The True Church

How distorted our concept of the church has become. We tend to think of it as the building on the corner with the steeple. Most speak of going to church or coming from church, believing it to be just a religious meeting, where certain rituals are performed. Is that what our Lord intended when He said, ‘ upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it?

Did He intend to establish a religious organization, with all it’s hierarchy and ceremony? An organization with outward form and ritual, with rules and regulations designed to teach a man how to become Godly, by a process that works from the outside in. God help us to understand that the Church that our Lord came to establish, He gave His blood for, a type of His life. That life has become spirit in the true Church which is a living organism, His very body compiled of many members. God no longer inhabits buildings of stone and mortar, but we are His temple, a temple made of living stones and filled with His spirit.

This is an inside out process, whereby God through his Spirit in the inner man, accomplishes His will in the earth through His body the Church. We cannot go to church, we as believers are the church. The called out ones of God, called by His name, sons of God born of God’s Spirit. We are not just people who belong to a particular denomination and subscribe to certain teachings. We are the people of God, wholly given to His purposes, knowing Him as our very life. As He is, so are we in this world. We can assemble with the Church, as a part of the Church but I can not attend Church although I may attend to the Church.

Our traditional concept of church has the tail wagging the dog. It causes us to lose sight of our purpose and our identity, by separating our lives into two categories, secular and spiritual. We have learned to serve God on Sundays and Wednesday night and a few other nights of the week, if we are really spiritual. If we happen to meet another “Christian” for the first time, the first thing we are asked is, where do you go to church?

Our assembling ourselves together, in a building called the church does not identify who we are. We have our identity in Christ, therefore wegather together as the Church, or better defined, as the body of Christ. Unfortunately, we gather, together as Baptists, Wesleyens, Methodists, Catholics and a number of other titles to which we have subscribed. I would ask, with Paul, the apostle,” is Christ divided”? Has Christ become a number of differing denominations? Organized groups gathered on Sunday morning, to do their religious duty in buildings we call the church. Is it possible, in our attempts at praise and worship, we have lost sight of God’s purpose in Christ? Are we not be a people who express the life of Christ in the earth, who not only praise God, but become a praise unto God? A people in whom the glory of God is revealed unto mankind, who assemble together as one, having one Lord with one hope of our calling and that is to be conformed into the image of the Son.
God help us.

Art Groesbeck