible to understand that word by the power of God's Holy Spirit.

A lot of people would probably live by that word, but they don't understand it. They read the Bible. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a gentleman some time ago. He said, why am I just now understanding this? You go your whole life and you read it and it doesn't make sense. But when God's Spirit comes in, that makes the difference. And I want to say it's possible only to understand it by God's Spirit and to obey it from the heart by God's Spirit.

A lot of people have strong will power. They can read those Ten Commandments and say, I'm going to do that. But Christ came and said, no, it's more than that. Not only don't kill your brother, don't hate him in your heart. Not only don't commit adultery, don't look at a woman to lust after her. I would say, we can't do that without the Spirit.

But that same power that makes it possible for us to obey by the Spirit will start bringing about other characteristics.

Let's turn to John 13 and we'll see one of the most important listed. John 13 and verse 34.

Of course, this is on that last Passover that Jesus had with his disciples before the crucifixion. And shortly after, he washed their feet. He sat down and said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. And by this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

That's an important trait. As I said, you've got to not just quack like a Christian, you've got to have these traits.

Did I just say, quack like a Christian? I'm going to have to put this duck away, it's getting me off track.

But true Christians love each other, because the love of God is in them. The only way we can love each other, as Christ loves us, is because of that spirit, and then we'll have the other fruits of the spirit. As a matter of fact, let's turn over to John 15. John 15 and verse 8, he makes that point.

By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so you will be my disciples. So what's one of the characteristics of a disciple? You bear much fruit. Love is one of the fruits of the spirit, but if you look at Galatians 5, 22 and 23, which I'm not going to turn there, Paul lists several fruits of the spirit, or you could say several aspects of the fruit of the spirit.

Love, joy, peace, gentleness, long-suffering, meekness, kindness, temperance. I need to start counting, because I always get to the end, I'm saying, well, I'm missing one, but hopefully we'll have them and more. Righteousness is considered a fruit of the spirit. And of course, as I said, we can only have God's spirit in us to give us these characteristics, and having God's spirit in us is the foremost characteristic of a Christian. If you'll turn to Romans 8, Romans 8 and verse 9, I'm guessing some of you are saying, what's about time you finally got to this one? This is the obvious one. Well, it is. That's part of why I saved it for later on. So you're not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he's not his. You're not a Christian without God's spirit in you. No matter how much you have the name tag, no matter how much you use the label, you've got to have God's spirit, and then you have to let the spirit flow to have those character traits. Walk like a Christian. Talk like a Christian. Think like one.

Now, if we drop down a few verses, we'll also see that this will bring us back to connecting Christian with the term brethren in a very important way. Romans 8 and verse 14. As many as are led by the spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption. Or as the Greek should say, a sonship of being begotten, not just adopted, although being adopted is good, but you're literally conceived by God the Father, and by which we cry out, Abba, Father, the spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. That's the most amazing thing that we could call ourselves, to be brothers of Christ, sons of the great, almighty, eternal God.

Now, I think it's interesting, it's sad that many who call themselves Christians miss out on seeing this because of the doctrine of the Trinity, where they believe that God is a closed unit of only three, you know, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that's all. We see God as a family, and He wants to have many sons begotten and born into the family, and that includes us. Brothers of Christ. And if we're brothers of Christ, we're brethren of each other. I was thinking, I'm not sure, it's been a long time since math class, if you call it the transitive property, if I'm brother to Christ and He's brother to you, then you and I are brothers. That's more simple than, maybe that's why you learn it in the third grade. And as I said, it's never enough to just say it. We need to have those traits. Walk the walk. Talk the talk. Never let ourselves be caught playing church, doing the characteristics that are seen. And as I said, I didn't plan this to be an accusative or corrective sermon, rather judging this, and for each of us to sometimes look at ourselves and say, what am I really doing? Am I focusing on just one and not all of them? So if we were able to answer that question that Shakespeare had Juliet ask, what's in a name?

Well, I think the answer would be, well, quite a bit. There's a lot in the name. When people ask, what church do you belong to? Usually they're looking for the name of a denomination or some corporation. I like to say, I'm a Christian. Now, sometimes it'll go, if they want to know specific doctrines or how the church is organized, but I like to say, I'm a Christian, or we belong to a Christian church. As we've seen, though, Christian in our society is used too much and too little understood. The Bible provides clarity if we look at those other labels that we know match, like disciple of Christ or brother of Christ. It shows that just like a bird needs to look like a duck and quack like a duck and walk like a duck, to actually be a duck. This one doesn't walk like a duck, but still, a person, as I said, should look like a Christian and talk like a Christian, act like a Christian, think like one, before we consider him a Christian, before I consider myself a Christian. That's the most important thing for me to take of all this. Am I looking at my traits? Am I doing these things? I need to believe God's word. And I need to believe that it's all there, Old and New Testament. I need to believe Jesus Christ and have faith in it, enough to live by it, abide in His word. And what Christ said, my brothers and my mother and sister are those who hear the word of God and do it. Now, I need to go beyond that, though. I need to love the brethren. That's all of you. And others far beyond this room, because they're begotten children of God. We're brothers to each other. And that's something, because as the song says, if we love one another, people will know that we're Christ's disciples. So this time, I'm following through. I am ending early.