Why The Church?

Why The Church?

by | Jan 24, 2020 | Gospel

Christ is the head of the church. And he does not have out-of-body experiences. To submit to the authority of Jesus Christ over your life is to live in fellowship with the church.

Here are nine reasons why you should have a high view of the church…

Faith in God is practiced in spiritual community. The unbelieving society we live in regularly claims that faith is a private matter. But this is not the truth. Indeed, faith is a personal matter. As Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). But personal faith is not private faith. True faith is lived in spiritual community with others. In the Old Testament, the faith community was the nation of Israel. In the New Testament, it is the church, a new community in Christ that transcends gender, race, or status (Galatians 3:28). To live in faith in Christ is to live in fellowship with the church.

The church is the household of God. Writing to Timothy in Ephesus, Paul called the church “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). In salvation, we are born again and adopted into the family of God. But a newborn child needs to become a part of a household for nourishment, fellowship, and protection. The church is the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). More than that, it is God’s household. To reject the church is to reject the means of care the Lord has provided for his redeemed children.

Church membership brings assurance of salvation. A Christian is one who has professed saving-faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But that personal profession must be made to and among the church for there to be true assurance. In the New Testament letters, the two essential marks of true conversion are faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love for all the saints. Christian fellowship is as essential to true assurance as personal faith. Love for the saints demonstrates faith in Christ. “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers,” wrote the Apostle John, “whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14).

You Don’t ‘Let’ God Do Anything

by | Nov 14, 2019 | Uncategorized

An early proponent of Keswick theology once wrote, “Christians need not sin, and if they allow the Holy Spirit to ‘operate invariably’ they will not sin.”  There are numerous problems in this one sentence, not least of which is that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about how sanctification works in a Christian’s life. Another issue is the idea that Christians can reach a point of sinlessness (or near-sinlessness). But a big problem hiding behind the others is one that is repeated in countless Christian sermons, books, social media thoughts, and even songs. It is the notion of “letting God.”

We must “allow the Holy Spirit” to operate, this thinking goes.

I don’t know if you noticed, but this sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit is our servant, a cosmic butler of sorts, rather than—oh, I don’t know—the third Person of the Trinity and thus our God.

I get the heebie-jeebies when I come across language like this, which is a lot more often than I would like. Christians who ought to know better routinely begin statements with phrases like “God can’t” or “God needs.” We are told that we need to “let God” do all manner of things before he can guide us, bless us, reward us, etc.

To all of this we ought to say that any God who needs us to activate him is not much of a god at all.