THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH
It all depends, doesn’t it, on what we’re trying to produce. If we’re
working to bring about a decent society where political freedom and societal
justice is experienced, where people are nice to each other, pay their
honourable debts and keep their commitments—if we’re working to produce that
then our message will be shaped in a certain way.
If we want to produce Christians,
followers of Jesus, who reflect his
agenda in their lives and teaching and ordinances then our message will be
shaped in another way.
The aims may overlap in some respects but they’ll be as different as
day and night. I mean, we can’t produce Christians (Christ’s followers!)
without producing people who are serious about keeping their word, about
treating people kindly, being honourable in relationships and wanting justice
for all. But even non-Christians can be
serious about such things and some of them apparently are more serious about
them than some professing Christians.
For all the similarities between the lives of a morally upright and
kind non-Christians and a fine Christian—their message is fundamentally
different. For the Christian the centre of everything is Jesus and what he
means and stands for. Their calling—and it is a calling—makes them different; what is distinctive about their lives and thought is what they have found
in Jesus.
Maybe that doesn’t matter! Maybe the only thing that matters is that
we all be kind and give each other a break; that we all live and let live, that
we all try to live by some “golden rule” and be morally upright—maybe the rest
doesn’t matter!
Maybe!
But this much is clear—if that’s correct, then Jesus was dead wrong!
If that’s correct then what is distinctive about the Christian faith is
redundant and nonsense and in some ways pernicious!
I can understand non-believers thinking this and saying it but what is
astonishing is for Christian leaders and a host of us followers thinking that
the Christian faith is little more than our way of getting people to live lives
of moral uprightness!
It is no such thing!
The Church is the body of Jesus, the extension of the Incarnation made
possible by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The
message is much more than “let’s all be morally upright people”—its Message is
about Jesus, who he is and what he stands for and when that becomes sidelined
by other agendas (like trying to make people more moral, growing large
churches, offering personal, present peace and fine families and other
interesting and sometimes good agendas)—when the Church’s immediate business is sidelined we’re obscuring God’s agenda in
Jesus and that’s inexcusable.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.