“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 3:11).
The receding cultural influence of the Church makes Christianity peripheral in the western world. But why is the Church’s affect upon the society receding? The Church is being built upon feelings, fears and human felt needs rather than the foundation of Jesus Christ.
God designed the Church as a peculiar society of people with the noblest goals. Its ambitions are celestial, not terrestrial. It is purposed to reform the terrestrial through the revolutionary person of Christ. It must ally itself with all that is pure and eternal in order to effectuate reformation. The Church should be penetrating every facet of life, including such market places as the factories and the professional offices, the legislative halls and the court chambers, the banks and the homeless shelters, the palaces and the farms, the ships and the space shuttles.
The true Church must purpose to influence the metropolises and the villages, athletes and the frail, homemakers and militia, the wealthy and the widows, the simple and the cosmopolitan, the obscure and those noticed by society. Christ’s biblical Church despises vice, ungodliness, greed and self-indulgence. It is a cultivator of the purest motives, the justness of holiness and the benefits of self-sacrifice. The Church of the Holy Spirit woos man to God, destroys class divisions and provides a social life envied even by the devils. God’s Church strengthens the weak, emboldens the timid, removes the guilt of sin and proclaims the substitute of life for death.
But how do these visionary ambitions occur? How does the Church bring healing to broken limbs? How does a dream become a reality rather than remaining an illusion? The society of the beloved places their trust and activates their spirits in the foundation of “Christ Jesus it is He, Lord Sabbaoth His name, from age to age the same, and He shall win the battle.”
Throughout the ages the Church has been tempted to place its trust in other more earthly foundations. The Church is subject to forgetting that it is constituted of fallen, faulted people subject to many doubts and artificial reliances. It is ever ready to trust walking by sight rather than marching in faith. Sight-walkers kidnap the Church away from its one true mooring.
Many doomsayers presently proclaim the demise of the Church. But ask yourself if the Church is in worse circumstances today than it was when enslaved in Egypt or when imprisoned in the traditions existing in the 10th through early 16th Centuries. The Church of the living God cannot afford to part with the biblical hope set before it. It cannot become distrustful of God’s goodness or apprehensive that they are expecting too much of God.
Christ’s Church exists for both the blessing and purification of humanity. It must not only oppose unrighteousness, but actually overcome the devil’s handiwork. The Lord Jesus of the Prophets, of the Law, of the Gospels and of the Epistles is God’s way, truth and life. Those “in Christ Jesus” must be committed to a constant sacrifice of their leisure, pleasure and comfort or they shall never accomplish all the Lord God has set before them.
The lifestyle of true Churchmen is set forth in God’s holy oracles. Are your life-principles found in the Ten Commandments, in the Psalms of praise and in the epistles of liberty? The Churchman’s life is one of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” coupled with applying all diligence to one’s growth in Christ so that “in your faith supply moral excellence; and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control; and in your self-control, perseverance; and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness, love” (Gal. 5:22f.; II Pe. 1:5-7, respectively). Is this a portrait of your life?
The character of the Christian Church is a character separate from (and almost in isolation of!) the ordinary ways of men. The true Church relies at the greatest cost upon Christ to bear its peculiarity. In reliance upon Christ, rivers of living water flow from this frail and yet august body (Jn. 7:38).
There is but one book in the entire world, one writing, one Author, one set of principles that provides and proclaims the hope for all the world. That God-breathed book affirms that all shall be accomplished only when the Church practices the lifestyle-giving evidence that the elder Brother of the Church is the King.
Would you describe your commitment to the labors of the Lord’s Spirit through the Church as being urgent, earnest, enthusiastic and sacrificial? Are you aware of being hurled into the spiritual struggle every day, and even after apparent defeats you know the freshness of the Spirit’s holy dew upon your life so that you are invigorated to continue in the eternal cause of Christ? Are you immersed in laboring for a new heaven and a new earth wherein you and scores of others you love shall dwell in righteousness?
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