Numbers - ironically, numbers
were once such an easy issue for the Church.
In the early Church, according to scripture, “multitudes” responded to
the good news of Christian redemption.
And, this was true even though that early redemptive message was quite
challenging to the hearers. As it actually
still does today, the Gospel of Christ required them to go from being the
masters of their own life, to becoming joyfully humble servants, surrendered to
the Lordship of Christ.
And, as they bowed to that redemptive
requirement, over time, a greater truth emerged. Turns out, this necessary humiliation, this
servanthood, was, in fact, essential to the workings of the divine plan for the
thorough renewal of the believer’s heart (character essence) and lifestyle
realities. And, that renewal was key to God’s ultimate redemptive end game: a
deep, durable, and mutually fulfilling God/man friendship.
And, in fact, this transformative process
which grows that “new creature in Christ” can only happen in that rarified
atmosphere of a profound humility before God.
We typically just refer to that special relational environment as
“redemptive faith.” Indeed this
relational atmosphere provides what an environment of arrogance and self-determination
never could – endurance.
And, endurance is sorely needed
to get through this transformative process.
This is no casual walk in the park we are talking about. It is a challenging pursuit which a haughty
heart could never tolerate. This is a
rigorous and focused pursuit of a spiritual merger by which the believer’s
character essence becomes integrated with the empowering character essence of
the Living Christ. And, flowing out of
that resulting symbiotic relationship then comes a divine overwrite of the
believer’s value system which yields a whole new body of life-altering divine
truth.
And, from this now fresh and
growing heart-oneness with God, enabled and sustained in the empowering
sufficiency of the Living Christ, springs that long sought divine prize. It is that now very real, deep, durable, and
mutually fulfilling God/man friendship – fully formed, and ready to shower both
God and the believer with its every day blessings.
So, this is that authentic
redemptive journey which those early “multitudes”
so willingly took on and successfully completed. Indeed, this is that thoroughly renewing
path, blazed by the work of both the Dying and the Living Christ, which not
only frees believers from the clutches of the Darkness, but from their own
disabling brokenness as well – just as God always intended.
But sadly, by this late hour in
history and due entirely to the work of the Darkness, this authentic redemptive
path has become much more obscured by other deceptive and misleading pathways. And many now succumb to the charms of those
simpler and less demanding paths. And,
the prevalence of those dark charms has actually had the effect of casting a long
shadow of rejection over this true path.
Thus many contemporary believers
are now lacking that excitement and passion that fired those early believers to
complete their redemptive transformation.
The reality is that the rank and
file of the contemporary Church, and specifically the American Evangelical
Church under all of its varied banners have, indeed, become widely reluctant to
move beyond the idea of merely a “Forgiveness Redemption.”
But that wondrous Cross of the
Dying Christ and the forgiveness which it affords, is but the trailhead of the
redemptive path which God has actually laid out. According to His
authentic redemptive mapping, there is a final leg of this journey which
reaches well beyond that Cross and involves that empowering encounter with the Living
Christ which transforms the believer.
So, enabled and sustained by the shared
vibrancy of the Living Christ living within, the believer experiences this personal
transformation. And, it is, indeed, a
spiritual journey which brings real newness to his or her heart (character
essence) and lifestyle realities. And, contrary
to that now widely popular mistake – this trans-formative part of our
redemptive journey is absolutely not optional.
God is seeking to achieve a
“thorough reclamation” of his fallen and badly broken human creature. And, He will not have that expensive, long sought, and blessed end-result preempted
by human reluctance, timidity, laziness, ignorance or any other such
thing. The divine redemptive design is firmly
established. And either we match its
specifications or we perish in our own mistaken choices.
Simplistic and easy is one
redemptive approach. But the pursuit of
a thorough personal transformation in the power of the Living Christ is an
immeasurably better one. It actually
brings God’s real approval and the believer’s true newness and ultimate success.
But it is true that the
contemporary Church is now struggling with this larger idea of redemption in the pew. And this is also true of the
pulpit and the administrative ranks of the Church.
We would all like to believe that our message is accurate and sacrosanct
– inalterable, no matter how high the level of real world pressures might get.
And, as ministers of God’s
redemptive truth, we would hope that any reluctance of contemporary congregations
to hear and respond to this more challenging truth would not quell our
willingness to energetically proclaim it.
But is all of this still as true as it once was?
In this time when the Church is
widely numerically challenged in key places: conversions, membership,
attendance, and connected finances etc., might we now be bowing to the tyranny
of those growing numerical pressures? These
pressures are very real in the modern Church.
And, they do have a far reaching and often excruciating influence.
For example, if this more
challenging but truly authentic message has now become widely more than this
contemporary church is willing to embrace, except to the level of casual lip
service, might we then simply resort to exploring less challenging truth (which
is also of much less import)? Or might we become willing to morph our
pulpit ministry into something more like helpful life-couching? And all of this,
in the interest of surreptitiously protecting our numbers and our continuing
ability to sustain and/or grow them.
Or, might those number
based pressures drive us to allow less altruistic concerns to begin to weigh in
on our thinking and behavior? The ebb and flow of those critical numbers can
and does exert an often relentless pressure on a ministerial heart.
So, maybe a numbers threat to our
personal validation, comfort level, credibility, job security, or our prospects
regarding that ministerial “ladder climb” might begin to have some
impact. Perhaps we might begin to soft-peddle or just avoid this more
stringent message altogether, in the face of less receptive modern congregations.
As a Church administrative
leader under the press of this numerical tyranny, might we be tempted to
back off in order to remain more palatable, and thus more relevant, to the
larger world and/or the growing shallowness of our constituency? Or,
maybe, in this case, we would start to refrain from ever critically juxtaposing
our authentic message of redemption with those heretical competitors. And
this, so we could maintain our personal and our denominational image as
thoughtful and attractive men and women of peace – thus, alienating no one (or
changing any hearts or minds) in deference to the numbers and the perceptions
they demand.
But, be all of that as it may,
the actual reality is that in most every church in the land there are now those
who are dangerously under invested in their own redemption – and blissfully
happy to be so. Truth be told, a great
many among our modern multitudes now demand that this Living Christ-fueled
renewal process be, at the very least, toned way down. And often, the greater preference is that it
be left entirely unmentioned.
And, this preference for
shallowness has, indeed, now become broadly embraced across the American
Evangelical Church as being the acceptable norm. And, in fact, it is this widespread and
completely deadly mistake which has also set up a presently raging negotiation within
the modern Church.
But this is no mere heated back
and forth between differing theologians.
This is a life and death involved negotiation between the divine Truth
Giver, the Holy Spirit, and those deluded, wayward, and /or terminally
misguided hearts within this contemporary Church. And how could it not be so? Jesus described the role of the Holy Spirit
this way. “He will guide you into all truth.”
So, when and wherever the Divine
Spirit encounters this deadly predilection for shallowness and under-investment
on the part of believers, be it in the pew, the pulpit, or the higher
administrations of the Church, what else would He do, can He do, but take
adamant issue with such. So, He begins
to intensely negotiate with that believer in his or her heart. Again, He simply
cannot do less.
Therefore, at such a point, the
Spirit’s whispering voice makes every effort to convince the believer to embrace
and/or proclaim this real and thorough newness of heart and life in the Living
Christ. The New Testament explains that
this is our confirming witness which affirms to the world, Christ’s genuineness
and absolute efficacy as the Savior of the world.
Nevertheless, this Holy Spirit
intervention, however it goes, ever remains a negotiation. It is necessarily never an irresistible
demand. The believer’s level of devotion
is always left to decide the outcome of these interventions. And, many do resist these urgings by the Divine
Spirit.
But if they refuse, or suppress, or
in other ways seek to escape His loving encouragement to lean into this Living
Christ-empowered completion, they will absolutely have to do so repeatedly. Obviously,
believers can grieve the Holy Spirit with our willful stubbornness. And, this is certainly a possibility in these
redemptive negotiations. But, in fact,
if we do so, it is at the risk of our very soul.
So, the Spirit is ever faithful
to return again and again to attempt to achieve this crucial enlightenment. But unfortunately, this is also the case. Our willful stubbornness can also be as
perpetual as His faithful love, a reality which can seal our doom.
Nevertheless, the pews, the pulpits,
and the Church administrations all across this contemporary Church are now absolutely
alight with the intellectual and emotional sparks generated by these intense,
life-and-death, personal negotiations with the Divine Spirit. And, indeed, countless under-invested souls hang
in the balance, as they now carelessly and/or callously ignore the simple and
still completely defining implication of the very first commandment.
Those “First Words” still clearly
describes precisely what God has perpetually sought from mankind. And, indeed that admonition still clearly
conveys the authentic redemptive outcome which He is seeking to achieve through
the redemptive work of Christ. It is
still His simple intent that each of us should truly “love the Lord your God with all your heart.”
But, in that regard, the reality,
which our now long human history of failure puts in stark relief, is this. That the first commandment can only truly be
fulfilled in the borrowed power of the Living Christ, as He literally enables
from within, a strong and consistent love of God.
The early Church, then, had it
right. Just embrace, pursue, and
proclaim the promise and the beauty of this heart-and-life transforming
redemptive message. And then, make sure
that every person makes their own redemptive decision in the light of our
confirming and credible witness – a testimony rendered in the real terms of our
own Living Christ-empowered newness.
That being faithfully done, at the end of the day, the numerical tally
of the redeemed will be correct.
Truly, as His witness, it is infinitely better to be appreciated for
the whole redemptive truth which we faithfully embrace and proclaim, than to be
defined by the willingness to abandon that more challenging part.
