From Jim McGuiggan... THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH

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.