Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2024 7:23:10 GMT -5
The Imperfection of the Church
There is nothing among men that is, as it ought to be. Nothing has remained as God had made it. Everything is out of joint. Everywhere there is confusion, sin shook the very foundation of human life, and therefore the walls are cracked and bowed and skewed.
The Church of Christ does not stand apart, exempt for from all the disruption and wreckage of the sin cursed world.
Christ gathers his church within that world and its members are all sinners. Every one of them is imperfect. Yes, in principle, they are perfect through Jesus Christ. But by no means are they perfect in daily living and doing, even the holiest of Christians struggles till is dying day against the weakness and sinfulness of the heart.
Because the Church of Christ is a gathering of imperfect people. It is an imperfect church. The church is holy because Christ is its head. It has beauty because Christ adorns it. It has heavenly gifts and powers because it is mired in sin and the filth of sin clings to it.
Not only the lay members, but the leaders as well are sinful. All are men of like passions and the leaders because of their position must guard against the temptation to vain glory and spiritual pride. Why they serve through their office it does not exempt them from the grip of sin. They stumble even while they reach out a hand to help others.
They are shepherds, not because of their own virtues and qualifications. But because the Lord bids them, bring his word and guide the footsteps of his people.
If all the members of the church are imperfect, it follows that even the outward forms of the organization, the management, the activities and the usages cannot be but faulty.
How can the walls be strong when a stone is brittle and a cement is weak?
Throughout all the centuries, God had to labor with his people.
Was there ever a time in any age of history when the church was truly beautifully pure? Free from spot or blemish in the days of the apostles, things already began to go wrong. Their epistles are full of complaints and warnings against sins and false doctrines.
We Christians of today ought to take this fact to heart.
Fully realizing that the imperfection of weakness of today's church is not at all unusual or unnatural.
Could we perhaps, by better cooperation with greater zeal, bring about a perfect and glorious church?
Whoever thinks so underates the extent of evil and human nature and deceives himself. Yet there are those who dream the dream and who.burn with eager desire to bring about its fulfillment.
They are deeply conscious of the great and holy calling of the church.
They are grieved by its failings, its shameful weakness, to cure the ills seems to them a hopeless task.
So the like minded band together and form a new church or a society where they may enjoy richer and pure spiritual fellowship of kindred hearts. And thus their dreams seem to come true. But it will not last.
They attained to their happy condition by separating the more pure from the less pure. But that is not a normal situation. Well, they seem to have excluded much evil from their small circle and to have escaped dangerous contamination. They soon find that evil came in with them. It is among them. The age old evil raises its horrid head, even among the most consecrated and separated. The dream of a perfect church on Earth is a vain dream.
Besides, such dream is in the church. There are also those who equally aware of the evils and equally grieved over them a wide awake and know from God's word or from history that a healthy church is a rarity and a pure church is an impossibility.
They know that there is not one shred of prophecy which even hints at possible perfection of the Church of Christ. They realize that they have no right to expect such a church.
They would fight evil. Yes, but expect perfection, No.
Sin is a Destroyer that creeps in everywhere. Therefore, we must expect an imperfect church. In fact that we church memories carry the sin of the world with us into the church.
Too often hiding it under a veil of spirituality. If the church was not the bride of His son, surely God would, in holy wrath, destroy not first all of the world, or rather first all of the wretched, sin ridden church we have mentioned.
We have mentioned these two kinds of church members, those who dream of a perfect church and those who soberly face the fact of her inevitable imperfection. But let us not carry away the idea that there are two classes and always that these two classes are always clearly distinguishable. The dreamer has his moments of sober insight and the man who calmly accepts the fact of evil also dreams his dreams.
Where is the believer who does not have a specter of unbelief crouching within his heart?
Where is the man who, while he professes salvation by free grace, does not find himself secretly priding in good works.
Even the child of God, who believes in free will and despises the doctrine of particular grace, bowed humbly before his God and his in his inner chamber, confessing his utter health and unworthiness before his maker
But in this, one man has the upper hand, and in another that
Our purpose is not to honor the one and upbraid the other. Rather, we would analyze and understand the holy things of God in order that we may come to the truth, that untruth may fall away, that thus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, God's name may receive the greater honor.
It is possible to have sinful ideals, ideals that reach out
The dream of a perfect church upon Earth is such an ideal. The imperfection of God's church upon Earth is a circumstance which you must accept and bear with patience if we fail to do that. it is because we fail to see the satanic depths of sin and fail to realize that the church is in its very essence, inseparable from the the sinfulness of man.
There is nothing among men that is, as it ought to be. Nothing has remained as God had made it. Everything is out of joint. Everywhere there is confusion, sin shook the very foundation of human life, and therefore the walls are cracked and bowed and skewed.
The Church of Christ does not stand apart, exempt for from all the disruption and wreckage of the sin cursed world.
Christ gathers his church within that world and its members are all sinners. Every one of them is imperfect. Yes, in principle, they are perfect through Jesus Christ. But by no means are they perfect in daily living and doing, even the holiest of Christians struggles till is dying day against the weakness and sinfulness of the heart.
Because the Church of Christ is a gathering of imperfect people. It is an imperfect church. The church is holy because Christ is its head. It has beauty because Christ adorns it. It has heavenly gifts and powers because it is mired in sin and the filth of sin clings to it.
Not only the lay members, but the leaders as well are sinful. All are men of like passions and the leaders because of their position must guard against the temptation to vain glory and spiritual pride. Why they serve through their office it does not exempt them from the grip of sin. They stumble even while they reach out a hand to help others.
They are shepherds, not because of their own virtues and qualifications. But because the Lord bids them, bring his word and guide the footsteps of his people.
If all the members of the church are imperfect, it follows that even the outward forms of the organization, the management, the activities and the usages cannot be but faulty.
How can the walls be strong when a stone is brittle and a cement is weak?
Throughout all the centuries, God had to labor with his people.
Was there ever a time in any age of history when the church was truly beautifully pure? Free from spot or blemish in the days of the apostles, things already began to go wrong. Their epistles are full of complaints and warnings against sins and false doctrines.
We Christians of today ought to take this fact to heart.
Fully realizing that the imperfection of weakness of today's church is not at all unusual or unnatural.
Could we perhaps, by better cooperation with greater zeal, bring about a perfect and glorious church?
Whoever thinks so underates the extent of evil and human nature and deceives himself. Yet there are those who dream the dream and who.burn with eager desire to bring about its fulfillment.
They are deeply conscious of the great and holy calling of the church.
They are grieved by its failings, its shameful weakness, to cure the ills seems to them a hopeless task.
So the like minded band together and form a new church or a society where they may enjoy richer and pure spiritual fellowship of kindred hearts. And thus their dreams seem to come true. But it will not last.
They attained to their happy condition by separating the more pure from the less pure. But that is not a normal situation. Well, they seem to have excluded much evil from their small circle and to have escaped dangerous contamination. They soon find that evil came in with them. It is among them. The age old evil raises its horrid head, even among the most consecrated and separated. The dream of a perfect church on Earth is a vain dream.
Besides, such dream is in the church. There are also those who equally aware of the evils and equally grieved over them a wide awake and know from God's word or from history that a healthy church is a rarity and a pure church is an impossibility.
They know that there is not one shred of prophecy which even hints at possible perfection of the Church of Christ. They realize that they have no right to expect such a church.
They would fight evil. Yes, but expect perfection, No.
Sin is a Destroyer that creeps in everywhere. Therefore, we must expect an imperfect church. In fact that we church memories carry the sin of the world with us into the church.
Too often hiding it under a veil of spirituality. If the church was not the bride of His son, surely God would, in holy wrath, destroy not first all of the world, or rather first all of the wretched, sin ridden church we have mentioned.
We have mentioned these two kinds of church members, those who dream of a perfect church and those who soberly face the fact of her inevitable imperfection. But let us not carry away the idea that there are two classes and always that these two classes are always clearly distinguishable. The dreamer has his moments of sober insight and the man who calmly accepts the fact of evil also dreams his dreams.
Where is the believer who does not have a specter of unbelief crouching within his heart?
Where is the man who, while he professes salvation by free grace, does not find himself secretly priding in good works.
Even the child of God, who believes in free will and despises the doctrine of particular grace, bowed humbly before his God and his in his inner chamber, confessing his utter health and unworthiness before his maker
But in this, one man has the upper hand, and in another that
Our purpose is not to honor the one and upbraid the other. Rather, we would analyze and understand the holy things of God in order that we may come to the truth, that untruth may fall away, that thus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, God's name may receive the greater honor.
It is possible to have sinful ideals, ideals that reach out
The dream of a perfect church upon Earth is such an ideal. The imperfection of God's church upon Earth is a circumstance which you must accept and bear with patience if we fail to do that. it is because we fail to see the satanic depths of sin and fail to realize that the church is in its very essence, inseparable from the the sinfulness of man.