Reality: December 2011

Original Intent

To be entirely honest, I know of nothing quite as boring as Christianity without Christ. Countless people have stopped going to a place of worship simply because they are sick of going through the motions of a dead religion. . . What a pity that there are not more people around to show them that Jesus Christ is alive.

Major Ian Thomas

The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, salvation without regeneration, and Heaven without Hell.
William Booth

We’ve read Acts and the epistles. We know what happened in the first century, so we know what’s possible. The scriptures revealed a Christianity all of us are looking for, even longing for. Is the Christianity we’re experiencing the same as what we see in the Bible?
Nice buildings, cutting-edge programs, vision statements and core values on posters are all great things, but ultimately it must come down to whether the church is the outward expression of the indwelling presence and activity of Christ or whether it is merely an imitation of God’s original intent.
How do we know that what we are doing in Jesus’ name in our generation has any substantive correlation to what He is really after?
I believe we are living in the most unique generation in the history of our country. Sweeping changes are taking place at breathtaking speeds on all levels of society; political, social, cultural and religious. The media is covering the political dimensions of our changing landscape but the cultural transformation engulfing us is making a phenomenal impact on the religious front, and this reality is still for the most part under the radar of public knowledge.
Christianity itself is changing.
Just as many in the political arena are concerned that the original intent of the authors of our constitution has been lost, some Christian leaders are beginning to consider the possibility that the evolution of Christian thought and expression over the last 2000 years has moved the modern church light years away the early church.
The purpose of this writing is to address these delicate but vital issues by demonstrating the ways in which contemporary evangelical Christianity has deviated from God’s initial intent and, at the same time, seek to clarify and recover the original thought of the authors of Scripture.
The Lord has graciously allowed us to see His purpose for the church of Jesus Christ in the Bible, both in the historical record of the formation of the early church under the Headship of Christ through His Spirit (the book of Acts) and in the doctrinal instruction of the epistles.
Debate over what the apostles meant by what they wrote will never cease. Thousands of books have been written trying to explain, expound and apply all conceivable concepts of belief and conduct for the followers of Christ. Much of what is written is excellent, but still many in the church grieve over how unlike Christ we remain. As Gandhi once commented, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Directives about what we should and shouldn’t do are abundant, but I believe what is needed is a rediscovery of God’s original purpose for the body of Christ. This discovery must be very personal. It’s not enough to simply learn a new doctrine or principle. As Paul prays in Ephesians 1:17-18,

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you might know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

This is not something we gain from academic or intellectual advance; this can only come directly by the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment. We’re not going to see what God wants us to see by simply reading and applying principles. We need to see and apprehend Him first and then the principles will be understood in the context of spiritual comprehension.
We are a get-it-done generation, but we aren’t necessarily a spiritual generation. If there is one thing that stands out above all others as the greatest need in our time it is genuine spiritual life. We have energy, high-technology, and intellectual curiosity, but are we spiritually alive? Do we understand God’s purpose for His people in this age? If we did understand wouldn’t our churches (accounting for cultural diversity) look similar in many ways to the church of the first century? We wouldn’t be wearing the same clothes or singing the same songs, but wouldn’t we be living the same life? Is it even possible to genuinely express the life of Christ and not see our world turned upside down?
We are indwelt by the same Holy Spirit who indwelt and shaped the first church. Assuming the problem is not unwillingness on God’s part to do as He’s always done, what is it that has hindered His activity in our generation? I believe the problem is this: American Christianity has created a multitude of substitutes for Christ, but we do not see Him as fully or follow Him as completely as our predecessors did. It is imperative that we recover what has been lost.

There is one all-comprehending, all-embracing, all-governing purpose to which God has committed Himself, by creation, by redemption, and by union. That purpose is the conformity of a race to the image of His Son.

God never departs from His initial and original position. God never accepts anything less. He does not deviate, He does not abandon, He does not forfeit or sacrifice one iota of His original position and intention. It remains the standard by which God governs everything right on to the end, and in the end God will sovereignly work in relation to His beginning.

T. Austin Sparks

Ultimately everything will be tested, not to see if it’s busy or productive or relevant, but to see if it is according to God’s plan. “That which was from the beginning” (1 John 1:1a) must be recovered and brought to fullness at the end. No matter how impressive something may be among men, nothing will substitute for this.
There is so much at stake we cannot afford to continue to play church all our lives and wait for heaven. We need to see the Lord’s original thought in fullness, in life, in real time - and we need to see it soon. We must rediscover, by the Spirit’s gracious revelation, God’s thought for His people and build from a renewed understanding of the glory of our Savior in His Church, the body of Christ. “Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. (Ephesians 3:21)

Contemporariness

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — At a recent conference-like ‘gathering’ of emergent church leaders, various factions sparred over competing visions for the future of the movement.
Leaders on one side called for ‘deepening and continuously beautiful efforts toward emotionally true self-divulgence and confession.’ Other leaders countered with a call for ‘a theological re-purposing of our objective and subjective missionality within a framework of God-love.’
Because few in attendance actually understood what either side meant, both ideas were tabled.
The sides did agree that emergent leaders should continue to take every opportunity to make casual, cool cultural references to popular television shows, movies and Internet phenomena to introduce quasi-intellectual spiritual points.
After toasting themselves with various hyper-cool micro-brews, the audience adjourned to begin 7 and 8 hour theological bull sessions in their hotel rooms and local bars.
Conference organizers say they will meet again to do the same thing next year. 3

When the body of Christ is unsure of what God is after but genuinely wants to serve Him, it gets creative. We may be living in the most creative generation in the history of the church, but “creative” and “spiritual” are not synonyms.
We know pieces of God’s plan but we don’t know what ties it all together. We lack unity and clarity. As a result we have countless denominational and personal agendas all competing for top billing. We have ideas and favorite verses, but we’ve obscured the big picture and settled for scattered, experimental detail work. We can’t see the forest for the trees.
When we look at American Christianity what we generally see is man’s sincere and best attempts to accomplish what only God can do. We develop ministries, outreaches, inreaches, and programs seeking desperately to help the church be the church, and since God responds to faith wherever He finds it, we do see some great things happen. But often when we believe we are pursuing God’s will, we really want our own will, or we want to do what we believe is His will our way. We struggle to find ways to do what we have seen Him do in the past and in the Scriptures, but we won’t look to Him exclusively to make these things happen.
What we see in the book of Acts isn’t the result of man’s creativity, it happened because Christ had found a group of people who were willing to lose their lives for Him. For them to live was Christ (Philippians 1:21a). For us to live is mostly about us even though we genuinely love the Lord and want to serve Him. Peter was very sincere in His commitment to Jesus. He had left all to follow Him. There is no doubt as to Peter’s love for Christ. But Peter was a perfect example of unenlightened enthusiasm when, for example, he sought to protect Jesus from the cross (Matthew 16:21-23). This issue wasn’t whether Peter was willing to serve the Lord or whether he loved the Lord, it was simply that Peter was spiritually clueless. In many cases our problems have nothing to do with lack of sincerity, commitment, or love for God; we just don’t understand what the Lord is really after.
At this point I want to make a few comments on the concept of “fullness” as it’s presented in the Bible and why it’s so important. If someone in our generation looked at the churches described in Revelation chapters two and three, and then read the letters sent to them, not knowing these letters had come from the Lord through John, they’d probably say that at least two or three of the letters were extremely unfair. For example, think about what Ephesus was doing. They were testing apostles and discovering that many were false, they were enduring persecution for the sake of Christ, and they hadn’t given up when others had given up. Yet with all that, the Lord threatens to “remove their lampstand” because they “left their first love”.
You wouldn’t know the Ephesian believers had left their first love by looking at their activity. They were doing great outwardly. Sardis was similar. They had a reputation of being spiritually alive, overflowing with many good works (Revelation 3:1). But Jesus said they were a dead church. There are dead churches that have an abundance of outwardly good things going for them. Nobody who is spiritually dead thinks they are spiritually dead, that’s the nature of deception.
The primary indictment against Sardis is in Revelation 3:2, “. . . I have not found thy works complete before God.” Jesus requires that a church move forward and not stop short of God’s full thought for them. That’s fullness. We aren’t to settle down on the Egyptian side of the Jordan, nor are we to neglect to possess all the land. If we do, we experience limitation not fullness.
Why exhort any church to move to a position it hasn’t attained if, for the most part, it’s a good church? Why not just be thankful for what we have and settle with knowing we’ve done the best we can? To answer this we have to face something Americans find difficult to embrace – the concept that Christianity is meant to be “Christocentric” rather than “us-ocentric”. If this were about us then I would agree; focus on what’s going well and overlook the things that aren’t complete, but from God’s viewpoint Christianity is about Christ. Since God knows what He is capable of doing in a church that is fully available to Him, His expectations are completely reasonable.
We can acknowledge that within stagnant churches there are many individuals who have gone on to spiritual fullness. History is filled with Hudson Taylors, George Mullers, D.L. Moodys, and Amy Carmichaels. These men and women were fulfilling God’s thought for their lives. But for the most part, the church corporate in our nation is still in an Ephesus, Sardis, or even Laodecia mode.
Having individual believers reach spiritual maturity is a wonderful thing, but God has greater plans for the church than individual advance or programmatic achievement, yet in most churches corporate spiritual advance seems to be a much lower priority than programmatic accomplishments.
Satan has always sought to devise ways to push the church back from spiritual fullness through deception and disunity. He has worked since day one to keep us either defeated spiritually or to focus us on a few positive heroes, trends, techniques or programs in Christianity to make us believe we are accomplishing God’s full thought.
This is why, although we can be grateful for the positives in our churches and give honor to those who have gone on faithfully with the Lord, we cannot settle for less than a corporate expression of Christ Himself. We must go with God’s plan and not lower His standard simply because it sometimes feels so unreachable. If it were not possible to go where God intends, the early church could not have gone there either. Like us, they were very human.
We try to heal marriages, we blast pornography and hope someone occasionally witnesses to someone. And when we think of corporate ministry, we think of community events, social action, “connecting to the community”, and eradicating poverty in third world countries. We don’t hear teaching about the spiritual advance of the church unto a full expression of Christ incarnate in His church, which is His body. Why? Because we’re not even sure what that means anymore.
The majority of our contemporary churches express limitation not fullness. If the Lord were to write a letter to us, He would say, “I have not found thy works complete before God”. Our works are not “complete”. It’s not because we’re not busy; we are brimming with activities, but we see more of Man than Christ in all that’s happening. Since much of what we do originates from our own ideas and plans rather than from God’s direct leading, we experience (and express) a limited revelation of Christ to the world and to angels.
God, working through the Holy Spirit, reveals the Son (Matthew 11:27 compared with 16:17; and John 16:12-15 compared with Ephesians 1:17ff). We don’t discover God; He reveals Himself. God must be the cause of His own effect. Everything else is imitation. Those with spiritual discernment can see through the activities of the modern church to the heart of what is really there. Churches under human leadership can accomplish some incredible things in the name of Christ, but that doesn’t mean those things are representative of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.’ (Matthew 7:21-23).

To a large extent we’ve lost original intent and original vision. We’re playing church, the one thing we all said we’d never do. But since we don’t know how to do the real thing and we have to do something, we do this instead. Why did we give up? We gave up because to go the way of Christ is to go the way of the cross. That doesn’t appeal to us so we have to stay productive and evidence-based in our ministry in order to believe that what we’re doing counts. Then when someone gets saved or a Christian gives a testimony of how awesome their church is, we fold our hands and kick back; not realizing that a bit of that happening from time to time is not the fullness of the revelation of Jesus Christ in His church. We can pump ourselves into a self-congratulatory frenzy and not even see it as that.
When we were unbelievers our understanding of Jesus of Nazareth was not only limited but wrong. We didn’t see Him as the Son of God. He was a young Jewish, itinerant teacher who threatened the establishment and got martyred for His efforts. But God in the flesh? No way. Then the Lord opened our eyes (Ephesians 1:17; Matthew 16:16-18) and we saw Jesus Christ as Who He is. Now we have no doubt about His true identity; no matter what anyone says. We know. We know because of revelation.
This is also the only way to know the church. We think we can figure out what the church is by looking for principles and blueprints in the Bible, but we can’t know the true nature of the church merely by studying historical information (Acts) and principles about the church (the epistles). It will be the study of these writings that God uses to reveal His church to us, just as God used the gospel to reveal Christ, because the Word is spiritual (John 6:63), but it must not simply come to us as a series of detached academic lessons in the Christian religion. The Holy Spirit must open our minds to understand the spiritual reality of what we are studying.

And He said unto them, These are the words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. Then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. (Luke 22:44-45)

1 Corinthians 2:10-11 also confirms the need of direct, supernatural revelation from the Lord if we are to understand spiritual reality. It seems we have decided we can know the church without revelation, but the condition of the Western church shows us that we are definitely not seeing the church as it is meant to be.
God grants revelation to humility. Prayer and a genuine openness of heart must form the foundation of all our study. We would not have seen Christ by the revelation of the Spirit had we not humbled ourselves, willing to have our own preconceptions of Him crushed by the truth. The same is true regarding the church. God will only reveal the true nature and calling of the church to those willing to have all false images and concepts destroyed by seeing the truth.
It is my impression that most in the leadership of American churches have relied on principles, concepts, and trends to help them define the church and have not sought revelation from the Lord. As we saw earlier in Sardis, a living, beating heart of flesh became a cold, lifeless, white-washed tombstone. Stopping short of God's full thought for them was the primary characteristic of the Sardis believers. The Lord does not say their work was not good, only that it was not complete. Spiritual revelation was replaced by academics. The church began to be defined by popularity and personal agendas rather than by revelation. The pursuit of fullness was replaced by satisfaction with that which was partial and incomplete.
The recovery of justification by faith, hidden during the dark ages, was a vital recovery, but it was only meant to be the beginning of a full recovery. The Reformation was a new beginning but did not provide for "going on to maturity" (Hebrews 6:1a).
All churches exist at some point along a spectrum from being flesh-based to Spirit-formed. Some churches develop outreaches to the community (take the church to the world) and others try to find ways to entice the world to visit the church (bring the world to us). But much of the time this is simply the church leaders trying to imitate what they assume must have been happening in the early church. What are the outreaches and enticements in Acts? Why didn’t the church at Ephesus set up a booth at the annual pagan Diana festival and pass out water bottles or Church at Ephesus tee shirts?
What are the blueprints suggested in the epistles? They don’t’ exist because the world isn’t impacted by these things nearly as much as it’s impacted by the full expression of the Body of Christ. And since we won’t do that we have to come up with substitutes; ministries and programs that fit our comfort zone.

How should we define ‘the works of God’? Quite obviously, the work of God is GodHimself at work. If it is not God Himself doing the work, it is not a work of God. 1

In the early church everything was initiated by the Lord in response to prayer and waiting on Him, not by counsel meeting decisions. It’s almost like we don’t know how to hear the Lord so we do this instead. And since some of it actually seems to work, we assume we’re on track. But much of what we’ve done is limitation, not fullness, and God wants fullness not limitation (even limitation at its best). This is why there is such a huge emphasis on holiness and spiritual health in the epistles. Healthy churches will reach the world; but they’ll do it under God’s leading not their own because they’ve grown and learned how to walk by the Spirit in all things.
If God wants you in Montana and you spend twenty years as a missionary in Africa, you wasted twenty years of your life. We’re not to be committed to a mission, but to a Person (Proverbs 3:5-6). Can you imagine how frustrating it would be for a coach if the players on his team decided what positions they were going to play rather than letting the coach make those decisions? They all want to win; they all want to help the coach, but who’s in charge? We aren’t the head of the church, Christ is. Our lives are meant to belong to Him, not to us. We’ve been bought with a price and are no longer our own.
I know that many pastors have long felt that something’s wrong; this isn’t the real thing . . . but rather than find out what “it” really is, they get busy. God isn’t interested in our creativity or our restless energy. He’s interested in expressing His Son’s life in us and through us on His terms, not ours; “Not by might nor by power (human creativity and effort) but by My Spirit . . .” (Zechariah 4:6). We tend to avoid moving that direction because it will cost us our lives. We simply do not like the thought of denying ourselves for His sake. Death to the self-life might interfere with our pride and creativity.

Now to be sure, there are hundreds in our fundamental churches who loudly proclaim that Christ is all we need, that He is completely sufficient, that Christ is our center and circumference. These have become very popular slogans. But perhaps many have only learned these nice phrases and echo them as a parrot would. It seems quite evident that the real significance of Christ as our all has not dawned, for in the very next breath they launch into extensive methods and programs for accomplishing the work of God; immediately they start to search out patterns and principles for doing things – all of which are simply good religious substitutes for Him. 4

The church is spiritually alive when the individual believers who comprise the church are pressing on to spiritual maturity. It’s not primarily what the church does outwardly but what it becomes inwardly that determines spiritual life. God looks at the heart, not the outward appearance, because it’s the change in the heart that determines spiritual advance.
We are living in an evidence-based world. This is the paradigm of secular evaluation when it comes to determining the success or failure of a business or organization. But the Lord is just as concerned about the widow’s mite as He is with the outward generosity of the wealthy. Unfortunately, the church has to a large extent adopted the world’s approach in determining success or failure. When you’re living in the “seen” world and have little to no discernment into that which is “unseen”, going evidence-based in your approach to diagnostics is all you have left (note 2 Corinthians 4:18).
Unfortunately, many pastors have tried to move their churches into conformity with external criteria without ever addressing the real spiritual issues behind what is seen. Our goal is not activity; our goal is life. Health isn’t based on what people do, it’s based on who they become, which only spiritual discernment can even see. Pastors who know their congregation’s spiritual condition can do wonders for them, whether the need is correctional or simply encouragement for continued advance.
But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
When those in leadership see as the Lord sees, reality will be achieved.

God will never put work or service in the place of character; and if we do that, eternity will reveal that however much we may have done, we are very small among the inhabitants of the Land, whose stature will be measured by the measure of Christ. The ultimate test is not how much work is done, but how much of Christ is present. 2

“The church is looking for better programs; God is looking for better men”, (E.M Bounds). Some churches, determined to break with the stagnation they have experienced in the past, have attempted to change their spiritual paradigm by essentially re-arranging the chairs. I will close this section with a humorous illustration of how this might look.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — At The Circle, a young, innovative church meets in a renovated bus depot, there is no pulpit, platform or pastor, as such. The congregation rejects the labels "Christian" and "congregation," preferring "followers of Jesus" and "friendship community."
There are no ushers, but rather "helpers."
There is no worship team, but rather "God artists."
And woe to anyone who affixes traditional church labels to any of it.
"God's doing a new thing here," says Mitch Townsend, the leader of the church. He shuns the "pastor" label and insists people call him, "Hey, man," or simply "Dude." If someone slips and calls him "pastor," he bristles and gently rebukes them.
"We got rid of all those old labels," he says. "There's no going back."
At the church office, which they never call a church office but rather "the Hub," secretaries, or "community action facilitators" as they are called here, tap-tap on computers (which they still call computers) and take calls.
When a visitor slips up and refers to The Circle's "sanctuary," Dude Townsend cuts him short.
"Listen, it's not a sanctuary, it's a meeting place, a gathering place," he says, flushing red.
"Sorry, pastor," the visitor says.
"Not pastor," says Townsend. "Dude, or friend. Or just hey, Mitch."
"Sorry, Dude Mitch," the visitor says uncomfortably, and slinks away. Mitch quickly goes to him and hugs him.
"We're all about love and freedom here," he says. "I know it's hard to get used to."
At a Sunday morning "gathering," as services must be called, people sit in chairs arranged in circle around a "focal point" (not a platform) and listen to the team of God-artists play instruments and sing "songs of adoration and devotion to the Creator," as opposed to praise and worship music. The gathered "posse of Jesus followers" is free to sing along and to express themselves in any way that seems "real and authentic."
"We strive to be genuine here," says non-pastor "Hey, Jim" Richards, who in another setting might be called an associate pastor. "It's about being who you are, not fitting into a pre-determined box."
Before Dude Mitch's personal sharing time (which markedly resembles a sermon), one visitor raises her hand and says, "Is there going to be an altar call? Because I really want to give my life to Jesus today."
Dude Mitch answers quickly, "We don't have altar calls here; we have 'God moments' or 'Creator re-connects.' And we don't say 'give your life to Jesus,' but you may begin a lifelong love relationship with the Creator-Friend, if you like. But please wait until we are done with sharing time."
After the service, "new friends" join in the "kick-back hall" for refreshments and conversation with the Dudes and other Hub personnel.
They may also join a mid-week "hang-out crew" of 10-12 people which meets in a home, and which is steadfastly not referred to as a "small group."
"Anyone who wants a break from normal, rigid church life is welcome at The Circle," says Townsend. 3

Layers

As changes occur in our culture and in our world people seek explanations, especially those who are affected negatively by these changes. The blame game begins. At the first level, everything is explained by liberal versus conservative politics and policies. Democrats blame Republicans and visa versa.
Some have gained a larger picture than partisan paradigms. They realize that behind the Democratic and Republican agendas other agendas exist which have a huge influence on the direction our leaders take us. At this level we sense that there are global forces at work, as well as national forces, and because of this much of what is done in national politics is heavily influenced by powerful people both within and outside the United States. It’s not as simple as the level one blame game. Though there may be legitimate differences on the surface between Democrat and Republican ideals in the areas of values and ethics, there are much deeper and more pervasive forces at work than simply the outworking of political platforms.
At the next level we begin to actually see with a global perspective and we learn that there is a government behind the government, which of course is no surprise since we know that human nature dictates the will to power. Those with money and power will pursue more of each, until they have it all: “Everything; all the time . . .” (Don Henley).
Finally, we come to the reality level (2 Corinthians 4:18; 2 Kings 6:15-17). This is the invisible behind the visible. The Bible makes it clear that kings and nations have ruling principalities and powers (demons) shaping the direction, not only of the country or kingdom, but of the entire world (Daniel 10:10-13). There is a satanic agenda led by the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) which is moving toward a specific goal – world domination under Lucifer through those loyal to his cause. This is a certainty because it’s taught in Scripture. It’s inevitable. The only questions are “when” and “through whom”.
We don’t know the exact timing of the establishment of this global regime (though indications would suggest sooner rather than later) and we know only some of the channels being used by these invisible forces to achieve the ultimate goal of a New World Order or global government under Antichrist. But as the time draws near, for those who are aware of this spiritual level and are examining its makeup, things are becoming clearer. The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place and the global agenda itself, its current progress and status, is becoming more easily recognized. We can begin at this level to see both the visible gamesters and the invisible occult plans and players. World events not only make sense, we can see some of the details of their inevitable outcome.
If we were to live at the first levels mentioned above we may appear historically educated but we would be missing the cause of the effect. This is where liberal and conservative talk show hosts and others operate. Like our political party conventions, in many cases, it’s simply a show designed to entertain, challenge and distract the populace from what is really happening. It’s not that what they are saying doesn’t have merit in its place. Challenging the economic policies of our government and challenging the morals of our leaders is valuable, but so ineffective as to be nearly irrelevant in the face of a much deeper and pervasive reality. Whether it is intentional or done in ignorance, these people can spend their entire lives debating surface issues believing they are actually accomplishing something, while the real power brokers plow ahead patiently and effectively with their concealed agenda.
We can also make an application of this to American Christianity. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship”. In our nation Christianity is a religion and that’s the problem. For some reason a relationship with Christ looks distinctly different in the book of Acts than in American Christianity. The first century church was apparently operating on a different spiritual layer than the 21st century church.
At the first level of contemporary Christianity we see the mainline denominations who believe that Jesus was simply a great teacher and that our responsibility is to follow those teachings to the best of our ability. Jesus is our role model. We can imitate Him to some degree but there is no anticipated personal relationship. That’s not first century reality.
The second level of American Christian experience acknowledges the truths related to both the deity of Christ and His willingness to personally enter our lives. The evangelicals live at this level. As far as it goes, it’s wonderfully true and worthy of all the rejoicing we could express. He is our Savior and our Lord and He will take us to be with Him. By faith in Him we are forgiven and therefore able to enter His kingdom as those redeemed by His sacrifice on the Cross. He saved us.
In addition, at this level people feel the inward spiritual pull to reach out to others with the gospel, to help one another as the family of God, and to seek to grow in their understanding of the life they’ve entered in Christ. These pursuits are Biblical and noble.
It appears that in our generation this is where the layers stop. But God has more layers; He has a deeper calling and a broader plan than this. The truths realized at the level we’ve just discussed are infinitely valuable to know and retain, and we must never lose what we’ve gained in the beginning of our Christian lives. But there is more. For many in our contemporary churches there is not more. We simply spend our lives exploring, dissecting, applying, and “unpacking” the principles, doctrines and truths we’ve already learned. As long as Biblical, intellectually appealing messages, emotionally satisfying worship, and steadfast Christian service are occurring, more is not sought. What more is there than this?
It is dangerous to stop short of a full comprehension of what God is after. In the first part of this writing we saw what happens when people operate at base levels regarding national and international movements. They end up spending their lives treating skin cancer with cosmetics, endlessly debating surface issues and in some cases, laying their lives down for what ultimately may not even matter.
Can this happen in the church? It happened in the first century (the Corinthians, the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews, the Galatians and the churches at Thyatira and Laodecia). It can happen in any generation that stops short of God’s full thought. And it’s no less dangerous in the church than it is in the realm of geo-political agendas.
Simply for the sake of illustration, we’ll look at one example of why it is so important that we understand what God has intended for the church of Jesus Christ. And remember, this is just one example for expediency; there are many other examples that could be discussed related to other elements of spiritual life.
In this illustration we’ll focus on outreach, on the evangelistic component of our calling in Christ since this is a very popular theme in current Church planning and programming.

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:41-47)

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-25)

These verses quoted from Acts demonstrate the foundation laid by the Holy Spirit in preparation for the early church’s outreach to all nations. Is this where we would start in our planning for fulfilling this great commission?
It seems we are unwilling to embrace the kind of personal sacrifice which would bring about an Acts 2 and Acts 4 reality in our churches, so we develop outreaches and partnerships with the community hoping experiments like servant-evangelism will get results. They do, in part. But, again, it’s the difference between limitation and fullness (it’s a layers issue). A much greater impact could be made in reaching the lost by the church if she were living as a corporate expression of the cross; living life in the Spirit in relation to the members of her body. This was the way God got the world’s attention in Acts and I’m sure His way of doing things will always be more effective than ours.
We are genuinely motivated to reach the lost so we creatively engineer ways to move the church outside the box, but God’s way is to show the world what the body of Christ really is – “By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). He could have said, “They will know you are my disciples if you develop creative ways to reach them.” But He didn’t. He knows that the world is looking for something from another world, not something that simply does outreach or demonstrates compassion to the community better than other 501c3 non-profit organizations.
There are many people in our churches who are hurting on numerous levels. There are others in the congregation who have the ability to completely revolutionize these people’s lives and dignity. But it rarely happens. Churches will send thousands, even millions, of dollars to charity works in a third world country but do almost nothing for the person sitting next to them on Sunday morning.
Those who fill our churches during our Sunday services listen as the pastor proclaims how much money went to the famine-relief effort in Bangladesh or as he describes the latest community outreach event. Everybody’s excited. And there’s no doubt that the people in these countries and cities need the help. But the church in the New Testament appeared to have had different priorities. They could have sent money to Bangladesh (or wherever), but the only giving done outside the local assembly recorded in the New Testament was the collection Paul got from the churches to take to the saints in Jerusalem. There was a famine in Judea.
Does that seem like the same thing as Bangladesh? It’s not. The money was for the “saints” in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16:1-3). The money was for the family of God. There were famines all over the world; there always are. But as far as what’s actually recorded in the Bible, the churches in the New Testament didn’t send relief to other places. Why not? Because there’s a significant spiritual principle at work that the 21st century Western church simply has not understood; there’s another level.
God’s goal is not to eliminate poverty (not yet); it’s to glorify His Son in the church. Evangelism is crucial. Evangelism is the vocational call of the church, but reaching the lost must be done God’s way, not ours. It’s not our vision but His that should direct our steps.
As mentioned in another context, we must not lose sight of the fact that God’s ultimate purpose is Christocentric. His purpose is to bring about the testimony of Jesus in corporate realization, the practical expression of the mystery of Christ as expounded by Paul in Ephesians chapter 3.
In the Old Testament God was expressed visibly by filling the temple with His glory (God’s glory is His invisible nature made manifest: 2 Chronicles 5:14; Ezekiel 43:5). The temple was where God met with His people. In the New Testament Jesus was the “temple” of God (John 2:19-22), the place where God met His people (Matthew 11:27-28) as well as the place where the world discovered God if they were willing to look for Him. Jesus was God in the flesh (John 1:1 cp. 1:14). To come into relationship with Christ was to come into relationship with God. To see Him was to see God. When Christ came He made visible what was invisible – He revealed the Father Who indwelt Him (John 14:7-9).
Let me approach this from another angle. Why are we here? When God created the human race, what exactly did He have in mind? God is invisible (compare John 4:24 with Luke 24:39 and 1 John 4:12a). He created the human race to be visible, made in God’s “image”. In the Biblical use of this term, an image is something that provides an outward visible expression of an inward invisible reality. We see this in the humanity of Jesus during the incarnation. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus was “the express image” of God. God was made visible in Christ;

The Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and lived among us; and we beheld His glory (John 1:1, John 1:14).

When our Lord walked the earth, if anyone wanted to find out what God was like, they could look at Jesus Who was God expressed visibly and thereby see and hear and observe God in the flesh. As Jesus said in John 14:9, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”
Numerous times Jesus called Himself the Son of Man. In Romans 8:29 He is called the “first born”. In 1 Corinthians 15:45 Jesus is called “the last Adam”, and in 1 Corinthians 15:47 He is called the “second Man”. The point of all these designations is simply this: The first Adam, though made in God’s image, failed to express that image. When Adam fell he became something other that what God had in mind. However, Jesus as the last Adam did not fail. As we saw in Hebrews 1:3, Christ perfectly expressed the image of God. Jesus was exactly what God had in mind when He created mankind. In Him God was well pleased. To look at Jesus was to see the exact image or expression of the invisible God in a visible form.
Jesus was what Man was always intended to be (“. . . Let us create man in our image”, Genesis 1:26). So, it’s no surprise when we see Paul stating that God’s ultimate purpose for you and me is to be “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). That’s why we are here – to be conformed to the image of Christ and thereby express the invisible personality of God in visible form. To see the Father, you must look at Jesus. To find out what Jesus is like, ideally, one would look at His second body, the church, to see His life expressed in His people.

For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus might be made manifest through our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:11).

When we set aside our own agendas and make ourselves available to the Lord, His life is “made manifest through our mortal flesh”. Our lives provide a visible expression outwardly of the indwelling Christ within us.

To many pragmatic minds, this total repudiation of self-effort is abhorrent. The thought of it can result in a hostility borne of self-justification. Such people often are very dedicated in their desire to serve God, but they are battled by the whole concept of a Christian life which is nothing more nor less than Jesus Christ Himself in action. 1

Jesus was wholly dependent on the Father for everything He said and did. He told us that His works and words were not His but instead revealed the Father’s activity in Him (John 12:49). So He could say in John 12:45, “He that sees Me, sees Him that sent Me”. If the Father was in Christ directing the words and actions of His Son, then to see the Son was to see the Father in action. Our Lord even went so far as to say, "He that believes in Me, believes not in Me, but in Him that sent Me." (John 12:44)
This would be confusing to anyone who didn’t understand Who Jesus was in relation to the Father. Jesus was Man in God’s image, as well as God in human flesh. Jesus was the truth about God and the truth about man, because the truth about man is that he was created to be the truth about God.
John 1:15 says, “We beheld His glory”. The glory, or nature and personality of God, was revealed through the Son. The nature and personality of the Son is to be revealed through His body, the church. It’s not a matter of us mimicking Him, but of Him living out His own life in and through us. As Paul told the Galatians, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me". (Galatians 2:20)
Paul’s goal wasn’t trying his best to be like Jesus, it was learning how to let God be God in him. God’s goal is not to make us clones of Christ; His goal is get our flesh, our natural self, out of the way so the Lord can live His life in us. His strength (demonstrated and expressed power) is made perfect in our weakness, not in our strength. We walk by faith in Him, not by confidence in our ability to act like Him. Paul told the Philippians “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). He didn’t say, “For me to live is to do my best to be like Jesus”. It isn’t asking ourselves “WWJD” and then seeing how close we can get.
As a general rule, could we say that to see the Church is to see Christ? Has Satan had any success in damaging or nullifying that image in us, or replacing it with a good religious, Christian substitute? Colossians 1:27 tells us that “Christ in you” is our only “hope of glory”. Just as Jesus could not have expressed the glory of the Father without being wholly dependent on and surrendered to Him, so we cannot express the glory of the Son without being wholly dependent on and surrendered to Him.
Only the Father could be the source of His image expressed through Christ and only Christ can be the source of His image expressed through us. His desire is to do so in and through us, just as His Father lived His life through the Son. When we try to live the Christian life the result is Christianity. When Christ lives His own life in us, the result is the image of God expressed in a visible form – the original purpose of our creation is realized.
Christianity is not doing Christian things. Christianity is the life of Christ Himself expressed in His people. It goes back to original intent – Man made in God’s image.
God did not compromise or forsake that plan when Adam fell; He simply started over in Christ – the “second Man” or the “last Adam”. In His resurrection, Jesus became the first born of a new creation, or as Paul puts it, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation . . .” (2 Corinthians 5:17a).
The church of Jesus Christ is meant to express the Lord’s image to a lost world and to angels (Ephesians 3:10), which, as we’ve seen, was God’s original intent for humanity. When the world looks at us, do they see Christ or do they see Christianity? Is there a difference? How can we know, personally, whether our lives are an expression of the indwelling Savior or simply a sincere, committed, energetic imitation of that life expressed in a religion called Christianity? The difference is the difference between fulfilling or failing the purpose of God. God’s intent was that the universe be filled with a race of people created in His image. He’s not impressed with a race of committed religionists.
Jesus was the light of the world (John 1:7-9). Now, He has called us the light of the world (Matthew 5:14). Not just because we have the truth but because we are indwelt by the truth. It’s not enough that the world learn from us, they must see Christ in us. The invisible must be made visible; the glory of God must be expressed, not in words only, but in life.
Can you see the difference between outreach first-century style and outreach 21st century style? In the beginning when Christ led and developed His plan for the church, they didn't initially set about to develop organized outreach events, first they became who they were in Christ, and through their lives, through the outwardly expressed indwelling glory of God, Christ captured the attention of their world (Acts 2:47a).
The effect of sending money to Bangladesh, even if done in Jesus’ name, does not have the same effect evangelistically as when the world watches Christians love each other like they did in Acts. If partnering with the community or facilitating social relief efforts were the best ways to get the world’s attention then that’s what the early church would have done.
What gets the world’s attention is seeing the kingdom of God. As our Lord prayed in John 17:21, “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, are in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that Thou has sent Me.” Notice the last part of that verse. How will the world know and believe in the Incarnation of God in Christ? Is it by impressing our community with how socially conscious we are? As Jesus prayed in John 17, and as we see that prayer fulfilled in Acts 2 and 4, that which has the greatest impact on the world, that which is most likely to bring people to faith in Christ, is a corporate, visible expression of Christ Himself in His people.
In Galatians 6:10 Paul wrote, “As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” Why “especially” the household of faith? Is Paul encouraging the church to take care of numero uno first? Isn’t that selfish? Not if we keep in mind the real purpose in all this.
God’s intent is to have a testimony on earth presenting a visible incarnation of His nature and character in the church, which is His body. When members of the church love one another as Christ loves, then (and only then) will the world be amazed and say, “God is among you!”
Religious groups and other non-profit organizations are famous for charity works, but where’s Acts 2; where’s Acts 4? Our churches seem more focused on imitating what other charitable organizations are doing than they are on the realization of what God intended for us in the first place.
The poor we will always have with us and we can help them whenever we choose. Christ corporate, indwelling and expressing Himself through the church which is His Body, we will not always have. The church will be removed at some point in time and the world will no longer be able to see the glory of Christ expressed in this way.
The world needs to see Him, not just groups of compassionate religionists being compassionately religious. In Acts the world saw the wonder of Christ incarnated in His people and that testimony was demonstrated in a kind of love and sacrifice for one another that the world had never seen before. In that context; in that endeavor, “God added daily to the church those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). That’s what evangelism is, that’s what outreach is in God’s mind. Ask yourself a very simple question. Which is more likely to cause you to give serious consideration to the claims of the gospel: Seeing a group of people raking leaves at a senior center with church logos on their shirts, or seeing a group of people loving each other in a way that has no possible explanation but the supernatural presence of a living Savior within them? God chose option two. But Jesus said, “By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)
So, is there a place for community-connected outreaches? Absolutely. But not until the church is the church! When the spiritual reality of Acts 2 and 4 are realized, the Lord may develop all manner of creative outreach projects, but if He does, He will do it on the foundation of the church being spiritually what the church was meant to be. The outreaches will be designed and empowered by Him, not by us. These outreaches will be the fruit, not the foundation, of the Spirit’s movement into the world.
The reason the church in Acts looked and acted the way it did was not because of a blueprint they followed. It was because Christ was the Head of His body in a very practical way. He had people fully available to Him; He indwelt them through His Spirit and moved according to His plan and purpose.
We could no more duplicate Acts than we could perform miracles in our own power. God doesn’t want us to duplicate or imitate what we see in Acts. Acts wasn’t meant to be an organizational blueprint for us; it was meant to be an historical demonstration of what can happen when the Holy Spirit is in charge. If the Holy Spirit had that level of access to the Lord’s people today the church in America might look similar or it might look different than Acts; that would be up to the Lord.
It’s not what we do for the Lord that matters; it’s what He does in and through us. The difference is vast. We are spending a great deal of time trying to do great things for God, but the one thing He wants above all others is our surrender to Him. It’s His church, not ours. He’s not impressed with our creativity, our activity or our busyness. Acts happened because of His creativity, activity and power. Churches can believe they are operating in the power of God and be operating in the power of the soul – the intelligence, strategic planning skills, or emotional appeal of human leadership.
Finally, what is true of our comprehension of Biblical outreach may also be true of our grasp of spiritual maturity, of the means for spiritual advance, of warfare, prayer, and numerous other Biblical imperatives. Books could be written on each (books have been written on each.) It would be interesting to see if we’re operating on God’s wavelength in other areas of our spiritual life besides outreach.
We need to reach the layers our Lord wants us to reach, whether in our discernment of world events or in the outworking of our “so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3 cp. Philippians 2:12-13). The Lord has provided us the light to move to fullness and not settle for limitation.
Moving forward is costly and for that reason many will not consider it. First, it would mean admitting that our current modus operandi is at best limited. It’s not comfortable to embrace those portions of the Word of God that shatter our preconceptions of the way we want things to be. Not only would we have to admit our own shortcomings, but we would also have to move in a different direction; a direction that may both confuse and scare us.
Levels one and two are easy to understand. Beyond that we find ourselves in over our heads. Just as the words and actions of Jesus were such a frustrating mystery to His first century disciples, moving in the direction of allowing Christ full headship over the direction, empowerment and planning of the church is something we are ill-prepared to consider, especially if He might ask us to do what He asked the early church to do.
What if His ways do not turn out to be the same as our ways (Isaiah 55:8)? When God stated this truth in Isaiah 55, He was speaking to His people. Is it time to move to another level? If we do move forward, will anyone go with us? Maybe not. At least at the level we’re operating in at present people are occasionally being saved and the church is staying busy and, we assume, productive. Why rock the boat with a challenge for “more” when we’re not even sure “more” exists?
The amazingly simple, often bewildering reality about genuine New Testament Christianity is that the Christian life is a Person, not a movement or a religion. Jesus Christ is the Christian life. God never intended that the Christian life be anything other than the Life of Christ in His people. And to the extent that He is free to express Himself through us; to that extent, and only to that extent, are we living the Christian life.

Disconnection

There is a growing pattern among Christians to consciously or subconsciously disassociate the truths of Scripture from the implications of those truths to real life. This seems especially true in relation to interrelatedness within the Body of Christ. If you were one of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape helpers, you would no doubt find this to be an excellent way to spiritually dismantle the church. We have somehow found a way to compartmentalize the principles and teachings of the Word of God to such an extent that we can become extremely enthusiastic about what we are learning without having a clue what those truths would mean to us personally if we applied them to the way we think and live.
The goal of Bible study is to learn the Scriptures in such a way that, under the inward working of God’s Spirit, the truths we are learning are fleshed out in our own lives—that we become what we have learned. Just as the Word of God became flesh in Christ, it must also become flesh in us. This intention of God for our lives is short-circuited if we fall into the trap of ignoring the implications of what we learn.
One example of this problem is found in James 1:22; “But be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” It appears that when we hinder the Word from moving past the learning to the living stage we are in full blown self-deception. In other words, if we don’t accept, understand, and jump with both feet into the implication part of learning the truth, we will end up thinking we did jump when we didn’t.
This is one of the mind blowers of deception. People actually believe they are living a life they aren’t living. Other people can see it, God can see it, the angels can see it; but the people themselves can’t see it at all.
In James 2:20 the writer points out the inconsistency of claiming to believe the Bible while not obeying it; “. . . faith without works is dead”. Why would anyone have to write that to anyone? Isn’t that obvious? If we say we believe a news report that a massive earthquake is going to hit our city in the next few days, wouldn’t we leave town? If we stayed, what would that indicate? That we didn’t believe the warning. But this is where deception comes in. If an earthquake really was coming, and everyone was warned, and proof was given to convince even the most skeptical, but people still decided to stay, we would call them deceived.
No matter how intellectually stimulated and excited we may be about the truth we have learned, failure to act on that truth leads to self-deception. Now, keeping these things in mind, let’s make an application of this principle by looking at the concept of the Church as the family of God.
We are united together in Christ and with one another. We can freely love each other and our Lord without guilt, without our past sin blocking those relationships. We live and move in the grace and mercy of God. Who wouldn’t be thrilled knowing that? But, it’s like C.S. Lewis once said, “The concept of forgiveness is delightful, until there is someone to forgive.”
The family of God is a delightful subject, until we take a closer look at the implications. On the plus side, as brothers and sisters in Christ we can have real, authentic relationships—maybe more of a family than we’ve ever known before. We can support and love one another, but to achieve this we may have to commit to each other more seriously, more deeply, than we have in the past.
As we saw earlier in another context, according to Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-37, no one in the early church had needs that were unmet. That’s amazing!

And all who believed were together and had all things common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them according to every man’s need. (Acts 2:44-45)

We’d do this for our kids, right? Parents make sacrifices all the time for their children and each other as husband and wife, and we don’t necessarily think we’re being noble or being martyrs. We love, so we sacrifice. It’s what family is all about. The church in the first century was family. So they did whatever was needed to help each other survive. These passages in Acts are the Holy Spirit’s historical examples of what happens when people love each other more than themselves.
We’re told in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 that all of us are supposed to give financially to help each another. Is it supposed to be 1%, 10%, 20% or 80%? There is no percentage given in the New Testament because true family-based giving has absolutely nothing to do with percentages. Giving in a family is based on love and sacrifice, not duty and obligation.
This principle is true throughout New Covenant teaching. What we do for one another is to be based on relationship not religion. This is why there aren’t any passages in the epistles that even hint at “tithing” or any percentage in relation to Christian giving. That would be religion and there’s no place for religion in the New Covenant.
In 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 Paul talks about sowing and reaping sparingly or bountifully. He says that each person must determine in his own heart what he shall give (9:7). It’s all about relationship, about being led of God, about personal love and sacrifice. It has nothing to do with religious percentages (like the Old Testament system of national income tax for the Jewish nation, which is what tithing was).
Acts 4:32-35 shows what happens when giving is removed from the legalism of the percentage game and brought into the realm of the Spirit of life.

The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common . . . neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them . . . and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

And the result;

And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all.

The 21st century church wants “great power and great grace” but we don’t want to walk the path that gets us there. We want the resurrection without the cross.
Some relegate what happened in Acts 4 to that time in history under those circumstances, but early church historians and the church fathers talk about churches “having all things common” decades after Acts 4. The issue isn’t an historical timeline; it’s a principle of how Christians love one another in a very practical way. If our congregations would catch this vision there would not be one person in our churches who had a genuine need unmet. We’d see the reality of Acts 4 in our churches, the city would hear about it, great grace and power would come, and many people would be saved. Our communities would say, “Behold how they love one another”! They would be astonished. But they won’t be astonished if they don’t see it and they won’t see it if we don’t do it.
Evangelical churches are doing a lot of great things; children’s ministries, home groups, missions, etc. A lot of behind-the-scenes sacrifices are taking place. All of these things are good and lives are saved because of them. But if we want to impact the world and the communities we live in according to original intent, then we need to see Acts 4 happen.
If we try to force or program an Acts 4 scenario into our church culture it would not be real, it would be just another religious experiment, or worse, it would be Christian communism. But, if the church understands and embraces the truth about giving, love, sacrifice and compassion, Acts 4 will happen spontaneously under the leading of God’s Spirit and it will get the community’s attention. Love expressed like that would shock our city just like it shocked Jerusalem.
In our generation the world simply sees the church as one of thousands of religious organizations jumping on whatever the newest politically correct charity happens to be. But often the man in the pew is still lonely and hungry.
The Pharisees did something similar (from another angle).

For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say, Whoever says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God’ (and do not honor his father or mother), ‘he shall be free of further obligation’. Thus, you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘This people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:5-9)

It’s in to give money to popular charities. For some reason it’s not as cool to take care of each other, but according to 1 Timothy 5:3, a person is “worse than an infidel” if he neglects to provide for his own family. Is the church also our family? Are we really brothers and sisters in Christ, or is that just a nice metaphor for a club we’ve joined?
There’s another danger to our contemporary redefinition of compassion that we need to take to heart. It’s cited in Jeremiah 6:14, "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially.” If you read the context of this passage you will see that God is angry with this superficiality. He knows those who are hurting and He knows exactly why they remain in pain. This principle is reinforced in the New Testament epistles:
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? (James 2:15-16)
But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. (1 John 3:17-18)
What drew the lost to Christ and captured the wonder of the first century world was their inability to explain the early church. Community outreach and rummage sales can be explained. The church does not have a monopoly on community outreach. But it was different in the early church. There was no rational explanation for Acts 2 and 4. The world will only be drawn to the Lord when, as they look at the church, they see another world (another King, another Presence). This is when Christ is glorified, because glorifying God happens when His own invisible nature is expressed visibly through His people. When there is no other explanation for the church except the presence and power of Christ, then you have true spiritual life being expressed.
But there are other explanations for our Christianity. These explanations (compassion, creativity, ambition, personal effort and agendas) are all very human, and can be found in most religious thought and expression.
We no longer need to operate from heaven, nor do we necessarily need heaven involved. Sadly, we have turned Christianity into a religion rather than a relationship while proclaiming dogmatically from our pulpits that Christianity is a relationship not a religion. We have become a religion with observances of days, programs, rules, dress-codes (spoken or unspoken), mid-week life groups and a universal Sunday morning agenda that changes little from church to church. We all know this is what God wants, right? Go to church on Sunday, follow the format, get involved in a small group, witness to your neighbors, and give money to support the continuance of this organization. Listen to what Paul would say of this. “You are observing days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” (Galatians 4:10).
What is Paul’s problem? It is this: The Galatians had begun to shift from a spiritual movement of God to a definable religion of Man; from that which is natural and spontaneous to that which is programmed and planned. In the early church, leadership was coming from heaven, not earth. But now the Spirit’s leading has been replaced by programmatic planning. This is definitely not what Paul had in mind. The unbelievers around Galatia weren’t seeing Christ in His church; they were seeing followers of Jesus attempting to act out His teachings.
Many churches think that by indignantly rejecting “old school” Christianity (like moving away from having Sunday School and transferring small group dynamics into homes) they’ve successfully moved a stagnant church out of the box of traditionalism, when in reality all they’ve done is introduce a new tradition; a new box. We may be contemporary and relevant, but is God directing our lives? Who’s really designing all this?

ORLANDO — Jim Turney of Raleigh won the coveted Most Relevant Pastor in America 2005 prize at a ceremony in November.
"It's fun to be recognized, but the glory goes up," he said, gesturing with the same hand in which he held his standard Starbucks double-shot vanilla latte — the one he takes with him to the pulpit on Sunday mornings.
Hundreds of pastors nominated by their churches for the award milled around the Hilton hotel lobby, standing in line at half a dozen coffee carts and swapping tips on which movie clips they are using lately as sermon illustrations. A knot of pastors stood in one corner and compared BlackBerries.
"Being with all these other relevant pastors is like being among family," said Cole Jenkins of Jackson, Mich.
Judges noted that Turney carefully selects the popular songs and TV shows to refer to in his sermons, and often preaches with his iPod earbuds draped around his neck. They gave him a 10 for Casual Demeanor and a 9 for Relevant References.
"The guy is in full relating mode with his congregation," said one judge. "He's completely dialed in."
The slightly less relevant runners-up didn't seem to mind missing the prize.
"We're all relevant, and that's what matters," said one. 3

When you take an honest look at the church in Acts, when you consider these things, you can see the inconsistency demonstrated by sending mass amounts of money to a foreign land at the expense of the person we’re holding hands and singing with on Sunday morning. We could do both. We should do both. But we must not neglect our family.
God responded to the early church’s love for one another by pouring out power and grace upon them. But to see that happen in our generation we will have to love each other even more than we love social relief efforts. When we can do both, great; but first “especially . . . the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:10).
The technology available to us has produced awesome videos and audio presentations for us to experience. In most churches we know more about the suffering in India than the suffering in our own church. Often we don’t even know each other well enough to help each other. How can that genuinely represent Christ to our world?
In Acts 2 and 4 everybody was helped, not just some. Fullness, not limitation! Proverbs 3:27 says, “Do not withhold good from those who need it, when it is in your power to act”. Does the church in America have the “power to act”? Of course it does.

Our life or His life

One of the most dangerous things that has happened to the church in our country is the consistent appeal from pulpits everywhere for us to become more committed to Christianity. Committed Christians are the last thing God wants on this earth. There is no way to overstate the difference between a believer being committed to Christ and a mature Christian living by the life of Another.

Jesus said,

Whoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall find it. (Mark 8:34-35)

And Paul discovered this reality that when he wrote,

For to me, to live is Christ (Philippians 1:21) and, It is no longer I who live . . but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20).

Discipleship is not commitment – it is death unto life. Picking up our cross does not mean increasing our dedication and determination to obey God; it means ending our lives completely. The cross is an instrument of death, not a noble cause to emulate.

Don’t you realize that all who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death? (Romans 6:3)

When Paul said he had died and the life he now lived was Christ in him, Paul didn’t say, “I die daily to my wants and desires so I can embrace God’s wants and desires”. We don’t die to a few of the things we think we need to die to so we can get more devoted to Jesus and do great things for God. Paul said, “I die daily”. This isn’t some kind of segmented smorgasbord of self-renunciation techniques. It’s total death to one kind of life in order to fully enter another: Life in the flesh (religious or otherwise) or life in the Spirit.
Again, the cross doesn’t just crucify one of our arms or legs; it doesn’t just cancel our preferences – it kills the whole person. Only those who lose their lives including, if need be, their version of Christianity, find life in Christ.
The young believer is living primarily in himself. The mature believer is living in Christ. He’s not experiencing God’s help but is actually living by His life. God is patient with the young believer as he grows and discovers these things, but there comes a point when infancy must give way to maturity, or the perpetually infant believer begins to lose ground and will eventually embrace a totally false Christianity.
It’s imperative we understand what faith is. Faith isn’t trusting God to help us live the Christian life, faith is trusting God to live that life for us - a life we can’t possibly live. The Christian life is Christ – only Christ can live His own life.

Faithful is He that called you, who will also do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)

Those in this world who have become disillusioned with life and are hungering for something new and fresh, something from heaven, aren’t that impressed with committed Christians or other religious people; they are looking for a life that is not of this world. If all we give them is ourselves, our Christian religion, our activities, our services, then we fail to give them what they need most – HIM!

And my speech and my teaching were not with persuasive words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (2 Corinthians 2:4-5)

Faith is trusting God to bring His life into and through us, which He won’t do until we lose our lives. What does it mean to lose our lives? It not only means losing our compliance with sin, it may also mean having our concept of the church and Christianity shattered by a new understanding of God’s purpose for His people.
Is our Christianity imitation or real? Are we living in the power of the soul or the power of the Spirit? Is ours a religion of man or is it the life of Christ? We either live in Christ or we ask Him to help us follow the instructions of the Bible. One is grace and one is Law. If Christianity is simply a manifestation of our commitment to Christ, then we are still under the Law. As Paul says in Galatians 2:19 and 3:12, "I have died to the law in order that I might live unto God . . . for the law is not of faith."
Those under grace have "ceased from their own works" (Hebrews 4:1), entered the rest, and now live by faith in (dependence upon) the Son of God. Those under Law pray for God’s strength and help so they can live according to the teachings of the Bible. That’s called religion; it’s the flesh intruding into the realm of the Spirit.

All of our works or righteousness are as filthy rags unto the Lord. (Isaiah 64:6)

Isaiah doesn’t say that only some of our noble efforts to keep His commandments are “filthy rags”, he says all of them are. God has no intention of giving us strength to obey the Bible. His plan isn’t to help us. His way is to apply the cross to us; to bring us into death so He can raise us from the dead and live His own life through us as new creations in Him.

I have been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20). You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest through our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:11). We have this treasure (the life of Christ) inside an earthen vessel, so the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us (2 Corinthians 4:7). Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as out from ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God (2 Corinthians 3:5). I have planted and Apollos has watered, but God gave the increase. So, then, neither is he that plants anything, neither he that waters, but God that gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). I will come to you shortly and will know, not the words of those who are arrogant, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power (1 Corinthians 4:19-20).

What we see in our country for the most part is Christianity, not Christ. What God wants the world and angels to see is Christ, not Christianity. And in our own lives, what we need is His empirical presence, His power, His life, not just a growing personal, natural ability and commitment to be really good Christians.
Again, when Paul said, “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21) he wasn’t being poetic, he was being literal. When we understand what he meant, we’ve taken our first step away from American Christianity and moved toward the life of Christ. However well intended they were, whoever invented “What would Jesus do?” was promoting religion. Knowing what Jesus would do doesn’t move anyone closer to experiencing or expressing “the life of Jesus through our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11). When Jesus is living His life in us, we’ll know what Jesus would do because He will be the one doing it.

Summation

Hebrews 10:5-7 tells us that a body was formed in Mary’s womb for the Son of God to inhabit. That Child, once born, would have one primary agenda for life; to allow God to be God in Him no matter what the personal cost. Jesus’ relationship with His Father was such that the Father was totally free to indwell and express His life through the Son – so much so that Jesus could say, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9) and, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work.” (John 14:10)
In instructing His disciples just prior to His ascension, Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you” (John 20:21b). Our relationship to Jesus is meant to be the same as His relationship to His Father. We are to be so completely available to Him that to see us is to see Christ in us “doing His work.” The book of Acts, often called “The Acts of the Apostles”, is in reality the historical record of Christ Himself through the Spirit continuing to do in His second body what was begun in His first body (Acts 1:1).
There is no way to overstate the wonder of the new life we have in Christ. Much more is offered to us than what we normally see around us in American Christianity. My appeal is simply that we allow our restlessness to drive our search until we find our rest in the fullness of Christ, both for our joy and for His glory.
God’s original intent must be recovered in our generation. I believe there is nothing more important at this time than this recovery. American Christianity must take its place alongside the suffering church in the third world where spiritual life is expressed in increasing fullness. When we see what they see and understand what they understand of God’s original intent for us, then maybe we can join them and move together in this spiritual pilgrimage to the likeness of Christ as we, ". . . all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13)

Notes

1. Major Ian Thomas, Multnomah Books, The Indwelling Life of Christ

2. T. Austin Sparks, public domain

3. Lark News, Larknews.com, Joel Kilpatrick

4. DeVern Fromke, Sure Foundation, Master Press

Reality

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Highest Calling

Saturday, December 17, 2011

American Christianity