A Christian has four distinctive possessions: Christ, the Bible, the church, and fellow Christians. In addition, a Christian has four distinct characteristics: before men, he is peculiar; within himself, he is contradictory; before God, he takes his innermost part as the starting point; and in all things, he is led by God.
From the Scriptures we can see that according to God’s will and ordination, as well as His salvation, a Christian is an extraordinary person. If a Christian is so ordinary and common that there is not the least bit of difference between him and any other human being, then something must be wrong with him. As a saved one with the life of God within him, a Christian has to be an extraordinary person. Titus 2:14 tells us that Christ “gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify to Himself a particular [or, peculiar] people as His unique possession.” This means that God saves us so that we may be a particular people as His unique, peculiar possession. This also has been our experience.
In the Scripture, the reference to a Christian’s being “peculiar” has two meanings. First, it means that a Christian is peculiar in his outward behavior. Almost everyone has the sense that genuine Christians behave differently from the worldly people. We have often said that the world is a powerful current. In such a current, people simply follow the flow in the world, even though they do not all follow the bad examples to do bad things. However, a genuine Christian, having been saved, does not go with the flow in many situations; rather, he goes against the flow and is always going upward. Thus, he behaves differently from others and looks peculiar to them. For example, when some people want to go to a movie, it is peculiar if a Christian among them does not want to go. People in the world all go with the tide, but not the Christians, because they have received the Lord’s salvation.
Second, that a Christian is “peculiar” means that within him he has a peculiar life with a peculiar nature. Although many Christians know that they have been saved, they do not know where the difference lies between them and the unbelievers. The greatest difference lies in the fact that Christians have the Lord’s life within them. We all know that a certain life has a certain nature with certain innate functions. For example, the life of the fish has a distinctive nature which enables the fish to live in water. If we put a bird in the water, not only will it dislike the water, but even its life will be in danger. This is because birds do not have the innate ability to live in water. Birds fly in the air, whereas fish swim in water. The birds may consider the fish strange because the fish cannot fly in the air but can live only in water. Actually, this is being different. However, this difference is not merely in behavior; it is a difference in life. Fish live in water not because they are odd but because they have a life that enjoys staying in water and that is also able to stay in water. Similarly, everyone who believes in the Lord has His life, and this life has its nature, its innate ability, which causes him to be different from the unbelievers. Such a difference is higher and greater than the difference between the birds and the fish.
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