Many things had to go wrong for the contemporary church to find itself in the spiritual condition it finds itself in. Perhaps one of the most insidious of these was the idea that we can attract those of the world by becoming more relevant, seeker-friendly, and less biblical. If we can dilute it, water it down, remove the bits the world deems unsavory and intolerant, then we’d really leave our mark. The reason people weren’t coming to church was because there was too much Jesus there. That’s an easy fix, then, isn’t it? Put Jesus in an attic somewhere and only bring Him out on special occasions. Birthdays and special events only; other than that handful of times, we can focus on the ministry of tithing and hundredfold returns.
It worked, didn’t it? Mega churches started sprouting up all
over the place, people were filling the seats and overflowing the offering
buckets, and we thought we’d cracked the code. We’d finally done it! Paul must
have been wrong in his first letter to the Corinthians after all. I guess it
was a limiting belief when he said that the natural man does not receive the
things of the Spirit of God and not the way things really were.
1 Corinthians 2:14-15, “But the natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual
judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.”
No, Paul wasn’t wrong. That’s the tragedy of it. The natural
man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. However, there are
countless souls who, still being in the flesh, believe the lie that they have
become spiritual by osmosis while retaining the natural man fully intact and
unregenerate. You cannot be of the light and of the dark simultaneously. You
cannot testify the truth with your lips while your heart is full of evil and
deceit. That thing about repenting, therefore, wasn’t an option or some extra
credit you could earn; it is mandatory and non-negotiable.
One of the reasons for the great peril of the last days and
the spiritual condition of the church during that time is that those who insisted
they were preachers of the gospel really weren’t, and rather than doing the
thing the Bible told them they needed to do, they took it upon themselves to
jigger with the Word and insisted they were supposed to save the world. Men
preach; God saves. If you preach the truth, those saved are being transformed,
renewed, regenerated, and born again. If you preach a lie, those thinking
they’re being saved really aren’t because you never told them what they needed
to do to be saved.
John 3:1-3, “There was a man of the Pharisees named
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him,
“Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these
things that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him,
“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.”’
Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He knew the law, lived the law, and
was even a ruler among the Jews. He acknowledged that Jesus was a teacher come
from God, as had the other Pharisees. Nicodemus was a religious man, likely a
moral man, a keeper of the law, and had ‘accepted’ Jesus as being sent from
God, yet Jesus still said, you must be born again, for unless one is born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
It’s not my job to convert you; it’s my job to preach the
gospel to you. The rest is between you and God. When we begin to poll test the
gospel message and remove the things unspiritual people find uncomfortable, we
are diluting the very essence of the gospel. It’s not as though we did it with
God’s permission or consent. It’s not as though He changed His mind or lowered
His standard, so why are we surprised at the lethargy sweeping the Western
Church? The gospel is not a commodity to be tested but a divine message of
salvation to be embraced.
This generation insisted on duplicity; don’t resent God for
maintaining His standard of righteousness.
You can’t have God on your terms. No matter how special you
might consider yourself to be or how entitled you might feel to a special
exemption wherein God has to dance to your tune and accept you without being
born again, it will not be so. You can have God on His terms, and His terms are
clearly spelled out in the Word.
But that would mean that far fewer people than we thought are
genuinely saved and sanctified. Isn’t that what the Bible says?
Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the
gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go
in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to
life, and there are few who find it.”
Departure from the truth has facilitated all the things Paul
lists as the source of peril within the church in our last days. Had we
remained in truth and prioritized men’s souls over men’s wallets and quality
over quantity, we would not be in the predicament we find ourselves in. We
would not be on the threshold of the falling away or the shockwave of animosity
and vitriol that will follow on its heels.
You cannot have a Christless gospel and still call it the gospel or have any expectation that it will save or lead you to life. There’s no such thing as a Christless truth, and any way that promises you life without Jesus is a lie and a deception. This is basic Christianity, yet pastors of all denominations and stripes are going out of their way to avoid this singularly crucial truth: Jesus is imperative! He’s not just some auxiliary figure in the Bible that we can ignore whenever it suits us. He is the gospel. Without Him, there would be no gospel, nor would there be a way to be reconciled with the Father.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
Posted on 21 July 2024 | 11:32 am
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