Anywhere you find an anemic church, the problem can easily be traced. The issue is certainly not with Jesus, or his Word, or our mission statements. When Jesus said “I will build My church…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it“ he meant exactly what he said. Peter said some pretty cool stuff in that exchange, but the church isn’t built on him. The church is built on My.
We gotta get the pronouns right. Weak churches have switched the pronouns from “His” church to “our” church. They love their ‘us-four-and-no-more’ little kingdoms or their mega-fancy Sunday events.
Wherever the church operates as His, flying under his banner, you can rest assured mountains are being moved, exiles are finding a home, bondages are being broken, devils are sent into pigs, the poor are being prioritized, the last are first, the first are last, nets are dropping, the gospel is thriving, and Christ is all and in all.
To be “His” Church requires ongoing repentance, faith, and being led by the Spirit. To say that “Jesus is Lord” is to say in the same breath “I am not.” It requires absolute reliance upon and unashamed allegiance to Christ. In essence, “not about me” becomes “all about You, Jesus.” Pronouns.
A powerless church has a nasty flesh-eating disease. Cancer, too-long undetected, has metastasized throughout the system and the body slowly dies.
The late Francis Schaeffer explains:
The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat.
The real problem is this:
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit.
The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.1
Good News
The gospel won’t allow us just to leave that hanging there, as if there were no hope, no remedy. ‘Twould be easy to harp all day about all the wrongs in the church, but we cannot ignore the fascinating picture of the end-time Church.
Paul said she’s still His church and he takes responsibility to bathe her and iron her garments and heal her disease-ravaged body. Our bridegroom Lord is not finished with his bride. Right now she’s “prone to wander,” but his love in the end makes her stay.
There is coming a day when we will see her high up in the bridal chamber “making herself ready” for eternal matrimony with the Lover of her soul. Her destiny is enfolded into Him.
O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above!2
Gospel grammar is important. This is our hope: He is Lord and we are made for him. Selah, beloved
1 Francis A. Schaeffer, No Little People (Wheaton, 2003), 66.
2 Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Robert Robinson, 1758
Spot on Brother.
Always so glad to hear from you, Jon!
The real problem is…. So often I wail over our culture and the state of the church or my own state for that matter. But the real problem is…. “tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh instead of the power of the Spirit.” Kind of clears the fog, doesn’t it? Here is the problem! So grateful for LOVE that won’t allow us to wander too far and promises hope! So grateful He says, ” Are you tired yet?” and gives His plan… so grateful!
I love gospel hope!
Finishing up an amazing book on the culture and why we are here…. and where it’s taking us. Outside of gospel hope I’d want to curl up fetally and hide out until the Second Coming. Thankful for the power of promise that it’s his church and he is with us always, even to the end of the Age.
Always grateful, Kelli!