One of the ways the Holy Spirit of God has always burned His truths deep into my spirit is to draw my attention to written or verbal statements made by others, whereby I will dwell on or meditate on them for hours, searching out the meanings and ramifications contained within. Statements such as this: “If the church is declining, it is an expression of the people, not Jesus. Jesus is never noted for going back. If the church belongs to Him, it will express life. If it’s not, then we must ask who is it expressing?”
That statement was made over twenty-two years ago, by the minister of the church fellowship that I, as a new Christian, had decided to associate myself with. It was the same church where I was a public gospel messenger, which I have been giving testimony to in these posts on this blog.
At the time that he made that statement, that minister was himself an expression of Christ, but a little less than five years later he began to rapidly decline spiritually and he became an expression of himself, resulting in much of the church becoming an expression of their individual selves. In other words, in just a little under five years I was to witness the life of Christ in all its beauty as it was expressed in that fellowship turn itself into death and ugliness as it became an expression of the people. It was an outworking I was to witness more than once in the twenty-four years I have been a biblical follower of Christ.
The Bible tells us that the nature and character of Jesus Christ is one of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control – also known as the nine-fold fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Bible also tells us that when we surrender our life to Christ and make Him Saviour and Lord, we become born again, a new creature (creation), the old passes away and the new comes in. That is; our old nature with its emphasis on sin and self dies and we receive the new nature of Christ as we become indwelt by His Holy Spirit. That’s what it means to be an expression of Christ in nature and character.
But it doesn’t stop there. For the church or fellowship to truly be an expression of Christ, each person must also be baptized into the Holy Spirit. This baptism is the initial experience of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the believer – an experience whereby by He completely surrounds, envelopes and immerses the believer who then becomes “filled with the Spirit.” From that initial experience there are on-going fillings, but only as we yield our lives daily to the leadings, promptings and power of the Holy Spirit. As we yield to the Spirit, we then make ourselves available to be recipients of the spiritual gifts that He seeks to impart upon us.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are also nine-fold: three revelational gifts – word of wisdom, word of knowledge, discerning of spirits. Three inspirational gifts – prophecy, various kinds of spiritual languages (tongues), and interpretation of spiritual languages (tongues). Three power or demonstration gifts – faith, workings of miracles and gifts of healings. These gifts are given to the church by the Holy Spirit for the work of the ministry. It’s important to note that they are indeed gifts. We can not earn them or learn them by feverish religious activity nor by attendance to Bible colleges and seminaries for the seeking of some sort of certificated qualification. I honor such qualification, but that is not how we receive the Holy Spirit.
New Testament 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 shows us that these nine-fold spiritual gifts are given to the church (which is people), rather than to any one individual. In other words, one gift is given to one person, another one is given to someone else, perhaps two or three gifts given to someone else, and maybe three or four given to another member – but all are dispensed by the Holy Spirit as He sees fit. They are not given as a mark favoritism to one person over another. The problem in the “church” however, anywhere and everywhere in the world, is that this fruit and these gifts are rarely seen in operation. See my post: The greatest loss of all.
Go into most churches today and all you will see is “religious” activity. Jesus called this activity, “traditions handed down by men.” This most certainly, is not an expression of the corporate life of Christ. It is, most certainly, an expression of man – dead, religious, proud, smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, spiritually-blinded man. It is not the church of Jesus Christ, regardless of who says what. And all too sad to say, in my experience and observations, most people love it that way and will not have it any other way. Yet these same people have mastered it down to a fine art on how to give the impression that they are the real thing.
Whether they are church leaders, priests, pastors, bishops, elders, deacons or ordinary congregational people like myself, they know which facial expressions to use, which tone of voice, use of the eyes, hands and body – they know what Scriptures to use in prayer and conversation – all has been well rehearsed so that they look the part, fooling all but the spiritually discerning, that they are the part. So again, it needs to be said, any church that does not function in the fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit is not a true church of Jesus Christ. It does not express the biblical Lord Jesus, it expresses the people and the Jesus of their imagination.
In my work as a street minister of the gospel of Christ, it was quite common for people to ask me, “Why all this emphasis on the Bible? Why do you always quote from that book?” My answer was always the same. The Bible is the only book to give confirmation that there is a God. It is the only book to show us that God reveals Himself personally to each one who diligently seeks Him. It is the only book that gives specific revelation that God has a will and a plan and that human beings are the objects of that will and plan. If it were not for the Bible we would be ignorant of God, His unchanging truths, answers, guidance and instructions.
Those people thought of the Bible as simply a religious book written by religious men. They were ignorant of the fact that it is God’s word which came to us by revelation – a process by which God imparted truths to man (Adam), Noah, Moses, prophets, angels, dreams, visions, and the disciples/apostles of Christ. They had no idea that all Scripture within its pages was given by inspiration (God-breathed) as He guided the pen of each writer to ensure His message was correctly written down. They had never been informed either, that not one iota or dot within will pass away until all God’s plans have been accomplished.
As a result of such ignorance, very little respect was given towards the Bible; it was devalued by most of them. But for the Bible to be devalued to the extent that it was/is in society, it first had to be devalued in the church. And when the Bible is devalued in the church, the result is people become religious – not Christian. That’s why we see more religion than Christianity in people who claim to be followers and representatives of Jesus Christ. God has nothing good to say about such people, He calls them traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than God, people who appear to have a form of godliness, but they will not let its power change them 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
The only way that the Bible can ever become devalued in a church, however, is for it to first become devalued by the leadership – and herein lies the problem. Every minister of God, regardless of who they are will be tested numerous times in their ministry by God Almighty Himself. For example: if he preaches and teaches on the need to be cleansed from sin, God will have him look at his own life too. If he preaches and teaches on the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience etc, then God will test that fruit in his own life. If he preaches and teaches on holiness, faith, obedience, humility etc; once again, he will experience the testings of God.
As a result, most certainly his shortcomings will show up. The solution then is to admit such to God and ask for deliverance from them and for the power to overcome in those areas each time he’s faced with them in the future. That is one of the reasons why we need to be baptized into the Holy Spirit, so that we will indeed be on the pathway to release and freedom from these things. But sadly, this is where the sin of pride now becomes the problem in such a leader’s life. It becomes a stumbling block so strong in that leader that he yields to it each time God faces him with something. Instead of listening to the voice of God, he listens to the voice of the devil.
He doesn’t call it the voice of the devil though; he prefers to call it the voice of reason. As he continues to entertain that voice, it’s not too long before his faith is supplanted by reason. From there he reasons out every Scripture that he finds unreasonable and he discards it or waters it down to make it more palatable, not only to his own thinking and doing, but to the thinking and doing of most of those in his church.
This downward slide does not show its effects immediately in himself or his congregation, but rather, by way of gradualism. “For you ought to put off the old man (according to your way of living before) who is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And you should put on the new man, who according to God was created in righteousness and true holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24.