“His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Eph 2:15b-16).
When Christ said he’d build his “church” in Matt 16:18, the Greek word used, ekklesia, means “called out ones. “It was also used of an assembly; so the idea is that the church is a special assembly of people called out from the world to become part of God’s family”1 and “set apart for a holy task.”2 The English word “church” derives from the Greek kyriakon which “refers to those who are possessed or owned by the kyrios, or Lord.”2
The thing is, before Christ created his Church, God already had an assembly, a holy people — the Jews. In Jewish thought, all the world was divided into two peoples — Jews and everyone else, called Gentiles. Christ’s Church was to take from the Jews and from the Gentiles to make a new people, a people now called Christians.
When the Apostles’ Creed says, “I believe ... in the holy catholic Church”, it is not saying that we are all Roman Catholics. “Catholic” means universal. (Yes, that means “Romans Catholic” is a bit of an oxymoron.) The creed is saying there is one universal assembly, one people, set apart to God.
Everyone who is called to Jesus is called to be part of that assembly. John Stott calls unchurched Christians a “grotesque anomaly” and says, “The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. ... Indeed, Christ died for us not only ‘to redeem us from all wickedness’ but also to ‘purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good’ (Titus 2:14).”3
But not everyone who attends church is part of the Church. There will always be church members who are not true believers, and there are a few true believers who for good reason cannot be part of a church. Historically we have referred to the “visible Church” (those who appear to be Christians) and the “invisible Church” (those who actually are).
What is the difference between the Church and a church? There is one holy Church, but it meets in many places at many times in local expressions called churches.
So is every gathering of Christians a church? No. There are parachurch organizations created for charity or missions. There are gatherings of believers to study the scriptures or fellowship. These aren’t churches.
A church must, first of all, be trying to follow Christ as laid out in the scriptures. If a group is no more bound to the scriptures than they are to the writings of Thoreau or Emerson, they are not following Christ. Which means not every group that claims to be a church truly is one.
Second, even if they are Christians, they must be trying to be a church. This includes baptism and celebrating the Lord’s Supper. “So, functionally, a church is a group of Christians who believe and proclaim the Bible, and intend to function as a church.”4
Why did Christ create his Church? We are part of his work to establish the kingdom of God. “[O]ur job is to help establish the rule of God in the hearts of people and bring the values and priorities of God’s kingdom to bear on every aspect of our culture.”1 We are here to represent God to the people around us and to try to bring them into his kingdom. This is something the forces of darkness do not want. They will oppose us at every turn. But Christ has promised, the gates of hell will not prevail against us (Matt 16:18).
1 Tony Evans, Theology You Can Count On
2 RC Sproul, Everyone's a Theologian
3 John RW Stott, The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor
4 Rick Cornish, 5 Minute Theologian
Image via Pexels
“...on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18).
Christianity is a team sport.
I think basketball is a good analogy. Unlike football, you can play a reasonable imitation of a proper basketball game one-on-one. But you cannot play one-on-five against a team. Trying to do battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil by yourself is like trying to play one-on-five basketball against a professional team: You simply cannot win. You need a team. You need the Church.
What is the Church? The Church is not a building. And the Church is not an event. What happens on Sunday morning is a meeting of the Church.
The Church is a community. It is the assembly of the people God has called to himself. There is one Church, and there are many, many local gatherings of the people of God called churches.
What is the Church supposed to be? Why do we gather? How are we supposed to help each other in our war against the enemy? Why is the church sometimes not very attractive? These are the kinds of questions we’ll consider as we look at the Doctrine of the Church.
Image via Pixabay
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).
What is the gospel? Let's sum up what we've learned so far.
The God who spoke the universe into existence, who needs nothing at all, made human beings to know him and have a relationship with him. But when we sinned — and whenever we sin — we created a separation between us and him. We became something that cannot exist in his presence and someone whose company he cannot abide. We also joined in the treason of the fallen angels. The punishment for treason is death, but all the treasonous beings were designed to be immortal, so hell was created as a way to isolate the contagion and punish the guilty. When we joined their rebellion, we joined their fate.
But God, who is rich in mercy, chose to create a way for us to escape that fate. God became a man. As Jesus, he lived the perfect life we owe our creator. Then he was put to death on the cross, his sinless death being accepted as a payment for the debt we owe for our crimes.
Then he rose from the dead, not only proving that he was who he claimed to be, but also defeating death, showing what will happen to those who trust in him. Through him we can be reconciled to the God who made us to be with him.
To escape hell, all we have to do is live a perfectly sinless life from the moment of our conception to the moment of our death. Or we can place our hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins.
When you trust in Jesus, you are united with Christ. Your sins are forgiven and forgotten. The Spirit of God transforms you into something new, making you someone that seeks God and can live with God. And you are adopted as a child and heir of that God.
One day every human being will stand before God’s judgement. Those who have not trusted in Christ will be held responsible for their own sins; they will be found guilty and “thrown into the outer darkness” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 8:12). Those who have placed their trust in Christ will be found not guilty, because Christ has taken their sin. They will see the results of their adoption in Christ, becoming heirs of God, reigning with him in his renewed kingdom forever.
“Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'” (John 14:6).
How can there only be one way to God? If God is love, shouldn’t he make it easy for people to find the way to heaven? And what about those who’ve never heard the gospel? Why is Christianity so exclusive?
The best answer to whether there could be more than one way for humans to be reconciled to God is to look at Jesus. God the Son became human, lived a hard, poor, oppressed life, died a horrible death, and experienced the wrath of God. If there were any other way, would he have done that? Of course not.
The problem in our thinking is we’re prone to seeing religion as a matter of personal preference. If someone says Christianity is better than Hinduism, that’s like saying vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate. Why would you say someone else’s personal preference is wrong?
It’s really a matter of truth. What actually works? Medicine is a far better analogy. To say that penicillin is the proper treatment for a disease isn’t to say that I like penicillin better than saline; it means penicillin will actually cure the disease whereas saline will not. To say that Christianity can save and Hinduism can’t is to say that Christianity has the cure for sin (Jesus) and Hinduism doesn’t. Jesus and the apostles repeatedly taught that there is no hope for mankind apart from Jesus, and that’s why they risked their lives to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and told us to do the same. “Singular problems need singular solutions.”1 Sin is the most singular of problems, and trusting in the death of the God-man is the only solution. For people to get to heaven without trusting in Jesus requires salvation by works. But our works are pitifully inadequate.
“Why can’t God just be happy that they believe?” Some people want to think being a faithful Hindu or Muslim should be enough to please God. But that’s watering down “believe” into the worst of modern terms. It’s not enough to believe that God exists. “Even the demons believe that—and tremble” (James 2:19). Biblical faith requires depending on Christ alone for your righteousness, something that is anathema to every human religion.
“Do people go to hell just because they don’t believe in Jesus?” No. They go to hell because they have committed treason against their King. Not believing in Jesus is simply failing to take advantage of the offer of amnesty.
But what about those who’ve never heard of that offer of amnesty? That’s an issue that has caused a lot of ink to be spent. First, some hard truths: We’re all sinners who deserve the just punishment of God. No one is owed grace — by its very definition, grace is what we do not deserve. The people who’ve never heard the gospel still sin willingly.
Second, some comforting truths: God is God. The universe is not run by the temperamental Allah of Islam nor the petty gods of the pagan pantheons. The world will answer to the holy loving justice of the God who describes himself as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished ...” (Ex 34:6-7).
And this God is sovereign. He doesn’t just oversee the universe; he runs it. In Acts we read how Philip was sent to meet an Ethiopian official who was seeking after God. After that he was physically relocated to where God wanted him to preach next (8:26-40). We also have the story of Cornelius being told to seek out Peter (10:1-8). In the modern world, similar things happen. There are many stories today of people having dreams telling them where to go or who to seek out to find out about Jesus. God can get the gospel where it needs to go. But most people, whether in the jungles of Africa or the cities of the West, simply don’t want to bow their knee to the true God.
“Why can’t God just forgive everybody?” That would send the message that sin isn’t a big deal, and it is. It’s treason against the King. It also harms people. When we suggest that God should just forgive, we don’t really mean he should forgive everyone; we know some people are murderers or harm children. But everyone hurts other people with their sin. When we steal or lie or gossip, we’re hurting other people. We don’t want people who harm us to get away with it; we can’t be allowed to get away with it either. The crime must be paid for. Or it must be atoned for.
Those worried about the fate of people who’ve never heard the gospel should make it their mission to see that they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
1 Greg Koukl, The Story of Reality
Photo via Pixabay
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (Rom 7:21).
God wants us to live holy lives, and we hopefully want to live holy lives, but we are opposed in that by the threefold enemy of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
“The world” isn’t the people around us. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12). DeYoung says, “The world stands for everything that opposes the will of God. In its simplest form, this means ‘the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions’ (1 John 2:16 mg.).” The world is the force that “makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.”1
The scriptures repeatedly warn us against loving the world (eg, Matt 13:1-12, 1John 2:15). The world is very good at getting its hooks into us and, at best, rendering us useless to the work of the Kingdom. We must beware the “deceitfulness of wealth” (Matt 13:22) because, as the demons know, “prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him.”2 The best defense against loving money is to give away as much of it as you can. Then give away a little more. As Lewis put it, “the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.”3
We also must be on guard against all the other ways it can influence our thinking. By “renewing your mind” (Rom 12:2), by filling it with scripture, we can “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and ... take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2Cor 10:5). We have to choose carefully what we set before our eyes: “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:34-35).
The flesh is that evil we carry around with us, the fallen nature that is still a part of us. “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom 7:18-19). Even though we’re saved, we’re still plagued by lust, jealousy, anger, and everything else that we were tempted to before. As Wormwood put it, “All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.”2
We have to make the daily (maybe hourly) decision to not follow those temptations: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24). We put off our old self by, through the power of the Spirit, choosing to follow him instead of the flesh (Rom 8:1-13).
Also, how we deal with the world can affect our flesh. A common metaphor is that there are two dogs fighting within us, one on the side of sin and one righteousness. The one that wins is the one you feed. Flesh that is regularly fed by the world will have a stronger hold us. If we starve the flesh and feed the righteousness that wants to grow within us, the fight will go better for us.
Our third enemy is the devil. Some will scoff, “How can you believe in a literal devil in the 21st Century?!” I believe in the devil because Jesus does (eg, Luke 10:18). So did his apostles who warn us, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1Pet 5:8). We don’t believe he is really the guy in the red suit with the pitch fork. No, Satan “masquerades as an angel of light” (2Cor 11:14).
I doubt most of us have to deal with devils on a regular basis. The world and the flesh cause us enough trouble that demons aren’t required. But those who are serious about holiness and especially serious about doing the Lord’s work will probably find themselves under demonic attack. If you do, your first, second, and third steps should be prayer. The same Spirit who cast out demons in the 1st Century can certainly drive them away today; call on him. And “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Eph 6:13-18).
Dealing with the world, the flesh, and the devil is hard. It requires that you make up your mind in advance that you will resist them. But that is not possible apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. “In this threefold conflict, there is nothing but defeat and failure in the path of the Christian should he not pursue the way of faith or dependence upon the Spirit of God. The child of God must ‘fight the good fight of the faith.’ His responsibility is not to war with his enemies in his own strength, but rather to maintain the ever triumphant attitude of faith.”4
For more on how the world, the flesh, and the devil attack us, I recommend CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.
1 Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in our Holiness
2 CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, emphasis in original
3 CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
5 Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith ... not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:8-10).
Do we have to earn our salvation or not? After the last entry, I worry that it would be easy to come away with the idea that you have to be good enough to be saved. Let’s look at two mistakes it’s far too easy to make.
On the one hand, it’s natural to think that you have to be good enough for God to accept you. Those tests in 1John like “if we keep his commandments” (2:3) or if we do not “continue to sin” (5:18) sure sound like we have to be obedient enough to merit salvation. And this is a strong urge of human nature.
But we are saved by grace through faith “not by works, so that no one can boast.” No one will be able to stand before God and talk of the deeds they did to warrant salvation, and no one will be able to compare themselves to anyone else because we will all appear before the King, not as high-achievers but as pardoned criminals.
For some it’s the fear of not being good enough. For others it’s about pride — they want to contribute to their salvation. Every other religion in the world tries to tell you how to earn salvation (of one kind or another), and it’s not unusual for this to creep into Christian thought — it’s part of our fallen nature. And there are those who try to wear their “good works” like a merit badge for all to see. This is legalism, “the attitude that the law is to be obeyed for its own sake”.1
To these people, Paul says, if righteousness could be gained through works, “Christ died for nothing” (Gal 2:21). Boice says, “We cannot be saved by grace and grace plus works all at the same time.”2 Works cannot save; do not trust in works, because if you are trusting in your good deeds, you are not trusting in Christ.
Don’t worry about not being “good enough.” We shouldn’t be flippant about sin, but we’re never going to be good enough. Tozer says:
“How good it would be if we could learn that God is easy to live with. He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is.”3
The other natural error, called antinomianism, takes everything we’ve been taught about grace and how good deeds don’t save us and says, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Rom 6:1). In other words, should we not worry about sin at all since we’re saved by grace? I like the way the KJV renders Paul’s response: “God forbid!” In Christ we have died to sin; we cannot live in it any longer (Rom 6:2). Even though we are not saved by good works, we are saved for them. We were “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Boice says, “This is stated in such strong language ... that if there are no works, the person involved is not justified.”2 But the good works are the fruit of justification, not the cause of it.
A form of this has become terribly common in recent decades. People believe God wants us to be “nice,” and beyond that he really doesn’t care what we do. “Nice,” of course, is watered down as much as possible: Don’t kill people, don’t steal anything big, give a dollar to the occasional homeless person, and God doesn’t care about your sex life, language, or self-absorption. God, in this view, just wants us to be happy.
God does want us to be happy, but he knows holiness is required for true happiness. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And the scriptures warn us, “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14).
Good works cannot save. We cannot “clean ourselves up” enough to warrant salvation. God saves us just as we are. But he does not leave us just as we were. He saves us so we can be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom 8:29). Don’t fall into either trap. “Instead of living in fear that you might mess up and slip from God’s grasp, get on with loving and serving Him with all of your being, and He will minister assurance to your heart.”4
If you would like to spend some time meditating on the Christian road between legalism and antinomianism, I think Galatians 5 is the best one-stop shop. Just realize that “circumcision” stands in for any kind of works-righteousness.
1 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
2 James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith
3 AW Tozer, The Root of the Righteous
4 Tony Evans, Theology You Can Count On
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Can you lose your salvation?
It is important that believers feel secure in their salvation. The person who does not feel like their salvation is a settled issue will be looking for the next thing they need to do to keep God happy with them. The person who is sure of their salvation will be able to live a life of holiness out of love and gratitude rather than fear, so we need to get this straight.
Unfortunately, this is another place where there isn’t really a “mere evangelical” view. Though those who believe you can lose your salvation are in the minority, it’s a sizable minority. (Most who believe this think it requires serious sin. It is not lost by your next white lie or lustful thought.) I am going to make the case that you cannot lose your salvation. I believe in the security of the believer for several reasons.
First is Jesus’ words. Jesus said his sheep “shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” As Tony Evans puts it, “No one includes every ‘someone’ in the universe.”1 Neither the Devil, nor his fallen angels, nor even you can take yourself out of Christ’s hand.
Second is the cross. “If any sin can undo a believer’s salvation ... then Christ’s death did not pay for that sin. But it did, Paul asserts.”2 Either the cross of Christ was sufficient for our sins or it wasn’t. There is no in-between.
Third is the very concept of grace. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith ... not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9). We cannot cease to merit salvation because we never merited in the first place.
Fourth is adoption. “If God in love has made Christians his children ... the family relationship must be an abiding one, lasting forever. Perfect parents do not cast off their children.”3
Finally, the doctrine of election. Whatever else it means, election means that God knows those who are his. “For those God foreknew he also predestined ... And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30). In God’s mind, not only our justification but our ultimate glorification were past tense before we were even born.
I believe this makes a solid case for eternal security. However, as important as this doctrine is, it also carries some danger. There are many who live like the devil believing they will go to heaven because “once saved, always saved.” Maybe they prayed the “sinner’s prayer” at church camp or signed a card in vacation Bible school decades ago. Whatever their reason, they think they’re set and can live however they want. So we need to look at the qualifications for having eternal security.
Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” How do you know if you’re one of Jesus’ sheep? You listen to him and follow him. It is not the following him that saves. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith....” But “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). Saving faith produces works. Jesus’ sheep want to be more like Jesus.
The Lord warned about the person who “hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.” And others will hear but “the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Matt 13:20-22). So not everyone who “responds” to a gospel call truly believes.
So what do we do? “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith” (2Cor 13:5). How do we do that? I think the Lord has given us a wonderful tool for such a test in 1John. It ends with “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13, emphasis added), but before you get there, you have gone through several statements of “We know that we have come to know him if ....” Norm Geisler4 provides a nice summary of John’s tests:
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If we keep his commandments (2:3)
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If we walk in love (2:5)
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If we love the brethren (ie, our fellow believers) (3:14)
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If we love in deed, not only in word (3:19)
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If we have the Holy Spirit within us (3:24)
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If we don’t continue in sin* (5:18)
Assurance of eternal security is for those who have tested themselves and found the evidence of saving faith described in the scriptures. For those who have not tested themselves to claim it is presumptuous (as some accuse all who claim it), but for those who have passed the test, it is not presumption to believe the promises of our Lord and Savior. We can and should trust that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6).
I encourage you to spend some time in 1John contemplating those conditional statements and his final encouragement for believers in 5:13-15.
* This refers to a practice of willful sin, not those times in which we fail, because “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1John 1:9).
1 Tony Evans, Theology You Can Count On
2 Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology
3 JI Packer, Knowing God
4 Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology
