Do you need a mirror, Hypocrite?

“Clearly there is a direct link between the profession of faith, the practice of faith, and the plausibility of faith. Practice what you preach and you commend your faith; don’t and you contradict it. ‘By this all men will know you are my disciples,’ Jesus said. ‘if you love one another.’ Or as Erasmus reminded his contemporaries a millennium and a half later in a more corrupt generation, ‘If we would bring the Turks to Christianity, we must first be Christians.’”
The Call by Os Guinness: 108

Are we living as Christians or just professing to be so? What does it mean to truly be a Christian? These are questions that have struck me repeatedly in my search. The church so many times seems full of hypocrites and liars. But are we not all hypocrites at some point? Christian does not equal perfect. I believe a better definition of Christian, though anything is probably better, is a sinner who acknowledges that they are a sinner and will be until they join God in heaven. The difference is that Christians know that their sins are forgiven and when Jesus died on the cross this allowed us to enter into eternal life with God.

This world is so sinful and wrong for us. Try to wrap your mind around the fact that we wake up in the morning to sin, we live through temptation, our actions, words, and thoughts are all possible methods to sin. How impossible is it to go a day without sinning? How many times do we sin to only realize we have sinned afterward? The point of faith in God is not to make us perfect statues on pedestals for the world to admire, but to be a light onto the world. We are not to hide in our own little enclave and leave the sinners to themselves. We need to go amongst others to cultivate relationships, spread the good news, and show the world what it truly means to be Christian. We need to practice what we preach and admit when we are wrong because we will do wrong at some point.

What a difficult calling. Then again, it’s not like we have to do it on our own. God calls us to him and wants to help us. He wants us to succeed. He is not there getting a giggle out of our failures. He has given us weapons and armor to succeed and he wants to hear us cry out to him. The Lord has also given us community, the church, our friends, a mentor. We are not meant to do this alone.