At the end of the day I just want those of us who know Jesus to live like we know Jesus, because our testimony about Jesus matters to a world that don’t know him.

Listen, I am so sick and tired of the term “Christian.” And some of you are like, “It’s in the Bible.”

Three times. Three times.

People that were closely associated with Jesus were known as disciples or followers of Jesus.

The term Christian in America today has become so neutered and watered down, it’s not even funny. I want for us to be known as people who really do love and follow Jesus.

Some questions.

1. Why follow Jesus if it means I have to obey God’s law? God’s law applies to everyone, saved and unsaved. Perry’s “generosity” in exempting the unsaved from God’s law turns the relationship between grace and law on its head. If we don’t know, or if it doesn’t matter, that we’re breaking God’s law, what’s the benefit of grace? Using Noble’s formulation, what’s the point of grace if it means that only once it has been given to me do I suffer the consequences of breaking God’s law? Wouldn’t I be better off and happier without either God’s law or God’s grace? As far as evangelistic strategies go, this one’s an epic failure.
2. Shouldn’t our Christian walk be prompted by what God thinks about us, not what non-believers think about us? Note that Noble asserts that the reason we follow Jesus is so that we’ll impress nonbelievers, not that we’ll please our Savior.
3. How many times does God need to identify us as Christians before Perry Noble accepts it? If the Bible had said it four times, would that make the word OK? Five? Twenty-seven? Perhaps this is just another of those antiquated Bible words, like shepherd, that we need to scrub from Scripture. The Commandments are only presented twice. Can we ignore those too? I mean, how important can they be?
4. Should Perry’s emotional state be more determinative than Scripture? God, through Luke and Peter, thought it a fit word to describe his people, but it makes this particular 21st century pastor sick and tired, so we need to drop it.
5. What does it matter what the world thinks of us? The world will always hate God, so it can be expected to hate his children. It’s ironic that the word is sometimes discounted by appealing to extrabiblical texts that suggest it was used as a term of derision against the early believers. If that’s the case, and if we want to model the early church, wouldn’t the contemporary worldly derision generated by the term encourage us to embrace it all the more?
6. Why should other Christians affect my willingness to be known by God’s name? Piper put it this way a few days ago:
   

   Being ashamed of the Bible because there are looney Christians is like being ashamed of Milton because of Hallmark cards.

7. If Christians make you sick, what’s your disease?

As I’ve argued before, this repeated hostility towards Christianity is profoundly worrying. Perry Noble says he’s not a Christian, and we keep trying really hard to disagree with him. At what point do we give in?

I just can’t buy into the Christian thing anymore. So I quit. I am resigning from the Christian party, the Christian club, the Christian religion. I am going to devote the rest of my life to loving God with all my heart and loving my neighbor as myself. I am going to spend all of my energy learning more about Jesus so I can follow him as closely as I can. Every day I am going to pick up my cross and follow Jesus; I am going to try be a light in my community and salt in a desperate world. I’m just not going to be a Christian anymore. Are you with me?

No, sirs, I most certainly am not.

He says

I’ve got some bad news, until we live as Christ, the Christian or Christ-Follower image will not change.

Actually, it won’t even then. The world does not like us because it does not like the cross. A sinner’s attitude toward Christians will have absolutely no bearing on the deadness of his or her heart or the Holy Spirit’s power to bring it to life.

Only Christ lived as Christ, and look what his culture did to him.

Important words mean important things, and the sheer repetition and deliberate care with which emergents use Christ follower suggest that they understand that there’s an important battle of ideas they can win if they can place the term into widespread circulation.

It needs to be resisted. Here’s why.

1. It rejects Christianity. Although this is a simple and indisputable point, it is by no means unimportant. Where most believers would use the term Christian, emergents insert the term Christ follower. No matter the arguments in favor of using CF, you are ditching a profoundly important term. Emergents will counter that Christian isn’t really important because it’s only used twice in the KJV Bible. Sure, but how many times does God need to say something for it to be important? When parents tell you their child’s name, do you make a habit of arguing with them?
2. It rejects tradition. God’s redemptive story doesn’t end in the last chapter of Revelation, although his revealed Word does. The Holy Spirit continues to act in human affairs through the institution of the church. To ignore all that wise men of God have left us (the creeds, the reformers, the traditions, etc) is to ignore God’s work over the last 2,000 years. The early apostles assumed that the Bible was understood within the context of the church that Jesus left us. When a church tries to untether itself from church history, it rejects godly wisdom and leaves itself susceptible to error.
3. It rejects God’s family. God refers to the church in familial terms. We are all adopted. We are Christ’s bride. We are brothers and sisters. You might not like it, but when Christ saved you, you joined the family. When my wife married me, she married into my parents and siblings as well. Just because she’s embarrassed by my brother (I jest, bro, because I care) was not enough of a reason for her to suggest that we change our last name to McSnickenmeister so no-one could connect the dots between her and the rest of my family. When Jesus chooses you, his family comes with him. It’s a package deal. It’s a good deal.
4. It rejects grace. Christian denotes a state of being and belief; we are part of Christ’s church. Christ follower denotes a state of action and effort. Being a Christ follower is always a secondary state compared to our status as Christians. I am a Christian because of what Christ did, not anything I did. To be a Christ follower I must do something. In terms of how both terms explain the essential quality of God’s grace in our salvation, Christ follower couldn’t really be more wrong. The consequence of being a Christian is that one follows Christ, but one can never follow Christ before, or without, being a Christian.
5. It embraces paganism. Although I argue that you must be a Christian before you can be a Christ follower, and that the first term should take precedence, that’s not necessarily the meaning that emergents convey. Following Christ is about living like Christ and doing things he would like. When you boil Christianity down into terms that suggest that it merely means living well, you remove the offense of the cross and let anyone claim they’re Christ followers if they’re living good lives. There are many pagans who live honorable lives and perhaps demonstrate the values of the Sermon on the Mount better than some believers. How does Christ follower communicate the message of the Gospel to a good-living sinner?
6. It welcomes heresy. Rejecting Christianity as a term puts you on the road to rejecting the beliefs that are part and parcel of it. It at least puts you in the company of people who are further down that road than you ever expect you might go. The value of the creeds and of the great traditions of faith is that they act as speed bumps for believers who so easily can lapse into heresies. By rejecting Christians and Christianity, you’re ignoring the speed bumps. We all hope you have skilled drivers.
7. It embraces cowardice. For two thousand years believers have been persecuted and killed for declaring that they are Christians. Now, because a bunch of ignorant MTV types think we’re silly, we get our knickers in a knot and flee the term. What fools the martyrs were. All they needed to do was change their label and catch the next bus home.
8. It embraces culture. The common reason for adopting the Christ follower moniker is that Christian has too much baggage and makes people think of the church more like Brussels sprouts than pop tarts. The world thinks the church is all about creeds (see #2), is full of old people (#3) and makes you study silly stuff like theology and doctrine (see #4). Tell me when the church or Christianity has ever been embraced by culture. The nature of the cross is at cross purposes with our sinful nature. We will never be loved and accepted. That’s the point of grace. Only with the Holy Spirit’s enabling can I ever hope to love Christ and his church. Besides, changing your terms to chase culture is a fool’s errand. In 20 years you’ll have to change Christ follower to something else more acceptable, perhaps to nice person.

If you’re a Christian, simply say so.