I was reminded the other day of the term faux Christian. If you are unfamiliar with the term faux, it means: made in imitation; artificial, not genuine; fake or false. I'm sure that you have heard of faux leather before. But have you heard of faux jeans? Recently I saw an article on faux jeans being sold by Nordstrom's. What might you ask is faux jeans? Apparently, Nordstrom's thought that it was a good idea to create a pair of dirty and distressed jeans. Their intention was to make the person wearing the jeans look like they had worked to get the stains.
I work out in the field for a living, so I know what dirty jeans look like. First off the mud stains are not in the right place at all. Most of the dirt stains would be from the waste down. We work in the dirt; we don't roll around in it like a pig. Secondly, there might be some rips or warn out knees from working hard. You might even find the occasional blood stain from when you cut yourself and did not have a band-aid, so you had to wipe your blood on your jeans. This is what real worker's jeans look like, not what is being peddled at Nordstrom's.
Why does it matter if Nordstrom's wants to sell dirty jeans? Because it allows the consumer to misrepresent their self. Yes, they do have the right to do this, and I am not trying to argue the point. What is wrong with the jeans? The blood is missing, and the user has no idea of what it took to get those stains on the jeans. They more than likely do not know how even to wash the jeans to get them clean.
Are you a faux Christian or a Christ follower?
What I am trying to do is draw a comparison between a faux Christian and a true believer in Christ. What does it mean to be a Christian? A Christian is a Christ follower, saying that we search out Christ in every aspect of our life and try to imitate him. We believe that the blood of Christ is what saves us from our sins. As sinners, we are like a dirty filthy pair of jeans. There is no such thing as faux sin. We are all sinners by our choice.
As believers, we know that only Jesus can wash away our sins. He can do this because he died on the cross to save us from our sins. No amount of cleansing or good deeds will remove the stains from our hearts. Denying the death of Jesus and not understanding that his blood washed away our sins makes us a faux Christian.
Hebrews 9:22 NASB “And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”