Have you ever given any thought to how church fights must look to non-church folk?
Sometimes it seems like churches exist to create a forum for fighting… a sort of religious WWF - except for real!
If the early church had fought like church folk today the church probably wouldn’t have lasted a decade.
Could you imagine the benevolent debacle of Acts 6 happening in your church? What about the issue of eating meat as recorded in 1 Corinthians 8? Some churches are still fighting over musical styles… others over dress code… others over allowing food or coffee in the sanctuary. Churches are still dividing over staff hirings and firings, charismatic or conservative, does God heal, when and how… and on and on and on…
Do you know why? Do you know why we fight and split and yell?
Simply put… we know neither the gospel nor the Christ of the gospel.
Do you know why Jesus could hang out with the religious establishment one day and be sitting in the house of a “sinner” the next? Do you know why Jesus could condemn the religious for their arrogance and pride and then offer forgiveness to a woman caught in the act of adultery?
…He was the Gospel!
The Gospel was not… has never been about the rules, or behaviour, or methods, or programming. The Gospel is Jesus the Christ. He could sit in Simon the Pharisees house one day and Matthew the former tax collector the next because that’s how the gospel is to come to folks… clothed in flesh and blood. If the gospel were a set of rules then Jesus would have had to say “no” to one invitation or the other. He would have been obligated to come with a presentation and require a specific response to His message.
…but He didn’t
…He simply came…
What does music have to do with it? What does a dress code have to do with it? What does a program or methodology have to do with it…
it is not an it…!
The gospel is Jesus!
…just sayin’
