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
destiny, 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 redemptive end game: an intimate, durable, and mutually fulfilling God/man
friendship fully substantiated in the Living Christ.
And, in fact, the
transformative process which grows this “new creature in Christ” can only
happen in that rarefied atmosphere of a profound humility before God. We
typically just refer to this special relational environment as “redemptive
faith.” And, it is this context of profound humility which produces what an atmosphere of
arrogance and self-determination never could – endurance.
And, endurance is needed to get
through this character and life transforming process. This is no casual walk in the park
we are talking about.
This is an encompassing adventure which involves a focused personal pursuit of a
spiritual merger with the Living Christ by which His empowering character
essence literally becomes integrated with that of the believer. And,
flowing out of this resulting symbiotic relationship then comes a divine
overwrite of the believer’s value system which, in turn, yields a whole new body of
life-altering divine truth.
And, from this now fresh
and growing heart-oneness with God, enabled and sustained by the empowering
sufficiency of the Living Christ, springs that long sought divine prize.
It is that now very real, intimate, durable, and mutually fulfilling God/man
friendship – fully initialized, and ready to shower both God and the believer
with its every day relational 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 the souls of believers from the clutches of the Darkness; but, it also frees them from their own
disabling brokenness as well – just as God always intended.
Sadly, however, 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 more specifically, the
American Evangelical Church, under all of its banners, have become widely reluctant to move, in real terms, beyond simply the forgiveness of the Cross.
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. It stretches toward Christ's Resurrection and that empowering encounter with the
Living Christ which transforms the believer in those very real terms.
So, enabled and sustained by
the shared vibrancy of the Living Christ as He lives within, the believer
experiences this personal transformation. And, it is, indeed, a 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 God-prescribed 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.
And, overly simplistic and ridiculously easy is certainly one of those mistaken approaches. But the pursuit of a thorough personal
renewal 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 safety of soul.
But it is true that the
contemporary Church is now struggling with this larger idea of redemption in
the pew, the pulpit, and in the administrative
ranks of the Church. We would all like to believe that our redemptive message is accurate and sacrosanct - immune to the ebb and flow of life's treacheries and pressures.
And, as ministers of God’s
redemptive truth, we would hope that any reluctance of contemporary
congregations to hear and respond to the greater challenges of the authentic redemptive journey would not
quell our willingness to energetically proclaim them. But is all of this
actually true?
In this time when the Church
is widely numerically challenged in key places: conversions, membership,
attendance, and the 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 widely become more than this
contemporary Church is willing to embrace, might we then simply resort to exploring less challenging truth (which
is also of greatly diminished 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
numbers based pressures drive us to allow less altruistic concerns to begin to
weigh in on our thinking and behavior? So, maybe a numbers threat
to our personal validation, credibility, job security, or our
prospects regarding that ministerial “ladder climb” might begin to have some impact.
Perhaps we might then begin to soft-peddle or just avoid this more stringent message
altogether, in the face of less receptive modern congregations.
As a Church
administrator, might we
be tempted to shade the truth a bit? Perhaps it would seem ok if it made our denomination more attractive, and thus more, "embraceable" by the larger world and/or the growing shallowness of our
constituency?
Or, maybe, in this case, we would start to refrain from "defending the faith", i.e. from ever critically juxtaposing our authentic message of redemption with its 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 none (except our own integrity), all in deference to the
numbers and the perceptions they demand of us.
But, be all of that as it
may, the actual reality is that in most every church in the land today, 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 some cases, this is occurring in spite of our long enshrined doctrinal positions to the contrary. 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 confrontation 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? What else 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.
And, 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. Nevertheless, these Holy
Spirit interventions, however they turn out, ever remain just that, a negotiation.
They are necessarily never irresistible demands. The believer’s level of
devotion is always left to decide the outcome of these loving confrontations. And, many do actually resist these urgings by the Divine Spirit.
Obviously, believers can, indeed, grieve the Holy Spirit with our willful stubbornness. And, this is certainly a possibility in these redemptive negotiations. But if believers refuse, or
suppress, or in other ways seek to escape the Spirit's loving encouragement to lean into
this Living Christ-empowered completion, they will absolutely have to do so
repeatedly.
This is true because their soul hangs in the balance. So, the Spirit is ever
faithful to return again and again to attempt to achieve this crucial
enlightenment.
But unfortunately, something else is also true. Our
willful stubbornness can also be as perpetual as His faithful effort - a reality
which can seal our eternal doom.
So, at this late redemptive hour, the pews, the pulpits, and Church administrations all across this contemporary Church are
now alight with the intellectual and emotional sparks of these
intense, life-and-death, personal negotiations with the Divine Spirit.
And, countless under-invested souls within the Church do, indeed, hang in the balance.
Nevertheless, the nature of God's ultimate redemptive aspiration never wavers. It ever remains that divine intention to bring to pass that every day reality of a durable and mutually fulfilling friendship with the believer, made strong and consistent through that unique symbiotic merger with the all sufficient Living Christ.
So, the ultimate redemptive end game simply cannot merely be about forgiveness. Again, this wondrous beginning benefit must necessarily evolve into this Christ-empowered transformation of our character and our lifestyle realities. It must be so to facilitate that heart-oneness with God which is so completely indispensable to that long awaited and mutually gratifying friendship which God eagerly anticipates with every the believer.
That consummate friendship is what was lost in the Garden of Eden all those eons ago. And, that friendship is what the redemptive work of Jesus is now putting back one person at a time. And, He is doing so in a much better and more substantial way. And ultimately, God simply will not settle for less.
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew [In the Greek: "Genosco" - a deep and intimate knowing] you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'" ~ Jesus [Brackets added]Numbers matter in the Church. But redemptive truth matters more. The simple reality is that redemptive truth actually defines the numbers; and, never is the reverse true - in spite of that now widely cherished delusion.
