ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – On September 28, Muslim extremists charged into the home of Christian lawyer and evangelist Edwin Paul and brutally murdered him, his wife, and his five children who were of the ages 6-17. His crime? For taking the legal case of Robin Mehboob, a Christian taxi driver, who received a hike in interest rate of a small loan (the equivalent of $1,725) from the original terms of 400% to 500% from a lender backed by Muslim extremists. The exorbitant interest rates, whether from the original terms or after, were based solely on the fact that Mehboob was a Christian.

Upon filing the claim, representatives of the lender went to Paul’s home, railing against him, “How dare you Christians go to the police; don’t you know we own the law here?” Upon that, Mehboob testifies, “They assaulted us, beating us with fists and clubs, and warned that if we try to seek any assistance, they will kill us.” Mehboob fled to his brother’s home, and Paul stayed at his home, pursuing the case of his Christian brother. Shortly thereafter, the same men returned and killed Paul, his wife, and his five children.

Such a story is almost surreal. To imagine that seven people, seven of our brothers and sisters in Christ, would be shot down in cold blood, because the father sought justice over a loan for $1,725 for a fellow brother. It takes your breath away. How did it transpire? It is heart-wrenching to imagine. Were the children killed first? Were they forced upon their knees and executed while their helpless parents watched in unimaginable horror? Or was Paul killed first, and his family left to watch as each subsequent one witnessed the successive and heartless murder of the persons whom they held most dear, ending with the 7 year-old child looking up at his family’s killers with devastation and tears streaming down his eyes as he viewed the last image of his short life—a gun barrel directed toward his head? O, the unspeakable horror!

And then we think upon what this great tragedy was over–$1,725! Robin Mehboob, a fellow brother and child of God, was so desperately in need of money that he was willing to accept the terms of a 400% rate loan and possible persecution to get it. What did he need it for? Was his family starving to death? Did he need a home to protect his wife and children? Was one of his parents deathly ill and needed medical care that he could not afford? We may not ever know the extenuating circumstances that drove this man to seek money from a Muslim-backed lender, but there is one thing that we can be sure of—he needed the money desperately.

When I think upon the sequence of events—a brother who needed money, a lender who changed the terms of the loan to something our brother could not afford, the brother who was willing to stand beside our brother to fight his case, and the subsequent beating of the two and then the murder of a family of seven—my heart cannot help but be torn within me. I ask myself, Could this have been prevented? Why was there not fellow Christians whom he could go to for aid? Why was the well of gifts dry? And then I think upon my situation and wonder what I possess that I paid $1,725 for. My LCD television was not so much less than that. The computers that our family owns does not total to much less than that. The car which we drive cost tens times that. Our satellite, internet, Netflix, cell phone and other luxury bills add to well over that in a year’s time. In all these things—all these things which I count as rights and privileges for being an American citizen—could I have prevented this slaughter by being generous and liberal with my giving? Could brother Mehboob have turned to the church for the $1,725 that he needed if I and other American Christians were not so ensnared by our luxuries? Would Paul, his wife, and his seven children still be with us today if we did not have to have our DirecTV and our iPhone data plans? My God, I feel damned by the weight of my luxury!

The sad reality is that this very thing happens to Christians around the globe all the time. What is sadder is that we who are blinded by our entertainment and our American Dreams will never see it. The world does not care, because they hate our Lord. Our government does not care, because Pakistan is not an area of civil interest. Our brothers and sisters in those areas do care, but they do not have the means to aid them, and they are in need of aid themselves. Who then does the weight fall upon? It falls upon us, the American church, because we are Christians, and we have the means to aid our brothers and sisters. Yet we will not, because we think that the American Dream is more important. We will not, because atrocities that happen to un-Americans are merely “unfortunate” and easily forgotten. We will not, because we think that having nice things is not a bad thing as long as we are reading our Bibles, praying, going to church, and going door-to-door on occasion. We will not, because we will not lift up our eyes to see the suffering of those whom our Lord has bought with blood, those whom he has loved before the foundation of the world, and those upon whom he peers down with tears, saying, “Well done, my good and faithful servants!” O, that God will tear open our hearts and tear us away from our stuff so that we can fulfill that which he has commanded us to do—to love our brothers as ourselves!

For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack” (2Cor. 8:13-15).

And if we were to step back and survey how we in the church have strayed so far from the biblical teachings concerning Christ’s church and its practices and growth, we would surely have a daunting task before us. We could certainly step back to the Medieval church and see the remnants of its thoughts and practices in our own thoughts and practices, and we could follow it through the Reformation and through the Enlightenment and cap it with the business models of the twentieth century, yet in doing thus we would see nothing but from where we have come. In order to understand where we need to be we must become like the Wise Man who holds the seams of the Scriptures together who meditates on God’s Word day and night so that he might not be conformed to the world but transformed by the renewal of his mind (cf. Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1; Rm. 12:2). We need to come back to the Source of our faith, and we must not wander from it, for in it lies what the Lord our God deems as prosperous.

Yet, even before we begin our quest into the hallowed halls of Scripture, we must rightly define our terms. For when we say the word church it does not convey the same meaning to all. To one, the church is a building and a structure that very much visible and has a street address. It is the meeting place of God’s people, and it is a place where we invite non-Christians to come. Yet, etymologically, this is not the proper definition of the original Greek term. For in the Greek, the church is not a building or a place, but it is those persons who are called by God out of the world and out of slavery to sin and death (Gr. ekklesia: ek: out; kle: to call). It is a term that connotes citizenship or an assembly, and it corresponds directly to the saints of God who have a heavenly citizenship–those who, through Christ, have “come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God … and to the assembly (ekklesia) of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb. 12:22, 23). Therefore before we even begin to think upon the subject of building funds and the like, we must dispel our false notions and understand that the church is not a structure with a steeple, but is God’s elect ones from every tribe, every nation, and every tongue.

Yet despite our tendency to doublespeak (a trap into which I likewise fall), we cannot let our misnomers drive our doctrine and practice. For though there are few who can honestly read their New Testaments and come away thinking that the church is actually a building (imagine a steeple-laden building being presented to Christ as his bride), the misnomer nevertheless has wholly infiltrated our doctrine and thought. And because of this, a church building is seen (whether consciously or subconsciously) as a place of reverence (“You had better not lie; you’re in church”), a central place of worship (opposed to Jn. 4:23, 24), a storehouse for God’s tithe, a sanctuary, a bearer of an altar, and a temple. It is a building in which we wear our “Sunday best” or our “church clothes,” and it is one which houses a weekly event for which we purify our hearts from a week of unholy living. It is a reality that is divorced from our normal lives, and it is a place to where we go rather than a citizenship from which we cannot escape.

And for many who preach and lead in churches, since the church is a building and not the saints of God–a flock over whom they are given charge (pastor being Latin for shepherd), they believe and teach that the church of the New Testament is like the Temple of the Old Testament. For instead of rightly discerning the Word of Truth and learning from it that the Old Covenant institutions are pictures and shadows of heavenly realities fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ, they instead reject and neglect this clear truth and take the church back to the realm of shadow and away from the light of Jesus Christ. And it is for this reason that these teachers preach about Nehemiah’s venture to rebuild Jerusalem so that they might propagate the raising of funds for their buildings, and why these teachers promise the curses from Malachi to those who do not bring their tithes to the storehouse (i.e. the church building). These have wholly misunderstood the place and purpose of Israel and his institutions in God’s Redemptive Plan, and because of this, they have wholly misunderstood the church of Christ.

And if this misunderstanding of the church was not enough, the problem has been exponentially heightened by American business growth philosophies. For the American church has with open arms embraced the Field of Dreams model of growth, viz. “If you build it, they will come,” and as such, the church is no longer the body of God’s elect drawn to him by the faithful proclamation of the Gospel, but it is those in a particular locale who have been drawn into a church building by its sales tactics. Thus you will find on signs outside of church buildings catchy phrases (or more likely, moronic phrases) that are aimed to attract an outsider, and you will find billboards advertising how that church can meet a particular person’s needs (e.g. Dave Ramsey financial courses, DivorceCare, etc.). Also, you will find that the person who leads the church (i.e. the pastor) acts more like a CEO than he does a guardian of God’s flock, and his role is not to lead God’s people to holiness and righteousness, but it is to devise plans by which he can increase the membership of that church. For this reason, he will preach “relevant” sermons that give “7 Ways to be a Better Leader” or “10 Steps to Strengthening One’s Marriage,” and, because of this, he is far less likely to faithfully teach God’s people God’s Word. Furthermore, God’s people have been so duped by this misunderstanding through the teaching of other pastors that when they must search for new pastor to fill a vacancy, they look for a person outside of their church who possesses the same qualities that the world would look for in a CEO–charisma, a particular education, experience, etc.–instead of raising up a member whom they know and who has proven himself to them as worthy of that calling.

Taking all of these false notions into account, it is not difficult to understand why a church’s building fund is such a holy topic. For if the church is a building that is a holy place for the worship of God on Sunday mornings, then a building is not a nicety, it is a necessity. Furthermore, if it is such a place, then it does not merely need to be a roof over one’s head and a climate-controlled environment, but it needs to be a building that is a suitable dwelling place for none other than God himself. In addition, since it is undeniably God’s will that every church grow in its membership and that membership growth is a sign of God’s blessing, and since the way to grow a church’s membership is by building a newer, larger, more grandiose building (vis-à-vis The Field of Dreams), then the only way to be in God’s will is to have a building campaign. Thus, if you do not have the vision of the building campaign, you do not have God’s vision.

If I have not made myself clear up to this point, allow me to do so now: To say, “If one does not have a vision for a building a building that he does not have God’s vision,” is a lie from the pit of hell. And why is it a lie from the pit of hell? Allow me to give some reasons:

1. The Church is not a Building
As I have already shown to be clear, the church of God is not a building, structure, or anything that can be pinned on a map. The church might meet in a particular location, but once God’s saints leave that location, the church is no longer there. A church cannot exist where there is no people, and God’s church can be God’s church without a building. If the building where a church meets burns to the ground or is sucked up by a black hole, the church would exist just the same. The church is God’s saints, God’s elect, God’s chosen, and they are comprised of flesh, not wood and steel.

2. The Church Building is not the New Testament Temple
Despite blasphemous claims to the contrary, the church building is not a temple, a holy place, a sanctuary, a bearer of altars, etc., but Jesus Christ is the Temple, and the Old Testament Temple was a picture and a shadow of him and his work. Furthermore, God’s saints are also the Temple of God because Christ is their Head, and it is in them, not a building, where the Spirit of God dwells. It is for this reason that Christ said to the Samaritan woman who asked where the appropriate place to worship was, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth” (Jn. 4:23). In other words, Christ is saying that by his coming he has fulfilled the shadow of the Jerusalem Temple (viz. “It is now here”) so that people will not go to particular location where God dwells, for God will dwell with his people. Furthermore, Christ is pointing to Pentecost when the promised Holy Spirit would be poured out into all the world so that the New Covenant promise of God dwelling with his people would come to pass (cf. Jer. 31). Therefore, God’s temple is no longer a building or structure, but by Christ and the pouring out of the Spirit, the shadow has been made obsolete and now God’s saints are his Temple with Christ as their Head.

3. God Builds His Church, not Men
God does not need nor does he desire salesmen. He does not need new and innovative ideas for saving the souls of men, but he has already given the church the appointed means by which he will build his church himself, viz. the proclamation of the Gospel. And that Gospel message which we are to proclaim is a clear message taught to us in God’s Holy Word, and it is not a message that is to be tampered with lest it lose its power. It is not a message that is to be watered down for the sake of getting a person to make some half-witted decision, but it is a message that is harsh, offensive, and divides. It is a message that repulses the reprobate and the wise of this world, but to those who are being saved “it is the power of God” (1Cor. 1:18).

Furthermore, the way by which God prescribes to build his church through the proclamation of the Gospel is not to lure people into the fellowship of the saints, but it is to go out into the world preaching the Gospel. The church–the fellowship of the saints, is ordained by God to be a time of teaching and reproof by sound doctrine, not an event where an evangelistic sermon is preached every Sunday. The reason that our churches are so shallow and have such little spiritual growth is because every sermon that is preached is preached to the lost and not to the redeemed. Because of this, God’s people are starving and malnourished, and they therefore closely resemble the world because they have no foundation and the world in being called into their midst. Therefore, there is no place for discipline (for it is presumed that many who attend are not saved), and there is no place for doctrine. For discipline and doctrine are both unattractive to an unbelieving world, and since our goal is to attract the unbelieving world to our church gatherings and since it is God’s will that we grow in number not in holiness and knowledge, we do not practice discipline or teach doctrine.

4. Building Funds Destroy God’s Will for the Church
James writes, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jm. 1:27). Christ put it this way: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn. 15:12). Christ also gave his church another commandment saying:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Mt. 28:18-20).

In these verses, we find God’s clear and undeniable will for his church, and none of them have anything to do whatsoever with a building fund. In fact, building funds, more often than not, detract the church from doing that which our Lord commands us to do. For in having a building fund, we are storing up millions of dollars in funds for something that God has never instructed us to do and, we, therefore, because of the building fund, do not have the funds to do that which God has instructed us to do, namely loving the church as he loved us. Because of our misallocated funds, we do not have money to aid those who need aid (e.g. widows and orphans), and thus we are willfully disobedient to our Lord’s command. Furthermore, by saving up funds for a building, we do not have the means by which to send people into all the world proclaiming the Good News of Christ as our Lord commanded us in the Great Commission. Yet in spite of this, we will preach the Great Commission, and we will say that we are a “Great Commission” people, yet in this we are liars and hypocrites. We prove by our most beloved building campaigns that we do not love God’s church and that we care nothing for the Name of our God being proclaimed to the ends of the earth. We preach it, but God is not deceived.

Furthermore, we, by our building campaigns and church growth methods, do not keep ourselves unstained by the world, but we stain ourselves by the world by drawing the world into us. More than that, we use worldly tactics to draw the world into our buildings, and we try to look like the world so that the world might find us attractive. And by doing thus, we actually destroy God’s church instead of growing it, though on the outside it might look as though it is growing by the number of attendees.

Conclusions
What is all this to say but that we have strayed from and spit upon God and his Word, we who claim to be “a people of the Book.” We think ourselves wise, but we are fools; we think ourselves well, but we are deathly ill. We are the church at Laodicea to whom Christ gives this terrible and terrifying rebuke:

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent (Rev. 3:15-19).

We are a church who has chased after the world and its methods, and we are a church who is materially wealthy. We think ourselves blessed because we have such monetary wealth, yet we are poor and wretched as is shown by poor use of it. We are blind to our folly, and therefore we desire no remedy. We care nothing for the holiness and the righteousness of our people, we care nothing for the Gospel of Christ, and we care nothing for loving God’s saints, and for these things we will be spit out of our Lord’s mouth unless we are zealous and repent. God does not desire our buildings, our building funds, or our tithes, but he desires that we love him by loving his people, proclaiming his Name, and being holy as he is holy. These are the commands that God gives to his church, and to disobey them by erecting some building that will be burned up on the Last Day for the sake of peddling God’s Word or for making a name for ourselves will not be suffered by the Wrathful Lamb.

As for [the seed that] was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful (Mt. 13:22).

In the parable of the sower, Christ intimates that there are four responses to the hearing of the Word of the Kingdom, three negative and one positive. Three of the responses to the Word are responses that are rooted in the heart of man and therefore bear no fruit, and one response in rooted in the work of God and therefore bears much fruit. In each of the negative responses there is the proclamation of the Word (i.e. the sowing of the seed), and in each there is a different enemy that destroys the effectiveness of the Word.

In the first, the seed is cast upon the hardened dirt of the path, and it is a picture of hardened man who hears the Word, and then the god of this world snatches the Word away so as to leave the man unchanged by it. In the second, the seed is cast upon the rocky ground where there is little soil. This is a picture of the man who perceives the goodness of the Word of the Kingdom, yet when tribulation and persecution befalls him, he falls away since he has no root in himself. In the third, the seed is cast upon the thorns, and it grows up, yet the thorns entangle it and choke out its life. This is the picture of the man who esteems the Word of the Kingdom for a time, but then the cares of this world and / or the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word so that he is unable to bear fruit and dies.

And lest there be any confusion, each of these three negative cases are pictures of those who are outside of Christ. For John says earlier in the Gospel to those who presumed they were the children of God, saying:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire (Mt. 3:7-10).

And Christ speaks later, saying:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Mt. 7:15-19).

And the apostle Paul testifies later concerning those who are in Christ:

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may to belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death, but now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code… So then brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live (Rm. 7:4-6, 8:12, 13).

All of these texts, in addition to several others, bear witness to the reality that those who are rooted in Christ and in the Word of his Kingdom are those who bear fruit. If anyone does not bear fruit, he is not in Christ, for Christ has called his people to faith in him for the sake of good works (cf. Eph. 2:8-10). For, “He will render to each one according to his works. To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rm. 2:7, 8).

For this reason, all who claim to be in Christ are called constantly to examine the fruits that they produce. As the apostle Paul exhorts, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work his good pleasure” (Ph. 2:12, 13). Therefore, all of us, regardless of our time in the faith and our doctrinal rightness, are called to fear and to tremble before God, because anyone of us at any time could prove ourselves to be either the rocky ground or the thorn-infested soil, having received the Word of God with joy and later turning from it to our destruction.

My greatest fear is that we have no fear. For I have surveyed the fields of American Christianity and have perceived that most of our church is comprised of thorn-laden ground,
and instead of witnessing godly fear that calls the church from the cares of this world and from the luxuries it affords, she instead has erected for herself false doctrines that are designed to quell godly fear. For rather than doing as Christ and the apostles call us to do, namely to find our security in the fruits that we bear wrought in us by the Spirit of God through the emancipating work of Christ, we look solely upon an event in the past where we received the Word of the Kingdom with great joy. Yet, from Christ’s parable, receipt of the Word of the Kingdom with joy is not by itself evidence of the work of God. The evidence of the work of God is found in the fruit that one bears, not in some profession that has been contradicted by the untransformed lives that we live.

O, that we might grasp this, American church! O, that we might see the error of our ways and the shifting and sandy foundation upon which we have built our hope! So many times, so many times, I have seen those who have claimed Christ with great joy only later throw him away for the sake of good things. How many among us have put Christ on the backburner for the sake of our families? How many of us have forgotten Christ for the sake of our careers? How many have traded the wealth in Christ for the wealth of the world? How many among us have substituted the pleasure of knowing our God and Savior for shallow Christian morality? It is so deceitful! It is so wickedly deceitful! For oftentimes it is not the evil things that turn us from Christ, but it is the good things.

My plea with you, dear friend, is to examine yourself. Do not believe the lie of some evangelist who persuaded you to write a date in your Bible so that he might put another notch upon the bedpost of his gospel adultery. Look upon your fruits and by them determine that you are indeed in Christ. Do you love Christ more now than you did the day you first professed him? Do you love others more and are willing to sacrifice the pleasures of the world for their sake? Do you love the truth more and proclaim it boldly with your words and deeds? For even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and those who bear no fruit or the fruit of unrighteousness will, despite profession and vanquished joy, be cast into the fire.

Justification by Acceptance rather than Justification by Faith
As those who claim to be Evangelical Christians–those who bear the very word Gospel (euangelion) in our self-made title, one would think that we would be quite sure about the Gospel to which we claim such allegiance. Yet in spite of our nominal allegiance, we find in modern Evangelical Christianity in place of the Gospel call given exclusively in Scripture by Christ and the apostles, namely, “Believe and repent!”, there is now almost exclusively the call: “Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and ask him into your heart.”

What ought to be quite startling is that the phrase we have so endeared—”Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior” is never used by anyone in the New Testament. Never. And this is not merely a point of semantics, for “accepting Jesus Christ” and “believing in Jesus Christ” are not synonymous phrases. In fact, they are quite different, and its shift is indicative of the philosophical shift that has occurred within the Western Church.

The Propagation of Free-Will Philosophy
If you think just for a second about the differences between “accepting” something and “believing in” something, it becomes quite apparent why the shift in language has changed from that of the Bible and the reformers. “Accepting” something by necessity demands an act of the will. It is an exertion. It is a work. It, in its connotation, is an evaluation of possible choices and choosing that which is most advantageous to the soul. In the case of modern evangelism, it is demonstrating to a person that life with Jesus is better than life without Jesus and to convince that person to say a prayer that “seals the deal” and causes the Holy Spirit give birth to him. The great majority of modern evangelism works in this way, be it done in “Hell, fire, and brimstone” presentations or in pretty tracts that purport an abundant life in Christ.

On the other hand, faith or belief in something is quite different from accepting something. Faith is not an exertion of the will. Faith is not a choice. It is a natural ascent to that which is true because one knows it to be true. For example, one believes that the sun will rise in the morning, because he has experienced a sunrise every day of his life and thereby knows that it will rise again. Faith in Jesus Christ is no different than faith in the rising sun. One believes that Jesus Christ is Lord because he has experienced Jesus Christ. He believes in Jesus Christ because Christ had shown himself to him. Just as Paul on the Damascus road saw Christ because Christ burst out of heaven and revealed himself to him, and then Paul by necessity believed, so God shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Cor. 4:6), and we believe.

Faith, therefore, is by its nature a natural reaction to a supernatural revelation. Just as a tap on the knee with a rubber hammer produces a reflexive kick, so God’s revelation of himself to a man creates in that man faith.

For this very reason, Scripture does not hesitate to say at some times that a man is justified by faith and at others that he justified by the work of Christ. For faith is not work that adds to the work of Christ, but it is the natural reaction of the revelation to our hearts that God has set us apart for himself through Jesus Christ. The apostle calls this action by God the “circumcision of the heart by the Spirit” in Romans 2:29, for we who were once far off have been brought under the Covenant and set apart for holiness and obedience through the work of Christ so that he might be the firstborn of many brothers (cf. Rm. 8:29).

Acceptance: Making Faith a Work
As we discussed earlier, the great difference between “acceptance” and “faith” is that the former is an exertion by reason and the latter is an affirmation of what one sees and experiences. The shift in language from the biblical and reformational “Believe and repent” to the present “Accept Jesus as your personal Savior” is an accommodation to human philosophy not to greater understanding of biblical truth. Our post-Enlightenment and American minds are so destroyed by our thoughts of liberty and pursuits of happiness that we cannot begin to grasp doctrines that teach otherwise. So instead of being transformed by the renewal of our minds by Holy Scripture (cf. Rm. 12:2), we are conformed to the philosophies of this world and attempt to ram the triangular peg of Scripture through the square hole of human philosophy.

Therefore in today’s context, faith is no longer a meritless assent to the work of the Almighty, but it is the work of our souls “to get right” with God. Despite clear teachings to the contrary, we explain away texts that do not fit our philosophies (and never explain them for that matter), or we avoid them altogether. We then take the analogies and pictures that Scripture gives us to show our whole dependence of God, and we twist them so as to make us the meritors rather than the meritees. If, for example, we were confronted by Nicodemus today and were asked to give instruction as to how the old man might be born again, we would not answer like Christ, who said “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8), but we would say, “Accept Jesus as your personal Savior, and then you will be born again.” You know, just as we accepted our parents as our personal parents before we were born the first time around.

For this reason, we cannot comprehend what the apostle writes in Romans 3, “Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (vv. 27, 28). We cannot comprehend this saying, because we can boast in what we call “faith.” If faith is truly looking at the option of Jesus Christ and looking at other options and accepting Jesus as our Savior on our own accord, then we do have something to boast in. We can say of ourselves, “We were more intuitive than those who do not believe,” “We are more predisposed to godliness than unsaved Jane over there,” “We are just smarter than every atheist that is on the planet,” etc. But if faith is, as John Piper put it, merely the cry of a newborn child of God, then we have as much reason to boast in our faith and salvation as a newborn has in crying and being born.

Next: The Doctrinal Ramifications of the Death of Justification by Faith

And as such, it is the least addressed of all the issues that plague the American church. For few are convicted of the improper use of American wealth (since we have been about explaining it away in our religion for decades), and even fewer are willing to suffer the lashes that come with its address. Yet, now is time, as the apostle Paul writes, to “awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:14b,15).

And the days are indeed evil. Yet, in spite of this declaration, most of us who comprise the American church live for these days. For we care little about that which our Lord asks of us, but we care much about what our idols ask of us. For we are more than willing to labor forty-plus hours a week for our nice homes, new cars, large televisions, and meals at restaurants, but we are much less willing to work those hours and spend that money to love our neighbors as ourselves, to reach the Nations with the Gospel, and to minister to the “least of these.”

And there is a direct correlation between what we do with our money and what we love. For as Christ said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt. 6:21). For where we spend our money in one area of our lives directly affects where we spend money in other areas. For if commit two thousand dollars a month to the home in which we live, it takes that much money away from loving our neighbor as ourselves. And if we commit five hundred dollars a month to the car we drive, it takes that much money away from reaching the Nations with the Gospel. And if we spend a thousand dollars here on a large television and fifty dollars here and there on going out to eat, it takes that much money from ministering to the “least of these.” Therefore, where we spend our money proves what Christ said as true, for that where we spend the most money is where our true desires and passions are.

And one will object, as many have before, “We need some of these things. And what is wrong with having nice things?” The problems with having such “nice” things are many, and I will address a few of them now:

1. The Pursuit of “Nice” Things Stems from a Pride in Possessions
If you think for just a moment on why Capitalism works so well in this country and why car companies and companies like Apple are able to survive and thrive here is because they provide possessions that can be boasted in. It is not that these companies make products that are needed for basic survival, but it is because they make products that are the “latest and greatest.” For it is not as though a 2009 model car is any less capable of getting a person from point A to point B than a 2010 model, or that a iPod Touch 3G is any more capable of playing music than an iPod Touch 2G, and yet millions of people in this country, including many Christians, year after year, trade in their one year-old cars for a new model and their one year-old iPods for a new one. And what is the driving force behind such behavior? It is pride. It is the ability to say and to show that I have the latest thing, that I can afford the best, that I am worth the extra expense. It is expense that exists absolutely apart from need, and it is expense that is prideful luxury.

Of this, the apostle John writes:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1Jn. 2:15-17).

And what does the apostle call this “pride in possessions”? He calls it loving the world and the things in it. Then he gives this frightening judgment: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Notice he does not say, “If anyone who has not accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior loves the world,” or “If anyone who has not believed in Jesus Christ loves the world,” but he says, “If anyone loves the world.” It is a blanket statement that says essentially that if you love the world, you do not love God and God’s love is not in you, and if you do not love the world, you do love God and his love is in you. There is no middle ground on the matter, either one loves God and hates the world, or he hates God and loves the world.

2. The Pursuit of “Nice” Things Testifies against Our Professed Hope
As those who profess to be Christians, we profess that our hope is not in this life, but it is in the life to come. We confess such things like the old hymn declares, “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand | and cast a wishful eye | to Canaan’s fair and happy land | where my possessions lie,” and yet anyone who lives in this country who does not claim Christ would be hard pressed to see by the manner in which we live our lives that our hope is any different than theirs. It is for this reason that few of us are asked to give a reason for the hope that is in us, because the world is fully aware of the reason for our hope, and they do not desire to hear it.

And yet, the greatness of our Inheritance is not without a witness. As I wrote elsewhere:

It is for this reason that the prosperous father of our Faith, Abraham, lived in tents rather than in a palace, for his hope was vested in the City whose designer and builder is God (cf. Heb. 11:10). It is for this reason that the faithful Macedonians forsook what little material goods they possessed and gave to the aid of the saints out of their poverty in an abundance of Joy (cf. 2Cor. 8:1-7). And it is for this reason that our Lord Jesus Christ forsook his rights as God and humbled himself to such an extent that he was born in innkeeper’s barn, labored as a carpenter, lived as a homeless man, preached the truth of God so that all despised him, and endured the shame and the agony of the Cross. All these lived thus because of the Promised Joy that was set before them–a joy to which no riches or sufferings in this world can compare (cf. Rm. 8:18)(Source)

We do have, as Hebrews 12 puts it, a great cloud of witnesses who testify to the greatness of our Inheritance in Christ, and we are to be like them, a testimony to the world by the way we use our wealth that our Hope is far greater than any luxury that this life can afford. It is in this way that we are to be salt to a bland world and a city on a hill to those who have no hope (cf. Mt. 5:13-16).

3. The Pursuit of “Nice” Things Robs Money from Those to Whom We are To Minister
As the American Church, we have become well accustomed to speaking as we ought to speak. We have become very good at saying such things as, “We need to be a Great Commission people,” “We need to love our neighbors as ourselves,” and “We need to minister to the least of these.” And while we say such things with our lips, our hearts and our wallets speak a much different word. For while we declare on the one hand that our desire is for the Kingdom, we, on the other hand, spend the money that is needed to do the work of Kingdom on things that are not of the Kingdom. And while we may consider ourselves faithful by giving a tenth of what we make to our churches, we demonstrate that our hearts are far from God and his Kingdom with the other ninety-percent of our income. For if the ministry to which God has called us was truly our heart’s desire and if we truly did not love the world, would we gladly not spend our money on the treasures of this world and spend them on loving the world as God has called us?

And yet our lip’s declarations are clearly false declarations. For how can we who possess most of the world’s wealth not have money to send out God’s missionaries? How can we who spend so much money on frivolous things not have money to feed our neighbors? How can we who buy for ourselves the “latest and greatest” things not buy for our brothers the same “latest and greatest” things if we truly love them as we love ourselves? The reality is that we are liars, and we do not practice the truth which we preach.

Final Thoughts
Most will read this and think of me as a sitting on my high and mighty throne of judgment with a “holier than thou” attitude. The reality is that that could not be farther from the truth. For, I must confess that I suffer from the same disease that plagues our church, and I myself own such nice things as flat panel television and a nice home in a nice neighborhood. By God’s grace I am attempting to remedy this hypocrisy that plagues my life and hope to get to the point where what I profess with my lips is true of my life. And just as a doctor ridden with cancer can with good instruments diagnose cancer in a patient, so I with God’s Word am attempting to diagnose the ills of the American church. My prayer is that you will not with pride cast this off, but that you with humility will consider the burden of my heart. My God be glorified by our demonstration of the great Hope we have in him to the world. Amen.

The apostle Paul puts it this way: “In this hope [viz. the redemption of our bodies] we were saved” (Rm. 8:24). For the salvation of our Gospel is laid in store for us in Eternity, when we who bear the curse of Adam shall be ridden of our dead bodies and rise as Christ rose by the glory of the Father (cf. Rm. 6:4). This is the glorious Promise and Hope that our God has granted to us, and it is a Promise and Hope that transforms our lives here upon this planet.

For this reason, we are called to live as aliens in this world, as those who are merely passing through it to reach our Homeland. It is for this reason that the prosperous father of our Faith, Abraham, lived in tents rather than in a palace, for his hope was vested in the City whose designer and builder is God (cf. Heb. 11:10). It is for this reason that the faithful Macedonians forsook what little material goods they possessed and gave to the aid of the saints out of their poverty in an abundance of Joy (cf. 2Cor. 8:1-7). And it is for this reason that our Lord Jesus Christ forsook his rights as God and humbled himself to such an extent that he was born in innkeeper’s barn, labored as a carpenter, lived as a homeless man, preached the truth of God so that all despised him, and endured the shame and the agony of the Cross. All these lived thus because of the Promised Joy that was set before them–a joy to which no riches or sufferings in this world can compare (cf. Rm. 8:18).

And it is for this reason that the yoke of Christ is light. For when this life is placed in its proper context, all matters that the world regards as significant become trite to the Christian. For worldly riches are trite when compared to the bounty that is in Christ, fleeting pleasures become trite when compared to the pleasures that are in Christ, mortal life becomes trite when compared to the Life that is in Christ, and the esteem of men becomes trite when compared to the commendation of Christ. Therefore, the call of Christ, which the world regards as nonsensical, namely to lose one’s life so that he might gain it, is the only sensible call for those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (cf. Ps. 34:8).

However, many in this country who call themselves Christians bear false witness to the Salvation which they profess to have. For they declare that their hope is in Christ, and yet their lives reflect little upon the greatness of their Inheritance. For rather than losing their present life so that they might gain Eternal life, they believe that they can gain life here and also gain it in the Life to come. Therefore, there is little distinction between those who profess to be Christians and those who do not profess Christ at all. For they both pursue the same things–nice homes, new cars, better careers, prolonged life, bodily health, etc. and the only difference between the two is that one seeks these things bearing a Christian façade and the other seeks these things without that façade. And those who claim no allegiance to Christ have no interest in asking those who claim allegiance to Christ the reason for their hope, for their hope is no different than theirs.

It is for this reason that most Christians in our county cannot preach the Gospel. Though they may take courses on sharing the Gospel, and they may memorize certain Scriptures pertinent to the Gospel, they do not preach the Gospel with their lives. And thus when they make converts, they make converts by their false gospel. And though their gospel may not bear the heresy of Joel Osteen in its word (viz. live your best life now), it does bear it in deed. For anyone who would follow after Christ must not merely talked as he talked, but he must walk the same road he walked–a road of suffering, of poverty, of self-sacrifice, of love–and not to walk that road is to walk the road to destruction.

It is for this reason that our first priority as Christians in America must be the comprehension and the demonstration of the true Gospel by those who profess Christ here. For while it is indeed amiable and essential that we reach the Nations with the Gospel, how can we reach the Nations with that which we do not understand ourselves? As it stands now, we, by and large, hold to a defiled gospel here in the States, and we therefore preach a defiled gospel to the Nations. It is for this reason that other countries where the Gospel is not tainted send missionaries to American shores. For they have seen what we who have been blinded by tradition and culture cannot see, and they out of deep love for us wish to show us the errors of our ways. Now is the time, as the apostle writes, “To awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14). And to “look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15). Therefore, live wisely, O Christian, for this life is but a breath, and pleasure in anything but the Gospel of the Hope of the revelation of Christ is vain and will be burned away.

For Southern Baptists, the final words of Christ and its implications have been the words that the denomination has trumpeted for decades: “Go and make disciples”; “Go and preach to a lost world”; “Bring the Word of salvation to the Nations.” All of which are true and good words, but do the lives of those who preach those words line up with what they claim is their heart’s desire?

First, what must be made clear is not that there are none who are Southern Baptists who live lives that demonstrate that the Nations are their heart’s desire, for there has always been a faithful remnant, but the great majority of those who preach thus as Southern Baptists contradict their words by the way in which they live their lives. These Southern Baptists are the modern-day Pharisees, who recognize the goodness and truthfulness of God’s Word with their minds, but their hearts are far from God, and they preach for the approval of men.

“These are strong words,” one will object, and they are strong words. However, the fact that the Great Commission is preached over and over again and is contradicted by the lives of those who preach it is a stronger word to the world. For if the Great Commission were in fact the greatest concern of Southern Baptists, our lives would look drastically different than they do.

Take for example the pastor of the narrative, whose capital building campaign has been fulfilled, and a new building has been constructed for his church. What is the case in his example, though fictitious, is very true of pastors throughout the country, namely that his church could have, with little inconvenience, survived and even thrived in its old building, but in the name of convenience, in making a name for himself, etc. the pastor has gone to great pains to have a new building constructed to house “worship” services on Sunday. And though he might preach the Great Commission in his new building, the building itself preaches that the Great Commission is not the church’s greatest concern, for exponentially more money went into constructing the building than went to reaching the Nations with the Gospel. Add to that fact that the Scriptures never instruct churches to build larger buildings (or to build buildings at all–for the people, not the building, are the temple of the Holy Spirit), the pastor’s capital campaign, which he poured his life and soul into, is a hypocritical and God-dishonoring endeavor.

Beside the testimony of the building, the pastor contradicts his preaching by the luxurious life that he lives. He drives a new, expensive vehicle and lives in a home that would make the middle-class in America envious. The majority of his salary from the church goes to paying for his cars and house, while his tithe (the only part that he believes is God’s) goes directly to the church’s building campaign. Instead of living a life that validates that the fulfillment of the Great Commission is his heart’s desire (i.e. a life of sacrifice that would manifest itself in a much cheaper car and smaller and meager home so that a majority of his income could go to the Nations), he lives a life that demonstrates that when it comes to his money, the Nations are not on his radar.

As for the Southern Baptist seminary that lies just miles away from the pastor’s home and church, they are the producers of such men as our pastor in the narrative. For they teach future pastors of the importance of the Great Commission, yet they construct multi-million dollar buildings that act more of a demonstration of American wealth than they do of a love for the Gospel. For if the seminary’s heart was truly for the Nations, their buildings would be bare-bones buildings that act merely as weather-proof classrooms (as are seminaries in other countries), yet they are buildings that are vain and decadent through and through. For they house great monuments as the exorbitant globe in the narrative, fine décor and upholstery, and the latest technological innovations–all of which are unnecessary and rob funds from that which they preach is preeminent in their hearts. Yes, the Great Commission may be written in rich, gold letters upon the building’s inner walls, but the Great Commission never leaves that building, for the seminary’s money was exhausted on that building.

Countless other examples could be given regarding the hypocrisy of American Christians and particularly of the Southern Baptist Convention in general, but those examples do nothing more than expose more of that which has already been evinced. What we need is not more Great Commission conferences or more signatures on some Great Commission Resurgence pledge, but we need complete overhaul from the top down. It must begin in the pastors and in the seminaries, and it must be manifested in their lives, in their buildings, and upon their campuses. For if the Great Commission is preached as preeminent, it should never, never be the case that missionaries cannot be sent out to the Nations for lack of funds, while we somehow still have enough funds to erect our golden calves here in America. It is hypocrisy and wickedness, and God and the world are not fooled by it.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs–heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rm. 8:16, 17).

K. P. Yohannan made a simple yet profound statement regarding suffering in the life of the Christian. He said that we as Christians are to seek actively our cross and carry it, for no one is going to throw it upon us; we ourselves must pick up the cross of suffering, deny ourselves, and follow Christ. And we must do it, for the cross we are to pick up is not icing on the cake of Christianity or a merit badge for the holier among us, but it is essential and salvific, for we, as the apostle declares in his letter to the Romans, will not be glorified with Christ apart from suffering with him.

For all who have been baptized into Christ share completely in his identity. For they who were baptized into him were baptized into his death in order that they might also share in his resurrection. And as Christ’s life and death did not come apart from suffering, so our lives and deaths (if we are indeed followers of Christ) shall not come apart from suffering with him.

What then is Christian suffering, and how do we pursue it? First, Christian suffering is a denying of one’s self daily. Christ said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23). Therefore, Christian suffering is not the suffering that is common to all men (e.g. illness, financial woes, etc.), but it is the suffering that comes from denying one’s self and following Christ. It is the fulfillment of obedience to all of Christ commands, for all of his commands can be summed up in these two words–love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. For when a person fulfills those two commands, he is by nature a self-denier, for those two commands cannot be fulfilled apart from self-denial.

Secondly, we pursue Christian suffering by obedience to Christ’s commands. We do this by looking at our lives, which up to a point have consisted entirely of self-gratification, and purge them of selfishness by asking, “How do I love God will all my being in this particular aspect of my life? How do I love my neighbor as myself with my present conduct?” As we ask these questions of every facet of our lives, we will begin to see areas for improvement everywhere. And if we obediently seek to remedy those discovered shortcomings, the result will always be self-denial and suffering.

A great negative example of this is the rich young ruler to whom Christ spoke in the Gospel of Matthew. He was bidden to follow Christ so that he might inherit eternal life, and the rich man claimed that he was obedient to all of the commandments of the law. Christ, however, was not deceived, and he instructed the rich man, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt. 19:21). For in his accumulation of wealth, the rich man had not loved his neighbor as himself, for, if he had, he would not have not hoarded up for himself earthly treasures thereby neglecting the poor among him, but he would have denied himself so that he could love his neighbor as himself thereby storing up for himself treasure in heaven. As it was, however, the rich man would not suffer self-denial and abandon his love of wealth, and he therefore went away to his destruction.

We, like the rich man, are called by Christ to poverty. We are not called to poverty for the sake of poverty, but we are called to poverty so that we might love our neighbor as ourselves. For if we truly love our neighbors as ourselves, we will give to them the very things that we give ourselves. And by doing so, we will suffer with Christ, who denied himself of his own kingly status and infinite wealth so that he might become poor for the sake of those whom he loves. For to those who are given much, much is required, for the wealthy by nature have a greater burden of self-denial for they must give away substantially more so they might love their neighbor as themselves and thereby fulfill the law.

To American Christians, much has been given to them and therefore much is required. We, however, like the rich ruler, have neglected this aspect of the faith and instead have conjured up for ourselves a gospel that denies self-denial so that we might find peace in our wealth. We are the rich young man, for we are very religious and feel that we understand the heart of God and will inherit eternal life, yet we are unwilling to part with our wealth so that we might love our neighbors. We, rather than actively pursuing our crosses, actively turn a blind eye to those who have needs, both in our country and around the world, thinking that we will be safe in our acquired ignorance. We however are not safe, and the warning that rested upon the rich man in Christ’s day now rests upon us, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt. 19:23, 24).

All of us, being wealthy, will only enter into the kingdom of heaven with great difficulty. For after having tasted the wealth of this country and the pleasures it affords, it is nigh onto impossible to turn from those things to God. Christ said that it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than it is for us to get into the kingdom of heaven. The only way that our entrance into the kingdom is possible is to have our fattened souls trimmed down by the Spirit of God through self-denial and suffering. Then, and only then, will we be fit to pass through the narrow gate that’s entered only by those camels who have been trimmed down to the size of thread.

While it is of little surprise that American Christians are more concerned about worshipping themselves than God by the churches they attend, it is saddening nonetheless. For it is clear that we have been deceived into thinking that true joy rests in self-satisfaction, and we rob ourselves of our Joy by seeking it in entertainment rather than in Christ and him glorified.

The reason I think of this now is because this past weekend I was called to remembrance of a small church at Atlantic Beach called Bogue Banks Baptist. I, my wife, and a friend attended this church a Sunday we were at the beach, and the effects that this small church had on my opinions of church services is nothing short of profound.

Upon first glance, the church appeared to be your typical Baptist church, with its members in suits and ties and Sunday dresses and with its members at the elder end of the age spectrum. But that is where its similarities ceased. I strolled into the church that Sunday in my typical church garb–a knit shirt, shorts, and flip flops–and rather than getting the expected strange stares and the tacit how-dare-you’s, I was received warmly and lovingly. When the service began, the music leader (who just as well could have been the preaching pastor), read from the Scriptures and went out of his way to honor Christ with his words. The whole service consisted of this–of the Scriptures being read and Christ being glorified.

The style of music fit well with the members of the congregation, being akin to what you might expect in an old school Baptist church, but that did not matter in the least. Every song they sang was Christ saturated and honored him. Every person there, it seemed, sang from his heart to his Savior, and they enjoyed him that service, not the style of music. And no person left that service without hearing the Gospel at least ten times. What a blessing!

My purpose in sharing this is both to honor the church I attended, whose heart’s desire was to honor Christ, and to exhort us in our local congregations to honor Christ above all in our services. So often we are worried about putting on a show for the people and luring them by entertainment (*cough* *cough* C3), instead of by luring them by displaying Christ as majestic and worthy of praise. If we could grasp this in our churches and seek to show Christ as beautiful rather than our favorite genre of music, there is no telling the effect that that would have on our country. Just a thought.