Reasons for Christian Labels

A sweet Christian friend recently asked me a very important question which can be summarized as: Why do we use extra-biblical labels in Christian circles?

Shouldn’t it be enough to just call one another Christians or Brothers and Sisters in the family of God? Why do we call each other Baptists, Methodists, or the label I addressed in a recent article Calvinist?

In addition to these terms not being in the Bible, they are also subject to great misunderstanding. To use such a label without necessary qualifiers can lead to some very wrong assumptions. Sometimes these misunderstandings have caused friction between fellow Christians.

Addressing assumptions about the label Calvinism was one of my main goals in the article that I wrote. No, Calvinists don’t believe everything John Calvin taught. No, Calvinists don’t unduly exalt John Calvin as a man. Yes, Calvinists believe that the offer of the cross of Christ is available for all people everywhere. Yes, Calvinists believe in missions and evangelism.

Calvinism is just a nickname for believing that God is sovereign over the salvation of sinners. I boiled it down to these thoughts: All Christians believe that humans have a part in their salvation—the responsibility to repent and believe the gospel. All Christians believe that God has a part in a person’s salvation—the provision of the cross and resurrection, conviction of sin, drawing the sinner to Christ. The question is, who is ultimately responsible for your salvation—God or you? A Calvinist answers God, everyone else thinks that man makes the first move (even if that is a move foreseen by God).

So the point is valid that labels are prone to libel because of misunderstandings and assumptions. It is critical that we never let labels come between fellow Christians. Christian love and grace must reign supreme as fellow believers pursue God’s truth together. And the other concern that labels are not given in the Bible is also true. In spite of these important points, however, I have come up with two reasons that I think give validity to a careful use of labels.

The first reason is that a label can be a time saving device. The vast majority of folks I talk to in the coffee shop and around town think of themselves as Christians. If you ask people if they believe in Jesus and the Bible, most say yes. In such a situation, how do you quickly get to the gist of what a Brother or Sister stands for theologically? Someone might object that details don’t matter, but sometimes they do.

Suppose you are looking for a good church. There are so many churches to choose from in our area. How do you choose one to join? Hopefully, you decide, at least in a big part, based on what the church believes and teaches about Jesus and the Bible (Please tell me that it isn’t just based on which Youth Group your teenager likes best!).

Labels, although imprecise and open to misunderstanding, can be an important way to quickly move the conversation forward to understand what a church believes and teaches. Mormons, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Episcopalians would all say they believe in Jesus and the Bible right? But those very denominational tags communicate quite a lot more about what each group means when they say they believe in Jesus and the Bible.

A second potential benefit in using labels is as an aid to helping Christians refine their own understanding of how the Bible fits together. I am concerned that a lot of Christians even in good churches are satisfied with a simplistic theological understanding. They love to listen to sermons, they read their Bible's regularly, and they believe the biggies (like the deity of Christ and his bodily resurrection), but do they really understand much else doctrinally? What I am finding is that they do not. They have lots of Bible pieces, but they have never put the puzzle together.

While I'm not arguing that a label is the only or even necessarily the best way to provoke these Christians to think about the Bible’s big picture, I do think it is a way to get them going. Asking such a person about Calvinism, for example, could help them to think through a host of theological and biblical issues in a more profound way.

Even their objections and the clarifications that need to be made can help people discern the truth in a much more precise way. I've found that people need to know not only what the Bible says about an issue, but then also what it does not say. For example, some people say they believe that faith in Jesus saves people. Those same people get upset, however, when you apply the contrast that faith plus works does not save you, and therefore people that trust in faith plus their own works are not Christians.

My point is that there are a boat load of real Christians that believe a lot of true things. Many of these same people, however, have very little clarity and discernment about pulling those true things together.

My goal in the article about Calvinism was to challenge folks to begin to put the Bible puzzle together for themselves. What is Calvinism? What is it not? Does it match up to what the Bible teaches? What about those verses that seem to say something different? When Christians start asking these types of questions and then coming up with Bible answers to these questions they begin to grow spiritually. Theological roots begin to sink deeper.

Theological labels like Calvinism, Arminianism, Conservative, Liberal, Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic can all be helpful tools in summarizing theological beliefs. My challenge to you is to use such labels with care. Engage people from different groups than you are in. Find out what they believe and why they believe it. Search out the Scriptures for yourself and hold on to what is right and true. And always have these kinds of conversations wrapped up in the gracious love of Jesus.

It’s great that you say you are a Christian, and that you love Jesus and the Bible. Wonderful! That tells me some good things about you. But its not enough; I want to know more!