 Justin Bieber recently opened up about his faith in Jesus and his perspective on Christianity. Is he a Christian? And what does he really believe about Jesus? Let's get into it. Hey guys, what's up? My name is Isaac and this is the Daily Disciple Channel where I help you follow Jesus daily. And what I wanna get out from this video, I want you to get out is not whether or not Justin Bieber is truly a Christian. I know there can be a debate on that. You can go through all the stuff he's ever said or go, you know, oh, what he did, he did this. He did this, how could a Christian do this? Like, that's not what I'm gonna be talking about just because I don't know. Today I'm gonna be reacting, responding, engaging with a piece of content. An interview that Justin Bieber recently did with Apple Music. And so we're gonna watch the interview. I'm gonna bring some commentary into it. There's some really, really interesting stuff in this interview, so I encourage you to keep watching and let's get into it now. But before we do, I just wanna give a huge shout out to my patrons on Patreon. I love you guys so much. Thank you for supporting me. Okay, it's time to jump into the video. So when did you decide to actually move within the guidelines and how did you find yourself away from, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I'm gonna drink or do drugs or sleep around or all these other distractions. How did you get out of that world? What was the turning point for you? I think it was my perception of who Jesus really was, you know? I had really bad examples of Christians in my life who would say one thing and do another. So they were my direct example of who Jesus was. That's why you didn't take it seriously. I didn't take it as seriously because I didn't have a good example. Good role models. Yeah, and so. Dang, okay. So when he talks about how his perspective of Jesus was formed, it was formed and he basically just said this is by bad examples, people that were hypocrites, people that were not, you know, aligned with actually what Jesus taught, right? They claimed to be representatives of Jesus and yet they didn't embody the message. Your understanding of a particular group doesn't come from necessarily what they stand for but how they act, how they treat each other. Maybe all that information about, oh Jesus and everything, that's not what's there initially. What you see is how they act, how they treat you, how their message impacts the way they live their lives. And if there's a disconnect there, there's gonna be a disconnect for other people looking in and seeing what does this Jesus message actually look like? And that was apparently big for Justin Bieber. Did you grow up in a Christian household? I grew up in a Christian household, yeah. But my mom was, I mean, she was really hurt growing up. I mean, she had so many things going on in her life. So she was navigating her faith journey. For me, it was just confusing because she'd say one thing and then like, she would say, well, you're forgiven but then I'd do something bad or whatever was supposedly bad but then she'd make me feel ashamed for it. So it's like, well, if Jesus forgives me, then why am I feeling, why are you making me feel bad for doing something? Like, obviously there's like a form of like we should, we gotta make sure we keep our kids accountable and punish our kids so that they learn from their mistakes. But like if there's this God named Jesus who died for our sins so that we don't have to live in shame, then why, it was just things like that that would make me really question like who is this Jesus guy? And I didn't really take a deep look into who he was. Yeah, we go back to kind of this idea of people acting as representatives for Jesus. He saw his mom and obviously I don't know the validity to what he's saying. I'm taking, I'm listening to him, what he's saying. So if I were to hear that from a friend, you know, obviously you take it with a grain of salt but at the same time, okay, this was what he was feeling. He felt like, look, Jesus was all about saving us from our sins and not wanting to put shame or guilt on us because he already took that. So why does he, why does his mom keep wanting him to feel that guilt and shame for when he does wrong? And I think there's some validity to that. I think there's an important distinction though that we need to have when we talk about guilt and shame. Guilt is when we feel bad for what we do and shame is when we feel bad for who we are. I think there's a necessity and I think God created us with a conscience and other people in our lives that when we do something wrong, yeah, there's a certain amount of guilt that comes along with that. But when we understand when we are in Christ, there's no shame. So we don't need to feel bad for who we are because we are a new creation. We can feel guilt for what we did but then we confess that to God and there's no need for any more shame. And I just think that's so sad and I think a lot of people experience what Justin Bieber experienced, not only from maybe their parents but from friends or teachers or whatever. But when we understand God has covered us with his grace then we don't need to feel bad about who we are anymore because we are his. But the more I looked at it, so now I'm not doing the way I look at my relationship with God and with Jesus is I'm not trying to earn God's love by doing good things. God has already loved me for who I am before I did anything to earn and deserve it. It's a free gift by accepting Jesus and just giving your life to him. And what he did is the gift. The forgiveness is the thing that we look at him. You know, I'm gonna worship you God because you gave me something so good. A consistent theme throughout this interview I was finding at least this part of the interview is this talking about guilt and shame and just all the things that he had been through and he had done that he carries this kind of baggage around with him. And this was kind of perpetuated with how he grew up, this idea that hey, look, Jesus forgives you but his parents are still gonna kind of put the shame on him because he's not measuring up to where they wanna see him. And that can weigh heavy on you. And when you add that to just our sinful nature where we're gonna wanna go to wherever we see fit, we wanna follow our selfish ways. That's just the way that we are as humans. When you have those things together, man, that is a very tough combination. And I think a lot of people, me in particular too, like I've been through that too. I've been through that not necessarily that my parents were shaming me in that way but just maybe a lot of it came from myself and just putting this shame and guilt on myself and not being able to measure up. And so you have these baggage on you. And what I think is amazing about what Justin said and what I believe and kind of my testimony as well is that he understood and he realized that his relationship with God was not contingent on him trying to measure up or make up for the wrong things that he did. It's not about him trying to work through all his life in order to just make enough good work so God would accept him. No, because God, we could never do enough to make up for our wrongdoing, right? But Jesus on the cross, and Justin explains this pretty well, he gave his life so we could be forgiven and so God could accept us not based on how good we are but based on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And so now we don't need to earn God's acceptance. We don't need to work in order to get his love. No, we already have his love through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And now this is an amazing thing that he's realized here, and this is a really freeing thing. When we are saved and when we understand we are accepted and loved by God, we have that security, right? Every child looks for that acceptance and love in their parents or in their siblings or just people in general, right? It's an innate kind of hunger and desire. And when we can see that, you know, even as adults too, a lot of like, we still, that desire hasn't left us. It may show itself in different ways by trying to get, you know, be successful at a work or have a good family life or be involved with the community but we're all striving for that love and acceptance. And when we realize that we have it in Jesus Christ fully, we have that acceptance and love, not based on what we do, but based on what Jesus has done. Then we can now do good works. We can honor God, not perfectly, but we can honor him out of love for God and love for others, right? So it's not, oh, I got to walk all ladies across the street because I got to earn God's love. No, it's God has loved me first. Now I want to love other people. Can I ask you a tough question before we focus on the future and how bright things look? Do you think that if you hadn't redefined what Jesus was and reclaimed it into something that was worthy of practice for you, which then led you on a path of reconciliation with your wife? Do you think the person that you of then was on a path of self-destruction? Do you feel that you were self-destructing? Oh, for sure. Yeah, I would have, for sure, 100%. Yeah, 100%. It would have been, it would have been no, but no. It was bad. It would have been, yeah. I don't know if I'd be alive for sure. It was dark, really dark. So I'm very, very grateful to have influences in my life that have played a huge part in me seeing their relationship with Jesus and their relationship with their wives and their relationship with their kids and saying that's what I want and striving after that. I often think of the Great Commission as just a call to go out and maybe just evangelize with strangers or whatever. That's kind of the main thing. Just, hey, here's the gospel and then either whatever, if it's a stranger, I'm only gonna see them once, share the gospel, be nice, but then you're not gonna really see them again. Or maybe you see somebody once in a while and they're not a Christian and you try to share the gospel a little bit, God's word, but then you kind of leave. I've just been convicted of this kind of perspective and my heart is continually being pulled into this area of seeing the church and seeing the Christian body as being capable of more than that, of being capable of being examples within the community. Justin talks about how his perspective of Jesus was flipped, was reoriented and it was by seeing other mentors, married couples that were in his community that were modeling what it looked like to follow Jesus. I doubt, I doubt they were consistently just cameraing him over the head with judgment or whatever. Obviously there needs to be truth and love, but this idea of just modeling what it looks like can help reorient somebody's perspective of what it looks like to be a Christian. Whatever you think about Justin Bieber, whether you think he's a Christian or not, my prayer is that his heart has been truly changed and that will be continued to be displayed as he grows in his faith. And I think for us, as Christians, seeing this is a great testimony of us saying, look, we gotta not only just talk the talk, but we gotta walk the walk because when we don't walk the walk, not only are we not showing people how to follow God, but we're actually giving them a false distorted picture of what it looks like to be a disciple. You're giving them a false perspective of what it looks like to follow Jesus. So that's, I was thinking too, it's not obviously when we wanna be successful in certain things, there's things we have to work hard at, but striving for God's love or God's approval or people's approval, it's like God's told me, he said, I mean, I don't hear from God, audibly, but I feel like God's, when he sees us, he's not this God that people, a lot of people think that it's like judgmental, and he's a God that accepts us for who we are and loves us through our pain and through our dirt. Jesus wasn't this religious elite guy that came to, but he was in the dirt and he found me in my dirt. God accepts us as we are, but he doesn't want us to stay there. That's the process of sanctification, right? We come to God with nothing, right? We come with all our sin. God doesn't want us to fix ourselves before we come to him. No, we come and he accepts us and he loves us fully, but he's not just gonna leave us in our sin. No, he's transforming us. I like to think of like the prodigal son. You think about the prodigal son and I think this clarifies things really well. The son went off, right? Took his money, spent it on lots of things in the sense like this is the analogy for us, right? We run away from God, we take all of our inheritance and we blow it, right? We blow it big time, but we come back because we have no else to go. Son, repentant, oh man, I'm just gonna become a servant now. I don't deserve any of this, right? We come there, I don't deserve any of this, God, but God accepts us with open arms by his grace. He doesn't say, oh, well, go back and earn all the money back and then fix your life up and come back and then I'll love you. No, come to me now. You know, I can't make a statement on whether Justin Bieber is saved or not. I hope he is and I hope he's continuing to grow in his faith, but this idea of continuing to exemplify what it looks like to follow Jesus and show people, help people get a better perspective of what Jesus' message truly is. Is it this message of God hates you, God wants nothing to do with you or is it, look, we've all sinned, we've all fallen short, but God accepts us by his grace, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. I think that is an amazing message. Let's talk about that. Let's share that with people and I think God is gonna work through that, right? Thanks so much for watching, guys. I so appreciate you watching. If you're new to the channel, subscribe down below. Hope you enjoyed this video and my camera battery is running out of battery.