In the sermon I stressed the importance of understanding what the gospel is.
The gospel is simply the “good news” of Jesus Christ. It’s the good news that when you and I understand what Jesus did for us, we realize we are more sinful than we ever dared imagine but more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope.
When we place our faith in Jesus, commit ourselves to Him, allow Him to change our heart (repentance) and share the symbol of His death, burial and resurrection (baptism), we can rejoice in our salvation.
This is the gospel.
There are a lot of differences between believers of different Christian denominations and groups. Some of the differences involve this gospel message, but most involve how the church functions as an institution. Sometimes we get so excited about telling people about our church and the way we do things in keeping our reading of the scripture that we confuse this with the gospel itself.
I said in the sermon that we should spend more time bringing the gospel to people who have never heard it than simply trying to convince other people who already consider themselves Christians to come to our church and our way of doing things based on the scriptures. If we do this, I believe we will have more success with the gospel.
Now, I don’t want anyone to get the impression that we should never have discussions about our differences with other believers or examine the Bible together to discuss those differences. We should stand up for what we believe from the Bible. When I said the gospel isn’t about getting “church right”, I didn’t mean getting “church right” is unimportant. I simply meant they are two different things.
Does one church have all the right answers? Probably not. To say that we do everything perfectly would be a little arrogant. However, we know the Bible has all the right answers, so where else can we look but to the Bible for instruction in how to worship, how to organize the church, etc? Overall, the churches of Christ do a decent job of sticking to the Bible alone. Are we perfect in this? Of course not, but I believe we do a decent job.
Is every church the same? No, certainly not. Does it matter which one you choose to be your spiritual home? Certainly. It’s every believer’s duty to read the Bible for instruction as to what God really wants for us as an individual and for the church as a whole. If we find the church doing things that take if off-track from its primary purpose of preaching the gospel, we need to avoid those things. If church assemblies are reduced to pure entertainment or simply another place to sit and enjoy coffee with some friends, we’ve missed the mark somewhere, haven’t we? The questions about whether the church has instrumental or a capella music or whether the church runs a large charitable organization or has a soccer or baseball league are legitimate issues for us to discuss.
Some of these issues have been
debated for a long time and caused a lot of bitterness between people. As a result, some people look at all this and say, “Does any of this even matter?” Certainly it matters. In the book of Revelation, Jesus wrote a letter to each of seven
churches telling them He was watching them closely to see whether they were
conducting themselves in a way that promoted godly lives and taught the truth
of the gospel. He warned that they might
be in danger of having their “candle snuffed out” as a
Let’s conclude like this. Every believer as an individual and every church as a group must look to the Bible for instruction in how God wants us to be. God will ultimately decide which church issues are important to salvation and which aren’t. We must do what we believe to be right according to the Word. When we just can’t come to agreement with our friends in other denominations and groups, we must ultimately go on doing what we believe is right according to the scriptures and let God worry about sorting out the differences in the end.
In the meantime, all we can do is read the Word and pray for His Spirit guide us into a right understanding of these matters.
times.
