What does a Christian Look like?

Exodus 12:1-14

Romans 13.8-14

Matthew 18.15-20

What does a Christian look like?

It is an interesting question – and we all probably have certain images in our mind. Culture provides us with lots of stereotypes – Ned Flander’s from the Simpsons with his relentless cheer and moral earnestness and ability to quote the bible in any situation, or Geraldine granger as the vicar  bible, chaotic yet well meaning, or more doubtfully someone like Fr Ted Crilly, care worn and cynical by the madness of the church he is trapped in. the list goes on and on. We can draw all sorts of images from our minds that speak to our very different expectations and experiences.  

Historically speaking this has been a question that has vexed the church at various times – what does a Christian look like what do they do, should they serve in the army, be involved with banking, should they be celibate or have many children, what do they wear or do. The prime example of this was probably Calvin’s Geneva in the reformation where they tried to make it a sort of protestant Rome for the world – there what you wore was controlled, what you could do – going to church was in, dancing was out, what you ate- no sweets at weddings, how you dealt with disagreements- they formalised the words of matthews into a consistory court of elders which ruled over behaviours and transgressions in the city. And they influenced what you could call your children – wisely the name claude was banned.

It doesn’t sound a whole lot of fun and it is perhaps easy to look at all of this with the tendency to laugh at either the foolish stereotypes or the weird paths history takes the church sometimes.

But actually we shouldn’t because there is something fundamentally right behind it. The key idea in Geneva and in every other iteration was that Faith should make a difference to the way we live.

If being a Christian makes absolutely no difference to how I treat other people, how I spend my money, how I use my time, how I conduct my relationships, or how I respond when somebody hurts me, then surely something has gone wrong. Christianity isn’t simply a set of ideas that we happen to believe. It is supposed to be a way of life.

But there is a danger here as well. We can become so concerned with what a Christian does that we forget to ask why a Christian does it. We can become so concerned with the visible signs of Christianity that the signs themselves become the important thing. We can start to think that being a Christian means doing the right things, looking the right way, belonging to the right group and being recognised by other people as one of the good ones.

And once that happens, Christian behaviour can become detached from Christian faith. We can end up performing Christianity rather than living it.

I think our readings today offer us a rather different way of understanding what Christian living is about.

The story from Exodus is fundamentally about remembering what God has done. The Israelites are not simply given a set of religious regulations and told that if they keep them well enough they will become God’s people. They are already God’s people, and they are being rescued. They are being brought out of slavery, and the Passover becomes the great act of remembering that rescue.

That is why Passover is not simply a history lesson. In Jewish liturgies Year after year the story is told again. The meal is eaten again. The people remember again what God has done. The story of what God has done becomes part of the story of who they are.

And that gives us an important pattern for understanding Christian life. We don’t begin with the question, “What must I do in order to make God love me?” We begin with the much more fundamental question, “What has God done for me?”

The Christian life begins not with our performance but with God’s grace. God has acted. God has loved us. God has called us. God has given himself to us in Christ. And therefore the way we live is a response to something that has already happened.

Our life with God begins with something God has done, not something we have achieved.

But that doesn’t mean that what we do doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite.

Paul is very clear about that. In Romans he is talking about how Christians are to live in the present world, including their relationship with those who exercise authority. That passage can sometimes be read rather too simply, as though Paul were saying, “Obey the authorities, keep the rules and don’t make trouble.” But he moves from questions of authority to a much more fundamental obligation, and that is the obligation we have to one another:

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”

It is a wonderful phrase because there is one debt that we never quite finish paying. We can settle a financial debt. We can fulfil a legal obligation. We can tick a box and say that something has been done. But we never get to the point where we can say, “I’ve loved enough now; my obligations are complete.” There is always more love to give.

For Paul, that love is not vague or sentimental. He says that love fulfils the law. All those rules about how we treat other people are ultimately pointing towards something deeper. Don’t steal from your neighbour; don’t exploit them; don’t harm them; don’t take what belongs to them. Why? Because your neighbour is someone you are called to love.

Paul therefore isn’t saying that the way we live doesn’t matter. He is saying that the way we live needs to come from somewhere deeper than simply a desire to conform to a set of rules.

And then Paul gives us another reason why the present matters. He says, “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

So Christian life holds together three things.

The past matters. We remember what God has done. Like Israel at Passover, we live as people whose lives have already been changed by the action of God.

The present matters. What we do now matters. The way we treat one another matters. Our choices matter. Our faith should become visible in the way we actually live.

But the future matters too. God has not finished what he is doing. Salvation is nearer. God’s purposes are moving towards their fulfilment.

Christian life is therefore lived between the memory of what God has done and the hope of what God will do. We allow God’s promised future to shape the way we live in the present.

And then Matthew brings all of this down to earth.

Someone in the Christian community has wronged you. What do you do?

Jesus doesn’t say, “It doesn’t matter. Just ignore it.” Christian love is not pretending that wrongdoing doesn’t matter. Nor does he say, “Tell everybody else what they’ve done.” Instead, he says, go to them. Speak to them. Try to sort it out. Try to win your brother or sister back.

And if that doesn’t work, involve others. Keep trying to deal with what has happened. Keep seeking restoration.

The difficult thing about Christian love is that it becomes most visible when life is difficult. It is easy enough to be loving when everybody is being lovely. It is much harder when someone has annoyed us, disappointed us, hurt us or behaved badly towards us. It is easy to say that we love our neighbour in the abstract. It is considerably harder when that neighbour is the person who has just caused us a considerable amount of grief.

And yet that is precisely where Christian life becomes visible.

Sometimes love means having a difficult conversation. Sometimes it means telling somebody that what they have done is wrong. Sometimes it means admitting that we ourselves have got something wrong. Sometimes it means forgiveness. Sometimes it means setting a boundary. But the purpose is not simply to establish that I am right and you are wrong. It is to seek the possibility of relationship being restored.

And perhaps that gives us a rather different answer to the question with which we began.

What does a Christian look like?

Perhaps we have sometimes answered that question by producing a list: a Christian is someone who does these things and doesn’t do those things; believes these things and doesn’t believe those things; worships in this way and lives in that way.

But the readings suggest that we have got the order wrong if we start there.

The Passover says: remember what God has done.

Paul says: let that shape how you live now.

And Paul reminds us: live in the light of what God is going to do.

Jesus then shows us what that looks like when it gets difficult and personal, when it involves an actual person who has hurt us.

So Christian living isn’t primarily about wearing the right uniform. It is about having our lives oriented in the right direction.

The distinctive Christian life doesn’t come simply from a culture of expectation in which we learn what good Christians are supposed to look like and then conform ourselves to it. It comes from a life lived in response to God.

Because of what God has done

Because of what God is doing

Because of what God has promised to do we live differently.

And that changes the motivation entirely. I don’t love my neighbour because I am trying to earn God’s approval. I love my neighbour because I have already received God’s love. I don’t seek reconciliation simply because it is another item on the Christian checklist. I seek it because I belong to a community created by grace, and because I believe reconciliation belongs to the future God is bringing about.

So perhaps the distinctive Christian life is not about having the longest list of things that we do or don’t do. It is about what we are living for and the story we believe we are part of.

We are people who look backwards in gratitude, remembering what God has done. We look around us in love, asking what faithfulness requires of us here and now. And we look forwards in hope, trusting that God is not finished with us, with the Church or with his creation yet.

And perhaps that is the real challenge for us. Not simply to ask, “Am I doing the things that Christians are supposed to do?” but to ask something deeper:

“Is my life actually being shaped by the story of God?”

Does the grace I have received change the way I treat the people around me? Does my hope in God’s future change the way I live today? And when I find myself in conflict with another person, do I simply want to win, or do I still want what Christ wants — truth, forgiveness and, where it is possible, reconciliation?

Because if our lives really are being shaped by what God has done and what God promises to do, then the Christian life will inevitably become visible.

Not because we have successfully attached all the right behaviours to ourselves. Not because we have learnt how to look like a Christian. But because something deeper is happening.

And in the end, that’s really what Christian life looks like. Not a checklist, not a performance — but a life shaped by God’s story. We look back with gratitude for what God has done; we look around with love, asking what faithfulness looks like today; and we look forward with hope, trusting that God isn’t finished with us yet. Grace becomes gratitude. Gratitude becomes love. And love becomes action.

So maybe the real question isn’t, “Am I doing all the Christian things?” but, “Is God’s story shaping the way I live?” Because when it does — when grace actually gets under our skin — the Christian life becomes visible without us trying to make it visible. It simply shows.

Because God has acted, we live differently; because we belong to a forgiven people, we love differently; because God’s future is coming, we hope differently — and that’s what the world should see.