The Gospel re-loaded.
The 'church' is a prostitute, noted Augustine, but also my true mother.
This is because what we actually seek as genuine believers is what Luther defined as the 'invisible church' - the fellowship of that company made free at the Cross amidst those who don religion in the way they would their membership of the golf club or the knitting bee - something 'civil' to wear as a badge of merit. These ugly ingrained caricatures have been known all along - 'Mr Morality' and 'Mr Worldly Wiseman' in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress exude the manner of piety and virtue which, like weeds, easily entangles and muddles many to see health in themselves rather than sin.
Once incarcerated by such counsel, it becomes entirely reasonable that our religious expression should be principally institutional - a tethering of chains that is presumed to launch us into a company of 'nice' and 'reasonable' spirituality.
What the true believer loves is what Christ died to bring - ways and means of faith and fellowship that instantly kills the facade and allows us to share the scope and depth of what God actually has granted - a righteousness not of ourselves, and a salvation entirely derived from that alone - which informs and keeps us amidst our living and our fellowship. What we should entirely renounce and reject is when mere religion acts to block or stifle that from being the single basis of the bond between us, choosing instead to transmit a 'Christ' corrupted by the poison of religiosity, by-passing the singular cleansing depths of God's actual justifying work for the ungodly.
Apostolic Christianity rises from the fact that God is in Christ, reconciling the world, dismissing our sins by the salvation He alone has brought to each of us in His atonement. Christian religiosity sets-in when this single essential becomes buried beneath a mass of 'other'. self-defined, imperatives. We must know and must do what is deemed "good" by us and our pious company to be 'correct'. This manner of "discipleship" seeks to manufacture a self-defined 'worth', whilst establishing a worth-while (seemingly pragmatic) "commitment" to the god of our own thinking - something we imagine to be 'good' and 'respectful' to the real world.
No room here for the tax-collector or the cancelled. Expelled are the actual deaf and blind, the oppressed and the prisoner of evil, and certainly there's no place for a Messiah who yearns for such a company to come and freely find God's glorious goodness and mercy in the gift of His beloved Son. Now we begin to see why Jesus and His Apostles were banished from synagogues and hated by the empire - they called for a freedom the world just cannot entertain.
So, how is it that the church has itself sunk so low? Where did all the fossilised layers of 'moral' requirements come from? How is it that we feel so condemned when we even suggest that faith should always furnish us with a better way?
The 'way' of the religious, notes Jesus, is always to tie heavy burdens upon their subjects, so hard to bear, because of the lies they hold. The care of Christ is to always look upon those without aid with mercy - so a true 'Jehovah-Jireh' - to these, that a company filled with spot and wrinkle become covered by His perfection. There resides our beauty and our holiness.
Worshipful activity in the company of believers is something which naturally occurs in response to the continual giving of such benevolence to beggars and wretches made pure by what was expended freely for them at Calvary.
We therefore gather to delight and revel in this marvel, and live to invite others around us to come and sup at this bounteous table of unmerited magnificence. We, as John Newton noted, are indeed great sinners, but Christ is a great saviour.
Loving 'nice' people is usually pretty easy - you just behave in the manner that says you are being 'nice' back, but what do you do with the soul that isn't consumed with a show of moralism? What do you do with the prodigal, profoundly needing to come home, aching for mercy?
The greatest danger we need to face is that we can fail to speak to such genuine need with the prefect answer - Jesus as all in all. The church isn't a 'process of socialisation' - it's a rag-tag company who are being grafted into the one who has taken their sin and exchanged this for His holiness. Life for them comes from beyond themselves - as with air, and water, and food, and sunlight - we must live by the gifts given by another in respect to eternal life.
Scripture is replete with examples of flawed men and women - people who are then deemed 'righteous' not because they lived some version of the 'victorious spiritual life' (most of them failed, and often miserably... on more than one occasion) - whom God was pleased to favour, entirely because He chooses to do so, out of His singular grace and goodness.
The question we need to ask is 'what impedes your being right with God'? Is it making God's grace the focal-point of our fellowship? Is it centring our liturgy and other activity around the atoning work of Jesus Christ, and enjoying the fruits of that in respect to our redemption? Is it having a Christianity based around something so gifted by another is just seen as 'too risky' by us?
Let's look at this in a slightly different fashion -
What if the biggest problem that we faced was that we sought to commit ourselves to being just too focused upon the sins we commit? Where would that place us? Well, we'd probably find ourselves in a state of perpetual anguish and misery, continually troubled by the level of condemnation we (probably rightly) presumed was upon us because of our wrong-doing.
How would you escape that level of trouble?
Would you choose to evade the trauma by jumping on the self-delusional band-wagon of self-defining your way to "health", or would you deeply and genuinely come to know an actual boldness and confidence with the Lord of Glory in the propitiatory work of His Son, that delivers us in our day of need?
Life is transformed when our attachment to our nonsense becomes dwarfed by the astonishing and unexpected grace of God, so we are ravished by a far larger goodness that turns our affections to the intoxicating glory of the beauty of His saving holiness.
You are not called to fix yourself, or others - you are asked to point them elsewhere - to allow each to see Golgotha, where true aid was given for them. Our times together can never be DIY hobby shops, where second-rate, ill-fitting materials are offered as 'devotional'.... "cross and dove" paraphernalia. That makes pagans rightly want to throw-up, and Jesus would join them.
The Gospels shows how much Jesus enjoyed life - He was actually termed a drinker and a glutton - and some of this feasting really caused a disturbance. We would certainly find most of our "devotional equilibrium' off if the manner of commotion that broke-out caused by Jesus, was encountered by us, and yet , in moments when God is deeply at work amongst us, we often witness just this manner of outburst, leading to many rejoicing in God.
Jesus being Himself can really unsettle the smooth waters of piety! Even when the Spirit works quietly, the consequences are monumental (see what occurs in Genesis 1). Notice how often these moments take place when God comes along side an individual or company - that's when our hearts will burn. The truth is God is delighted when such 'disruption' breaks out.
Cultured Christianity (our laying-down of what should be) will leave us merely measuring up against one another, and that leaves us all too easily content with a 'virtue' as fleeting as our mood - far, far below what is truly needed. We will become skewed beyond remedy if that is all we pursue.
True Christianity is all about a righteousness which far exceeds what we can seek to establish, however content that may make us in our own conceits. We find true purity only at one place - in one person, so let us be those who hunger and thirst for His working in us, being conformed to His sufferings and redemption in the power of His life - that is where we're made free indeed.
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