SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT ORGANIZED RELIGION
If people are drawn to you, eventually they’ll become a part of your circle, and that circle should include Christian friends and people from your church. Becoming part of a Christian circle doesn’t make one a Christian. But God’s drawing people to Himself necessarily involves the influence of and connection with others. Others must lead the horse to the water.
When a soul decides to follow Christ internal and external changes – social changes – take place in that soul’s life. As the heart changes, preferences and behaviors change and the soul needs a place to belong and fit. That’s what a church is supposed to be.
Faith may be an internal individual phenomenon, but “the faith” is a social phenomenon. We become a part of the body of Christ, the Church, God’s people. We belong to God, to Christ, and to each other.
Western society prefers that religion be merely private. “Organized religion” – people sharing a faith together – is something we usually disdain. But the apostles saw connection to the Church as one of the ends God sought when He saved a soul.
Paul said so in many places. Here are just a few:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12.12-13)
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2.19-20)
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son… (Colossians 1.13)
Peter, likewise, taught the same thing:
As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood… (1 Peter 2.4-5a)
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession…Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people…(1 Peter 2.9a, 10a)
The apostle John said it as well:
To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1.5b-6)
Most importantly, Jesus said it the night before He died when praying for those who would choose to follow Him in the years to come:
I do not ask for these [disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17.20-21)
If Jesus saw the fellowship of the Church as a tool to reach others, shouldn’t we? Can God draw a soul to Himself using our friendships to gently acclimate them to what a transformed life looks and feels like?
When a soul decides to follow Christ internal and external changes – social changes – take place in that soul’s life. As the heart changes, preferences and behaviors change and the soul needs a place to belong and fit. That’s what a church is supposed to be.
Faith may be an internal individual phenomenon, but “the faith” is a social phenomenon. We become a part of the body of Christ, the Church, God’s people. We belong to God, to Christ, and to each other.
Western society prefers that religion be merely private. “Organized religion” – people sharing a faith together – is something we usually disdain. But the apostles saw connection to the Church as one of the ends God sought when He saved a soul.
Paul said so in many places. Here are just a few:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12.12-13)
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2.19-20)
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son… (Colossians 1.13)
Peter, likewise, taught the same thing:
As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood… (1 Peter 2.4-5a)
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession…Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people…(1 Peter 2.9a, 10a)
The apostle John said it as well:
To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1.5b-6)
Most importantly, Jesus said it the night before He died when praying for those who would choose to follow Him in the years to come:
I do not ask for these [disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17.20-21)
If Jesus saw the fellowship of the Church as a tool to reach others, shouldn’t we? Can God draw a soul to Himself using our friendships to gently acclimate them to what a transformed life looks and feels like?