“But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you and shall go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot you from My land which I have given you, and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. As for this house, which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’” (II Chron. 7:19-21).
Martin Luther attempted to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within – he failed. The English Puritans attempted to reform the Church of England from within – they failed. The likelihood of anyone outside church and denominational leadership reforming their church or denomination out of the darkness of lawlessness into the light of grace is ever so slight absent the mighty hand of the Holy Spirit. There are few instances of a particular church or denomination, once having taken a course away from II Timothy 3:16, ever returning to God’s way.
Why and how do churches and denominations become lawless? Churches and denominations turn away from God’s commandments in order to draw larger crowds to their facilities. Sometimes they are chasing finances or numbers, but oftentimes their intentions are noble, it is just that their methods and goals are less than God-honoring. They may accommodate the world in the areas they deem less important thereby failing to recognize that every word of Scripture is important to God or He would have remained silent in the matter. Every denomination or church with a weak unbiblical address to sin shall become a people where the flesh of man rules rather than the Spirit of Christ.
The house of the Lord should be a house of prayer, obedience, sacrifice and holiness. The way of the Cross has been designed by the Christ to be difficult and offensive to the world because it demands holiness. The narrowness of the way of the Cross is not agreeable to man’s corrupted nature so that even Christians face many struggles as they follow Christ.
The way of the cross of Christ requires precision, diligent singularity of purpose and the employment only of the means that delight God. You, your denomination or your church cannot imitate your world and delight God at the same time (Js. 4:4). Worldly imitations trigger sin that in turn introduces unrestrained apostasy from the God of the Bible. This forsaking of God’s statutes and commandments can have national consequences:
“The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 also produced intense hostility to religion and the Churches. In 1793 the government and Assembly in France that had replaced the monarchy, and sent king and queen to the guillotine, declared Christianity to be abolished. In it place the Worship of Reason was proclaimed. A certain Mademoiselle Maillard, an opera dancer, wearing the three colours of the new republic, was enthroned as the goddess of Reason upon the high altar of Notre Dame, the Roman Catholic cathedral of Paris, and there she received the homage of the revolutionists. The Christian calendar was abolished and a ten-day week was instituted. Church bells were called ‘the Eternal’s geegaws’ and melted down, cannon and coin being made out of them. Death was declared to be but ‘an eternal sleep.’ Church services were forbidden, but every tenth day it was arranged that philosophical or political ‘sermons’ should be preached; alternatively, popular banquets or balls were arranged.” ^1
Temporariness is the mark of scores of professing Christian bodies. They are not truly Christian because rather than being married to Christ, they are betrothed to dead formalities and false confidences. They have no king but themselves (Judg. 21:25).
^1 S. M. Houghton, Sketches From Church History (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), p. 235.
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