What are the marks of the church?

If my grandson one day asks me what he is to do now that he is a Christian, what will I tell him?

One day last week my four year old grandson and I watered peach trees. We toted buckets of water to the new, young peach trees in a little grove on the south side of my home place near Humboldt, TN. There have been peach trees on my family's farm for at least 100 years.

My grandson and I watered those peach trees. Jack has no idea that he participated in a rite of passage for all Cooper boys. To be a Cooper boy or man with roots in the land, you have to love peaches and you have to want to grow a few trees. My wife, Gayle, learned this in the first days of our marriage. She has always insisted somewhat humorously that I was more interested in the fresh peaches we found when we took our honeymoon than anything else.  Loving peaches and growing them is a mark of being a Cooper, or so Coopers like to say.

If a love of peaches marks Cooper men, then what marks the Christian life? I mean to ask, what is a mark of the Christian life that distinguishes Christians from other persons who are not Christian? If someone becomes a Jew, they are told that the mark of their Jewishness will be their faithful observance of the Sabbath. Jewish people learn to mark their lives each week by the sanctification of time. If someone becomes a Muslim, they will be told, "Now that you are a Muslim, you are to read the Koran and memorize as much of it as possible, and you are to pray each day at the appointed times." Muslims' lives are marked by their life of prayer and love of their scripture.

But what is the mark of the Christian life? What are the marks of the church? If my grandson one day asks me what he it to do now that he is a Christian, what will I tell him? What practices distinguish Christians from others around them, thus making our Christian life truly visible to the community? Does the grace of God mean little more than the bumper sticker, "Christians are no different from anyone else, just forgiven?" I deeply belive that God is calling us to much more than that. We must be willing to be marked or branded by peculiar behavior that is at once public and personal. 

Let us encourage one another.