The #1 Qualification Needed to Be a Christian
What God is looking for
There’s one quality a person can have that makes all the others fall into place. Obedience is important… repentance is important… faith is important… but before all of those comes a certain disposition that determines our suitability for the Christian life.
The #1 qualification needed to be a Christian is a soft heart
The Gospel message either produces faith, or stubborn refusal. The determining factor? The softness of your heart.
A call to repent either produces life change, or doubling down on our disobedience. It all depends on the softness of your heart.
Willingness to obey? Yep, soft heart, too.
In the Scriptures we repeatedly see God rejecting and punishing those with hard hearts. Whether it was Pharaoh, the Wilderness Israelites, or the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day (Mark 3:1-5), God was always grieved and angered when He encountered hard hearts.
On the other hand, soft hearts like Josiah’s (2 Kings 22:18-19) or those of the Pentecost crowd in Acts 2 were met with God’s favor. Being a Christian means realizing He is God, and we are not. If we aren’t malleable, willing to be shaped by God and His Word, we’re still acting as though we are God. Only a soft heart acknowledges God as God.
But how do you know if you have a soft heart?
Consider a few litmus tests…
Do you trust God, even when you disagree with Him?
Israel was chastised and punished for their hard hearts when they repeatedly doubted and complained to God in the wilderness (Psalm 95:8). Constantly doubting God’s providence or complaining about answers to prayer (or lack thereof) reveals a hardened heart that is not submitted to God.
Do you tolerate lingering sin?
Even if it’s what we want to think of as a “little” sin, letting gossip, or lingering looks, or bitterness, or the like hang around is a sign of a hardened heart. Like the rich young ruler, it matters little how much else we do right, if we have hardened our heart against God in the one area He aims to convict us.
How often do the Scriptures convict you?
If your time in the Bible only results in cold memorization of facts or attempts to refute other people’s doctrine, it might be that a hard heart is keeping you from being molded by God’s Word.
One doesn’t have to come away from Bible time every day with something to work on or repent of, but there should be regular realization that we need God’s grace and have room to grow.
How do you respond to correction?
There is always a good excuse to brush off correction—“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” or “But my case is different,” or “I didn’t like their tone when they corrected me,” or “That’s between me and God.”
Sadly, I’ve run into a handful of Christians who have said—some explicitly, some implicitly—“Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” If your #1 goal is being like Christ, wouldn’t you welcome pointers, advice, and corrections? A truly soft heart wants to be right with God more than it wants to maintain its pride.
Do you bear with your fellow man?
Christians are called to be tender-hearted toward one another (Ephesians 4:32). Grudge holding and cold-shouldering are tactics of a hard heart, a heart that wants God’s forgiveness but won’t forgive others.
Everybody gets hurt by other people at some time or another. What you do when it happens reveals your heart condition. Shunning your fellow Christians or running from church to church after each offense is a sign of a heart that is set in its ways, worried more about its own rightness than about unity.
The good news is, if you want a soft heart, he’ll give you one! Our God is in the business of replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). If you’re not sure what kind of state your heart is in, you can ask for God to reveal anything you need to change (Psalm 139:24). Simply making that request and preparing to respond to the answer is a pretty good sign of a properly softened heart.
If your heart is in the right place, you can begin to grow in your knowledge and your obedience. On the other hand, if your heart isn’t right, every bit of Bible study, sermon listening, and praying you do won’t amount to much good. It really is that important.
Notes
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Great litmus test here. How often do the scriptures convict you, vs. how often they convict someone else (including some other group) you are thinking about as you read?