Monthly Archives: January 2013

Glory of God, Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

Making distinctions regarding the local church.

What does the local church look like and what does it do? Churches function according to their central core beliefs. They always do what they accept to be their mission and purpose. A church may have been founded to be a center for worship for local Christians, but over time it chose to become a center of recreation, a school, and a place to serve the needs of the poor. And the founding principles were lost.

The YMCA is the often-used example of an organization that was founded to “make disciples of young men” and it became a gym. Most fraternities were founded to be “little churches” on the campuses of colleges, where men learned to live the Christian faith, where prayer and study of God’s Word were essential to the fraternity’s values, and where Jesus Christ was exalted in their pledges and covenants. Today, of course, they are social clubs that have nothing to do with the Gospel of Christ at all.

Here are some distinctions between the Biblical Local Church and what we see almost universally in the local churches of our day. No church is perfect. But today, so many churches have become something different, something essentially alien to the Biblical model, that we hope to recover the Glorious Local Church, for the salvation of men and women, and supremely for the glory of God. Here are some distinctions. This is short-hand, and much more could be said about each of these. These are intended to spur your own thinking and reflection.

Churches don’t provide services for people. We serve God.
Churches are not commanded to have programs. We worship God.
Churches in Scripture did not advertise or sell services. The Glorious Local Church is captured by the Christian Gospel and we give all to advance the spread of Christianity in every way we can, even at the price of our fortunes and our lives.
Churches don’t convince or convert anyone. God redeems. God gives faith. God makes dead men and women alive. God gives grace. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost” Luke 19:10.
Churches don’t seek members to join them. We gather those who are saved for instruction, for worship, and for ministry and mission.
Membership is not about the local church. Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is governed by God. Men have nothing to do with it, other than to test the faith of those claiming to believe, so that the local church is kept as pure as possible.
The church is for believers not for those in need, not for the lost, not for those needing a class or an intervention.
The church may minister to those in need as God commands, but “confessing the good confession” 1 Timothy 6:12, is the standard for entry into the local church.
We must not confuse the local church with the Church of Jesus Christ. One is a human, broken, failing institution. But it is to come as close as possible to the Glorious Body of Christ as we can. We are the eternal Bride of Christ, the assembly of the victorious, the fellowship of the redeemed.
Churches do not entertain or provide performances in the name of worship. We are Christians that, as a gathering of the redeemed, worship God. We do not relegate worship to a few people standing up front.
Worship is the passion of our lives, the undergirding strength for facing every trial, our great joy, and our astonishing privilege. We will not delegate it to others, even if they sing better than we.

The Biblical Local Church grows not by programs or by structures. It doesn’t expand through marketing campaigns and targeting segments of the population. We grow by the faith and beauty of the lives of those who make up the worshiping assembly. People are changed by true worship. Our lives are enriched by coming together and all of us worshiping God together. Our minds are instructed. We learn about God. We hear his Word. We love one another as God loves us.

Churches can’t repair peoples’ lives. God alone can. We must decide what is first (the Worship of God) and what else should be done in obedience to God’s commands and instructions in his Word. We must never lose sight of our first duty to God: To worship and praise — to Give Glory to God in worship, in our lives, in prayer, in obedience, in service, in sacrifice, and in holiness.

True worship is the wonderful gathering of Christians, in which all believers stand before God personally praising, saying the content of our faith, listening to the Word of God, singing praise to our Redeemer, joining our song and confessions with others who love God and who have been transformed by his amazing grace, too. Worship involves everyone in the room. Christians must worship God alone. But we worship him together.

The essential point is this:

Churches are for believers. What we do in worship may be shared with friends and family who visit, but everything we do is focused on the Church coming before our Loving Redeemer God in worship, growing unto maturity so we can serve him, and living lives that bring honor to God and praise to Jesus Christ.

The highest and most glorious commitment of the Local Church must be the glory of God. When that is in focus, everything else becomes clear as to what we are to do, and how we are to do it. God is to be glorious among his people.

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Glory of God, Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

Trinitarian glory.

From Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, 1774.

“It was his design that the Son should thus be glorified and should glorify the Father by what should be accomplished by the Spirit to the glory of the Spirit, that the whole Trinity, conjointly, and each person singly, might be exceedingly glorified. The work that was the appointed means of this was begun immediately after the Fall and is carried on until, and finished at, the end of the world, when all this intended glory shall be fully accomplished in all things.”

We are not, in this age of texting and uncomplicated paragraphs, as able as earlier readers were, to be able to follow such tight and weighty language from Edward’s pen. But this little paragraph contains some of the loftiest and most important information about God’s heart, what matters to him, and what he will do to ensure his glory is displayed and vindicated. This is the work of the Trinity. Edwards was saying that each Person in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit would be working both for the glory of each other member of the Trinity and that they would each also be working for their own glory. There is nothing more important to the mind of God than his glory.

His glory will be fully displayed in all things that have been made and in all events and occurrences that have ever happened in the past or ever will take place in the future. This involves our lives, our choices, and our future eternity.

But this is the work of God to glorify God fully and absolutely. There is no higher purpose in God’s being than the defense and display of his glory. He is God and he would not be glorious as God if he did not defend and propound his virtues. How unlike people God is!

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Glory of God, Philosophy of ministry.

From Glory to Worship

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” (Luke 4:8)

Jesus’ command is very hard to bear. The exclusionary command to worship and serve only God sweeps away human (or demonic) ambition, pride, and our insatiable hunger to be first. Jesus didn’t say, “Worship God alongside other people and all your possessions and ambitions.” His words point to a new, a greater ambition for believers in Christ: to place God first with no second in view; to have him and no other (cf. Luke 14:33); to have him with nothing of equivalent value—and there to learn that God’s glorious presence in our lives defines, evaluates, judges, and potentially redeems, every other love and longing we have. To know God is to gain everything we had longed for and to lose everything we had cherished in place of him (cf. Matthew 13:46).

From More Glory, W. Thomas Warren.

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Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

The power of godliness in the glorious church.

… having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

2 Timothy 3:5

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True godliness claims nothing for itself. If God is seen living in the life of a believer, that Christian is just amazed that God is doing something so wonderful in them, and they give God the glory. They take no credit for it. They are as amazed as the other person who saw God living in them. True godliness has an honest, truthful view of the human heart. The godly know their heart is wicked and deceitful. They fake no one about their sin. In fact, the most godly will be the most aware and the most broken over their sin. But they will be the most assured of forgiveness and the most comforted by the Gospel of Christ. True godliness grieves when sin gets in the way of God’s glory or his Gospel. It claims the Gospel and is restored quickly and often to walk again with God. They are not crushed by sin. They put sin to death.

False godliness denies God’s power. It doesn’t need God’s power. It doesn’t want the restrictions that God’s power places upon the soul. It creates false measures of goodness, holiness, and obedience to God. And it proudly claims godliness where there is none. They may fool the young and the newly converted, but they will not fool the man or woman of God who has fought against sin for decades. The falsely godly live differently from the truly godly. There is no comparison. One has no power. There is self-serving and pride overflowing, and they are blind to their sin. The truly godly is filled with the power of God, is self-emptying, and quick to repent.

True godliness means that we seek God from the heart, not for show or for position or praise. It demands that our life and our faith hold the same values and the same virtues. True godliness is quick to confess sin, eager to seek reconciliation between brothers and sisters, and it is tender to the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. It doesn’t delay to do what is right. It treats people with real love and understanding. It has integrity, authenticity, and consistency.

False godliness may bring about great things in the work of the Kingdom of God. But if God had had nothing to do with their plans and their schemes, they wouldn’t have noticed any difference. They do bold and grand things, even in God’s name, but they don’t have the Spirit of Christ, the spirit of servanthood, of self-sacrifice, and they are not friends with humility. They have grand visions and poor living. They invariably fail morally or are blind to some great sin. They have great power over people, but they do not build them up or bring them to maturity. They use people and they love things. They deny the power of godliness.

Godly people are tenderhearted. They are quick to forgive. They are able to measure everything by the standard of God’s Word. They are teachable and they are able to be led by others. They do not demand others follow them. They are distinguished as leaders because they are first and foremost, servants. People follow them because they are living with such beauty and integrity that people want to be with them. As people see the godly life of a believer, they too become more honest, more truthful, more prayerful, more diligent in the Word of God, and more fruitful. Godly people are students of the Word of God, not just for the factual content of it. They live and apply the Word of God in their daily walk with God. They are “living epistles” of God’s Word. The power of godliness is that it captures the whole person and leaves nothing untouched. True godliness is not perfection. But it is human beings living in the presence of God, more and more, closer and closer, growing and learning, following and obeying with greater diligence and success over time. Never perfectly godly. Never completely holy. But true godliness is that one qualifying aspect of their life that is more defining of them than anything else. The power of godliness captures the way they think, the way they talk, and the way they care about others. Their godliness impacts the way they love God. There is no compartmentalization of faith and life. They are wholly God’s. There is no decision where God’s will and God’s life in them is not taken into account. They speak the truth to themselves, and they surround themselves with others who are also truly, wonderfully, godly.

The falsely godly have few truly godly associates and friends. They could not stand the comparison.

Avoid such people.

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The weakness of the glorious church.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

The glorious church is weak when measuring the skills, competencies, abilities, talents, and intelligence of those who make it up. People are frail, broken, crushed, incompetent, foolish, stupid, and they make terrible decisions. They go in the wrong direction. They cannot perceive what God’s will is for them. And they do the opposite of what God instructed them to do. People are weak. People are wrongly motivated. And people misunderstand.

But the glorious church is also victorious, wise, gifted, amazing in capacity, generous, even rich, and incredible in vision and in accomplishment. But these qualities come only through Jesus Christ and they are gifts of his grace to the weakest of people. These qualities of victory and wisdom, wealth and success, do not rest in men, they are not from men, and they don’t come naturally to men. They are God’s.

Paul declared his frailty, his weakness. He said that when he was weak, then God was most strong in him. The opposite is also true:  When we think we are strong, or wise, or smart, or that we know what we are doing, then we are the most incompetent, wasteful, foolish, and ridiculously ineffective.

The glorious church is strongest when it knows how weak we as people are. We don’t depend on human capability or the blessing of human wisdom, knowledge, or intelligence. That is a certain formula for utter catastrophe. A church that brags about what they have accomplished or how they have  prospered, is doomed. Everything done in the flesh will be destroyed. None of what was done by the insights of human wisdom will be allowed to stand. God hates it. Be on guard for those who are strong, competent, and smart. They are standing against the principle that only in weakness can we conquer.

The glorious church only succeeds when it is utterly weak. We should only do incredible things, attempt amazing conquests, when we are certain of our weakness and are assured of the power of God in us who believe. We decry and declare our weaknesses, and we renounce them so that we may be strong in God’s power and can rejoice in our weaknesses.

When Christ is our wisdom and our strength, then we are strong. When Christ is our victory and our conquering power; when he alone is our Guide to the will of God, then we will always, always, be successful. And only then is God praised and glorified. He is only pleased with what is done by faith in him, and in nothing else we have or offer.

The church is only competent when it acknowledges its utter and categorical weaknesses. And then, by grace, the power of God, the competency of God, the will of God, the wisdom of God, is ours. In our weakness are we strong. Then we can boast even in our weakness so we may learn to rest upon the power of God.

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Promises of God, The Word of God in the life of the believer.

Freedom of the glorious church.

The 20th Chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith reads in part, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” This principle of freedom of conscience means that no Christian can be bound to do anything that is contrary to the Word of God, not can there be any action permitted by the church for a Christian to do that is specifically forbidden by the Word of God. The freedom of the believer lies in those things which are not forbidden by principle or specific in the Word of God, and it allows Christians to refuse to be bound by the rules and regulations of men, where freedom has been given to them by God. A Christian is free to obey Christ; a Christian is free from any of the commandments of men.

Today freedom is assaulted when people require of us what God does not require. When well-meaning Christians obligate us to do those things which the Word of God does not speak about, and they do so for the loftiest of reasons.

An example would be teetotalism in reference to alcoholic beverages. The Bible forbids drunkenness and is clear about the dangers of strong drink, but it doesn’t require that all Christians abstain completely. It is silent regarding abstinence. Some church leaders would forbid drinking for any who wish to join their church, but such a prohibition is not contained in Scripture and should not be a Law for Christian people to obey. Christian freedom may allow drinking wine, but it would still forbid drunkenness. There are also rules about causing others to stumble (people who struggle with drunkenness should not be taunted by your freedom, but the law of love would require that you set aside your freedom for the good of your brother or sister, see Romans 14:20; 1 Corinthians 8:11). And a Christian is free to abstain if they wish. But where we get into trouble is requiring others to live like we want to live (usually forbidding something like drinking or playing cards, or dancing, or requiring actions that the Word of God doesn’t say anything about, like requiring people to serve in some specific project, or directing people to take some pledge that isn’t required in the Word of God).

Christian freedom was the central and most important element of Reformed theology. The Puritans were willing to die over the principle of the “freedom of the conscience of the individual,” and many did. Freedom is very important in the Christian life. Without it, we are going to be compelled to obey whatever our leaders dream up for us to do. But with freedom of conscience, we just politely ask them to defend their request from the Word of God and if they are creating some fiction for us, we politely refuse to do it. And that refusal is protected by our freedom in Christ.

The glorious church celebrates the freedom of conscience. We hold that we must never bind the conscience, require behaviors, or demand actions that the Word of God doesn’t assert and clearly set forth for believers to do. If God’s Word leaves freedom, we affirm that freedom and are willing to live with the consequences. If the Word of God is silent we, too, are silent. If the Word of God addresses a matter (fidelity in marriage, prohibitions of theft, forbidding lying, directing us to faithfulness in prayer, and the like) we will bind Christians to live as the Word of God instructs us to live.

The principle is this: The Church must never bind people to do things (even good things done for good purposes) that are not specifically commanded by God in his Holy Word. Christians are free from all the commands and rules of men. Our freedom in Christ is precious and it is worth defending.

The glorious church has freedom in Christ.

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Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

Glorious joy.

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

John 15:11

Joy should be sought after and found in the presence of God, in the company of God’s people, and in the exercise of worship. If joy is not the essential experience when God’s people gather, there is something missing. Joy is the universal experience of people in the presence of God, from those who have been redeemed, and from those who understand the Gospel of peace.

Joylessness is a diagnosis, not something to be allowed or admitted into the celebration of grace, the declaration of our freedom in Christ, or the grasping of hope that never fails. Joylessness is utterly incompatible with the true and saving Gospel. There is no excuse for joylessness. There should be no room permitted for it, no songless worship, no gathering of people who somberly recite, retell, and then forget the wonders of grace, the depth of forgiveness, and the breadth of mercy that God has lavished, LAVISHED on his people.

Joy comes from Christ. It is his gift to us. If there is no joy, then we have not worshiped completely. If there is no joy, we have exchanged the sorrow of sin for the joy of salvation. If there is no joy, then reconciliation has not completed its work, turning aliens and strangers into sons and daughters of God. If there is no joy, then singing has been replaced with self-obsession. If there is no joy, Christ has neither been seen nor has he been heard. For when the glorious Savior speaks, he speaks joy to his people. When the glorious Savior appears, he gives joy to everyone. When the glorious Savior teaches, he teaches us to rejoice, and again I say, rejoice.

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Glory of God

The glory of God as the reason for all ministry in the local church.

The glorious church exists to praise God and to give him all honor.The focus on the glory of God means that people are worshipers and recipients of the grace of God, and they are never to be used. People bring their gifts and talents, their faith and their abilities, but what they give to God does not make God more glorious. It makes God’s people more aware how glorious God is. The church adds nothing to the glory of God. Since God has all the glory that exists, there is no glory to be extracted from God’s people. There is nothing from the efforts of people that will ever make the church greater in glory or more pleasing to God. The best it can do is experience the glory that God has made known about himself.

The church is great because of the Christ who is at the center of all we do. We believe that the Gospel has enough power in itself to provide for the needs of the glorious church. The Gospel doesn’t need the church. The church needs the Gospel. Only when Christ is our Substitute, our Savior, our Only Qualification, our Great Hope, are we pleasing to God.

The glorious church does not exist for greater numbers of people and for fabulous amounts of money. That implies that bigger is better in glory. But all glory is already God’s, so the numbers’ game is foolish.

In the glorious church, numbers never come into the equation in considering whether or not to create a new ministry or a mission. Practically, to be sure, there is an accounting of what is possible (do we have people with the gifts necessary to do this work? or do we have enough financial resources available to complete this work?). There will never be indebtedness for ministry. But we will be free from the love of money, knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Our ministry scope and reach is only calculated on the basis of the glory that God possesses, not on numbers and finances. This changes the reasons for which we exist and the purpose for every ministry. We never use the calculus that “if we could attract X number of people, then we could generate Y amount of money.” We may ask, “How can we tell more people about the glory of God?” “Who in our church has a vision-yet-unfulfilled that we can help bring into reality, so God’s glory will be praised, displayed, and experienced through these wonderful believers who have themselves experienced the glory of God and desired to tell others about this glorious God that they have known by faith in Jesus Christ?”

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:6

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Glory of God

The glory of God as the reason for all ministry in the local church.

The glorious church exists to praise God and to give him all honor.The focus on the glory of God means that people are worshipers and recipients of the grace of God, and they are never to be used. People bring their gifts and talents, their faith and their abilities, but what they give to God does not make God more glorious. It makes God’s people more aware how glorious God is. The church adds nothing to the glory of God. Since God has all the glory that exists, there is no glory to be extracted from God’s people. There is nothing from the efforts of people that will ever make the church greater in glory or more pleasing to God. The best it can do is experience the glory that God has made known about himself.

The church is great because of the Christ who is at the center of all we do. We believe that the Gospel has enough power in itself to provide for the needs of the glorious church. The Gospel doesn’t need the church. The church needs the Gospel. Only when Christ is our Substitute, our Savior, our Only Qualification, our Great Hope, are we pleasing to God.

The glorious church does not exist for greater numbers of people and for fabulous amounts of money. That implies that bigger is better in glory. But all glory is already God’s, so the numbers’ game is foolish.

In the glorious church, numbers never come into the equation in considering whether or not to create a new ministry or a mission. Practically, to be sure, there is an accounting of what is possible (do we have people with the gifts necessary to do this work? or do we have enough financial resources available to complete this work?). There will never be indebtedness for ministry. But we will be free from the love of money, knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Our ministry scope and reach is only calculated on the basis of the glory that God possesses, not on numbers and finances. This changes the reasons for which we exist and the purpose for every ministry. We never use the calculus that “if we could attract X number of people, then we could generate Y amount of money.” We may ask, “How can we tell more people about the glory of God?” “Who in our church has a vision-yet-unfulfilled that we can help bring into reality, so God’s glory will be praised, displayed, and experienced through these wonderful believers who have themselves experienced the glory of God and desired to tell others about this glorious God that they have known by faith in Jesus Christ?”

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:6

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Philosophy of ministry.

Glorious worship

Worship in the glorious church will bring people into the presence of God. It will not bring God into the presence of people. Worship is adoration and honor. It is hearing the commands of Christ and falling on our faces in obedience to them. It is yielding ourselves to the will of God, as Christ did, and seeking support and help from our brothers and sisters to walk in it.

Worship hears from God. This would mean that worship is filled with God’s Word. We read and hear God’s Word and we receive it. But more than that. We obey the commands of God that we have heard, especially regarding what worship is and what it demands of us.

My mentor, Harold O.J. Brown (Protest of a Troubled Protestant), wrote about worship connecting the people of God with the meaning of what God has commanded us to do in the worship experience. He was puzzled that “religious language” carries so little weight in peoples’ actions in worship or in their lives more broadly. For example, when you hear in church, “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker” (Psalm 95:6), one who was unfamiliar with the Christian faith might think that this phrase would effect an action on the part of God’s people. But after that Psalm is read, no one, not one person in the room, kneels. No one moves or does anything at all in response to that specific command. They do not understand nor do they perceive those words to be a command at all. They do not see that God’s people should  actually do something with their bodies and with their knees. That admonition in the Psalm is perceived by the dull-listening worshipers simply as religious talk and we all have learned that no one does what the preacher says. The words do not carry any import into the lives of the worshipers. They have missed the meaning of the text altogether. There is no expectation that the Word of God would be translated into the obedience of those who worship God and that it would have the power to drive a person to their knees.

How different, if at the reading of Psalm 95, and when verse 6 was read, that there would spread over the entire congregation the creaking and shuffling noise of people taking their knees,without instruction, without being prompted to do it. They did so because the Psalm called the worshipers to do it. The most appropriate, the right and proper thing, would be to drop to our knees. That is what the glorious church would look like.

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