Ecclesiology and the Honor of Christ
By Jay Wegter
Ecclesiology and the doctrine of God
Mega-church values are killing the spiritual core of Evangelicalism, states author David Wells. He is one of the most lucid and incisive writers on Evangelicalism’s drift from God. In the following four pages, are some of the most important observations which Wells makes about Evangelicalism’s ‘degenerative sickness’. These excerpts are primarily from his book, God in the Wasteland. Wells notes that Evangelicalism has assimilated therapeutic culture (in which ‘badness’ or human depravity, is a disease treatable by the therapeutic). Evangelicalism has assimilated consumerism in which it is common for ‘worship’ to be equated with mood-altering entertainment. Wells argues that the spirit of the age has reduced Evangelical Christianity to the private and the internal. Evangelicalism has been emptied of serious thought, serious theology, serious worship, and serious holy practice in the world, states Wells. Yet, these are the very things needed by broken men! Protestant orthodoxy has been altered to fit an atmosphere of ‘pleasantness and light’—insulating hearers from the trauma inherent in true repentance. Churches are filled with those who wear a happy face, but who have no religious passions. Decades of postmodernity have left us with an ingrained self-referential perspective. This has twisted Evangelicalism to the point wherein interest in the transforming power of the truth of God is severely lacking. The therapeutic and managerial have replaced the love of the truth—divine truth which God intends to devastate, renew, transform, and sanctify His people (Jn 17:7).ⁱ God’s absolute truth has been displaced by personal intuition as the basis for decision-making.ⁱⁱ This sentiment has invaded the psyche. It may appear to value the individual, but is it worldliness.
We are seeing an ever-present search for adaptation to the needs of the modern world. God is secondary to the organization, its image, and its perpetuation. The world of 21ˢᵗ Century Evangelicalism prizes techniques, managers, and psychologists, all in “Christ’s name. Wells goes so far as to suggest that “the church has replaced God.”ⁱⁱⁱ The sovereignty and providence of God (and our incumbent reverential fear in light of these truths) are no longer stressed; they are seldom pulpit themes. God’s control of creation has been wrenched away, and replaced with self-fulfillment. But this orientation is completely at odds with the self-denial and cross-bearing proper to union with Christ.ⁱᵛ
Today’s Evangelicals practice a religion comfortably wedded to worldliness. Results are measured by ‘successful’ entrepreneurship. But, when biblical truth is dislocated from
life, discernment evaporates. The Church’s theological soul is dying as a result. The Church is no longer taking its bearings from God who is centrally holy. Evangelicalism, having abandoned theology, is running on the high octane fuel of preoccupation with self (‘tell me more about me’), therefore it cannot see the alien values inside it. In this condition, the Church cannot recognize or dislodge the worldliness within her (1 Jn 2:15-17).ᵛ The priority that has taken over is refinement of technique in order to improve the bottom line. Because of accommodation to modernity (my needs, my journey, my potential through therapy, my conviction that the individual is ultimate reality), the techniques of capitalism are devastating the understanding and experience of God. It is a biblical fact that we won’t be able to reconcile the true knowledge of God with a self-referential view of life, for the love of the world and love to God are totally antithetical.ᵛⁱ
Evangelicalism’s new value system can be stated thus: ‘remove the barriers to conversion and to attendance, and you’ll get the numbers’. McGavran’s formula for church growth is ‘applied sociology’. Raw pragmatism intrudes into churches where the confessional and the theological have faded. When theology is not at the center, managers and marketers will conduct the “business” of the Church.ᵛⁱⁱ George Barna does not even conceal his crassness in the matter: the Church is to follow the big business competition model; i.e. assess consumer needs. Says Wells, according to George Barna the Church is viewed as a business with a market and with a product. Its core product is the message of salvation and the experience of God. Each church is a franchise, the Chrysler of tomorrow. Modern pastors are the CEO’s in this business model. ‘Market the Church by understanding need suggests Barna’.
In Barna’s world, the mega-church is a full-service bureaucratic structure that fills a market niche of felt needs.ᵛⁱⁱⁱ Modernity plays to the ‘sovereignty’ of the audience. Os Guinness gives this sobering reminder; it is possible to “win” the world and lose our own souls by ecclesiastical engineering. Worldliness makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange. Worldliness puts man at the center and God out to pasture—then there is no place for truth and its disturbing ramifications. When self is at the center as a religious consumer, technique replaces the very truth which God intends to disrupt our self-directed lives. There is no longer a place for God’s devastating word of grace which is intended to knock men off balance and bring them face to face with God transcendent in holiness.ⁱˣ
The “otherness” of God is domesticated, He is reduced to a benign and harmless helper. God is no longer understood as standing outside the sinner, summoning him to repentance. By contrast, the God of Scripture calls the sinner to repent by means of the knowledge of Himself who is thrice holy. The Holy Spirit convicts the sinner, pressing upon him a crushing, bankrupting verdict of ‘guilty’—for there is no other way to be emancipated from the deception of external religious appearances.ˣ Psychologized culture has an affinity for the relational, but a “dis-ease” for the moral, thus it is drawn to a god who can be used. The modern church wants the love of God, but not the invasive holiness of God (1 Pet 1:14-16). Scripture is replete with the reality that objective truth anchored in redemptive history is the revealer of who God is—He is so right, and we are so wrong. But, that is considered too disturbing. God’s redemptive presence in truth and holiness are found only on His terms, not ours—His truth and holiness are not accessible through the mindset of a consumer. But why? We must have God transcendent in holiness, or we simply do not know Him!ˣⁱ Simply put: self as the arbiter of truth is appalled by the great things of God—the all-consuming significance of God becomes dislocated from life. God’s moral “otherness” is converted into relatedness. In the transition from transcendence to immanence, God becomes a convenient means to satisfy self, and self’s longings and aspirations. And, what is the consequence? God’s incomprehensible “otherness” is increasingly lost in compromised Evangelicalism.ˣⁱⁱ
To be Christ-centered is to be God-centered
The only way to be God-centered is to be Christ-centered. The glorified Christ of eschatology who returns as Lord of history to judge the earth and consummate all things is assiduously avoided by a church culture that reveres autonomous choice (Heb 9:26-28). Disinterest in God’s holiness always results in a lack of interest in the pursuit of godliness and little interest in the reception of holiness from God.ˣⁱⁱⁱ There must be an echo of holiness in those who approach God, without which there is little evidence of personal salvation (1 Jn 3:6). That echo manifests itself in separation from sin and in consecration unto God. God’s holiness is intrusive to the inner man. To approach God’s holiness is to have the life of the inner man invaded by light that exposes everything. What a source of discomfort and trauma! But, by way of contrast, the most common experience in Evangelicalism is to hear perky homilies which insulate the hearer from anything traumatic in regard to the true knowledge of God. The listener is ‘protected from’ coming in contact with that which would ravage his perceived sense of security and importance.
If holiness slips from a central position, then the centrality of Christ is lost. One cannot enter the knowledge of the Holy as a consumer, only as a helpless sinner. Sin, grace, and faith are meaningless apart from the holiness of God. The implications of God’s holiness are increasingly missing in the Church. God’s authority and power are passé. Self is sovereign, authority now is only a private reference, nothing is allowed into the inner man which would dislodge the self.ˣⁱᵛ The church which caters to the self-referential individual is fun and bouncy—she is oblivious to the gaunt figure of death that is stalking a world filled with lovers of self rather than lovers of God (2 Tim 3:2, 4). The indulged Church must be put to death by living out her co-crucifixion with Christ in order to be of any consequence in the world. Only God can incite the heart to ‘rebel’ against the world so as to love the Word of God, to love the truth, and to love the Lord.ˣᵛ Anything less warrants the assessment found in James 4:4, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
The church of cultural accommodation is afraid to ask its attendees for consecration, for death to sin, and for sacrificial service. But, the church which asks most in terms of conformity to Christ will stay closest to the biblical pattern. But, those raised on social media are, for the most part, ignorant of the fact that the believer is strengthened by giving of himself. Only when the lives of believers intersect in sacrificial ways, will the Church develop an internal culture of true community to the glory of Christ. Only then will the reality of God weigh heavily on the Church. The Evangelical Church must reformulate anew what is the chief end of man, the glory, worship, and enjoyment of God. This can only happen if there is complete resolve to the Word of God.ˣᵛⁱ For, the culture of self has deceived us by suggesting that our level of consecration to Christ the Lord ought to be in keeping with our level of comfort. In that view, daily taking up the cross in self-denial will never ‘feel right’ or ‘comfortable’. The true believer’s consecration flows from Christ’s absolute call upon the lives of His disciples (Mt 10:37-39).
Ecclesiology and the gospel
The gospel comes down like a Texas tornado, and by its power redeems sinners and gathers them into local church bodies (P. Zahl). The gospel’s transforming force operates by the power of forgiveness, blood-bought freedom, and Spirit-engendered true community, “creating families of love.” The result is that churches are planted. But that powerful ‘gospel tornado’ when neglected, can lift up and away. Author Paul Zahl warns of a consequence of drifting from the gospel truth that Christ sustains the life of His people—the church is ‘objectified’ (institutionalized). In other words, Zahl is reminding us that the church is a supernatural entity by virtue of organic union with Christ. It is formed, birthed, and sustained by the gospel of Jesus Christ. When that reality is forgotten, men tend to objectify the church; treating it, and managing it like an earthly institution, even redefining its purpose as the perpetuation of itself. But, that is to sever it from its life source, from Christ, its living Head. As a result, argues Zahl, they begin to kill it in the process of objectifying it. Christ owns the church having purchased the church by His blood (Acts 20:28), He possesses the church (1 Cor 6:120), she belongs to Him and not to herself (1 Cor 6:19), He indwells His church as her life force (Jn 14:20), He rules His church by His infallible Word (1 Cor 2:16). But, these all-pervasive Christo-centric spiritual realities are obscured when the values of a corporate, consumer-based ecclesiology are held in high esteem. In the process, Christ’s honor and glory are overshadowed.
“To overestimate church as a value in itself is to objectify the non-objectifiable and thus to possess that which can never be possessed.”ˣᵛⁱⁱ Zahl’s point is deep and profound— he is saying that any movement in the direction of institutionalizing (objectifying) the church will have the effect of hiding and concealing its God-ordained, and God-sustained life and identity in Christ. The author cites the fact that Europe is filled with church buildings which are lifeless monuments to a bygone age. They have become ‘museums’ of marble and stained glass, but in reality they are nothing but ‘grave markers’ recording the memory of where gospel-fed spiritual life once thrived (note the severe warning against ‘drift’ in Hebrews 2:1-4). How bitter is the irony that the relative permanence of innumerable tons of polished marble only served to emphasize the ephemeral nature of an objectified church.ˣᵛⁱⁱⁱ
Charles Hodge offers a related comment: the purity of the Gospel is of extreme importance because it alone is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16-17), and it is solely the true basis of Christian unity. Hodge points out the danger of teaching decisional regeneration (a pervasive error in Evangelicalism today). “No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please. . . As it is a truth both of Scripture and of experience that the un-renewed man can do nothing of himself to secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to a practical conviction of that truth. When thus convicted, and not before, he seeks help from the only source whence it can be obtained.”ˣⁱˣ Paul Washer echoes the disturbing assessment of this problem, “The biblical doctrine of regeneration is completely missing in the church today.” Where are the messages which leave the sinner undone because he possesses a ‘stone heart’ that is dead to God, and that he cannot make himself alive to God? The hunger for numerical growth will always tend to push the church in the direction of ‘easy-believism’—an error which makes salvation the sinner’s prerogative, and the power of God in salvation diminutive, or even unnecessary.
What Hodge and Washer are contributing to our discussion is this: our ecclesiology and our unity (in order to be biblical) depend upon a corporate understanding of the sovereign grace of Christ—of monergistic regeneration—of the effectual call itself (Mt 11:27). The saints are bound together in overflowing gospel gratitude—for God intervened in His sovereign grace in our case—breaking into our ruinous situation of helplessness and rebellion. This is the power of God in the gospel (Titus 3:5-7). For in the good news of the gospel we discover that God comes to the elect monergistically—bringing the divine power necessary to resurrect spiritually dead sinners (Eph 2:4-11). Therefore, the saints, by means of the effectual call, are bound together into a worshipping body by the Spirit of God—this is the gospel reality that holds us together—the ‘call’ of which we are to walk worthy (Eph 4:1). We are in hearty agreement with Hodge that the purity of the gospel is “the true basis of Christian unity.” By denying the necessity of the effectual call, Semi-Pelagian (Arminian) schemes of salvation rob Christ of the glory He is due in calling, saving, keeping, and sanctifying us (1 Cor 1:30). “[Semi-Pelagianism, and decisional regeneration] while not denying the necessity of grace for salvation, maintain that the first steps towards the Christian life are ordinarily taken by the human will and that grace supervened only later.”ˣˣ
Ecclesiology and Christ’s relation to His church
Christ is Redeemer, Owner, Ruler, Sanctifier, and Lover of His church. He whose eyes are a flame of fire walks among the lamp stands of the churches, giving oil, trimming wicks, and in many cases, abandoning some of the lamp stands to die, leaving them in a state of ‘ichabod’ (Heb.-‘the glory has departed’) (Rev 1:10-20). In Revelation chapters one through three, Christ examines the churches, providing very precise commendations and condemnations. In His office of Prophet, He calls the churches to repent of very specific sins (Rev 2-3). Christ is the Chief Shepherd, the True Pastor of every genuine church body. But His absolute living Headship of His blood-bought church is not in the visible ‘DNA’ of most Evangelical churches today! In other words, church leaders conduct the work of the ministry as if Christ were absent, and they are His vicars. This is tragic, and it begs the question, ‘how can we do church in such a way that it manifests Christ as her life, her present Savior, her Lord, and her King?’ Very few churches order their worship services around the glory of Christ. A church pastored by a friend in Orange County, California is a wonderful exception to this sad trend. When I sat in this service, I was moved with awe and adoration as Christ. Our Lord’s accomplishments were central in every part of the service. Instead of the feeling of laid back, social-club casualness, there was a prevailing reverence and aim to exhibit Christ in His preeminence and majesty. Every portion of the morning worship was aimed at His glory. The Christo-centric mindset was grounded in the deliberate communication of the following: Christ is enthroned on the praises of His church. The body of Christ is animated and constrained by His love. Christ directs His church by His Word and His Spirit—by His providence, by God-ordained circumstances, and by gifted men. The ordinances of the church are intended to communicate our corporate life in the Son by virtue of our union with Him. We are built up and edified by means of the corporate enjoyment of Christ. Progress toward spiritual maturity is indispensably a function of attaining to “the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). The point is that none of these Christ-centered attitudes emerged as a matter of coincidence, or due to a seasonal theme that showed up on a calendar. No, this local body gathered and worshipped with the express purpose of seeing Christ exalted, and with the intent of drawing its spiritual life and breath from Him.
Churches that order their services around the glory of Christ seek to make the offices of Christ as visible as possible in the way they ‘do church’. Since Christ is Prophet, He examines us by His Word (Heb 4:12-13; Rev 1:14-16). All we do is under His watchful omniscient searching gaze. He corrects us, comforts us, and admonishes us by His Word. As Priest, He is our access to God, our status before God, our pardon, sanctification, hope, and cleansing—they come from His ceaseless intercession on our behalf (Rom 8:34). As King, He rules over us, His beloved subjects and the citizens of His Kingdom (1 Tim 1:17; Rev 19:16). He is sovereign King over all, He selects the trials which refine us, discipline us, sanctify us, and subdue our wills to His will (Heb 2:11). He is subjecting us to Himself by trial, discipline, and affliction for our consistent progress in holiness, all for His glory and our eternal good (Heb 12:1-17). Now this begs the question: “Is the way we do church really intended to communicate Christ’s offices and authority, and the church’s relation to His offices and authority?” “Do we do church so as to honor Christ’s authority and place as absolute Lord and life of His church?” We are instantly aware that the answer to this question is “no.” This calls for a second question: “Why don’t we?” “Why are we not committed to exalting the glory of Christ in every part of our Sunday services?” The answer is revealing: it is because we think we can do church without dependence upon Christ and without His glory being central! We have stepped into the ditch Paul Zahl warned of—we have objectified the non-objectifiable—in our hubris and yearning for control, we have attempted to possess that which cannot be possessed. We have patted ourselves on the back as competent ecclesiastical engineers who take great delight in having our managerial skills put on display in our cherished philosophies of ministry.
Martin Luther said it well: the church always tends to deteriorate into a system of honoring men. And why does that take place? The trend throughout church history has been, by ‘sheep consensus’ to crave a strong visible human head to lead them. The answer in part is because men prefer a visible head in which they may take pride, and with whom they may identify—for a visible head requires no vigorous faith to behold (1 Sam 8:4-5ff.; Heb 12:2). In addition, men in their carnal religious instincts tend to be unnerved by, and fear that which they cannot control and influence. It takes faith well-fortified by Scripture to prefer the glory of our unseen Lord Jesus, to the dynamism of a mortal pastor standing before us in the flesh. Do we really want Christ and His offices exalted and made ‘visible’ in our ecclesiology—made manifest in the way we do church? If so, it will cost us the relative comfort of, and preference for, our traditions and religious forms, and visibility of our celebrity pastors.
We will have to review what it means to be a believer priest in the new covenant. It will take a fresh renewing of our minds to be thrilled once again that every true believer is a living stone in the temple God—and that through Christ, God is constructing as an eternal dwelling place for His Spirit—Christ being the Chief Corner Stone (Eph 2:19-22; 1 Pet 2:1-10). And, that as the life source and transforming power of the Body, Christ’s work causes each believer priest (‘each joint and ligament’) to contribute to the body what it needs in order to edify itself and grow to maturity: “. . .holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God” (Col 2:19). Notice that the body receives what it needs as Christ animates, and works through each member, through the contribution of each believer-priest, “. . .but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Eph 4:15-16).
To recover our cognizance of Christ’s glory, we will need to craft our sermons in such a way that they are clearly directed at our saved listeners as being alive in Christ (Hywel Jones). Notes Joel Beeke, people leave the Sunday service excited, fired up, and feeling good, but they have zeal without knowledge. There is no vital connection between truth and love in Christ. Gospel truth has not reached its goal until it produces love.ˣˣⁱ In quoting Puritan William Perkins (1558-1602), Beeke states that “the spiritual knowledge of God consists in an experimental knowledge of Christ’s death and resurrection, an effectual and lively knowledge, working in us new affections and inclinations.”ˣˣⁱⁱ ‘Experimental’ in this context comes from the Latin root, meaning to try, prove, or test. Thus, experimental preaching stresses the need to know the great truths of the Word of God by personal experience, so that these truths transform one’s Christian walk.
In addition to being highly applicatory, experimental preaching must be discriminatory. It is to aim at distinguishing the Christian from the non-Christian so that people can diagnose their own spiritual conditions and needs. The preacher applies biblical truth to help his hearers test whether they belong to Christ and have His Spirit (Rom 8:9; 2 Cor 13:5). In the tradition of reformed preaching, ministers stood by the gates of hell, as it were, to proclaim that those not born again would soon walk through those gates to dwell forever in the abyss unless they repent. Thus, experimental preaching brings Judgment Day near the consciences of men, either to their vindication and joy, or to their guilt and terror.
In stressing the urgent need for experimental preaching, Beeke observes that the Word of God is often preached in a way that cannot transform the listeners because the preacher fails to discriminate and apply. The preaching is reduced to a lecture. By contrast, experimental preaching often grows out of the preacher’s own experience of Christ in the midst of his sorrows and sins. True experimental preaching brings a believer into the realm of vital Christian experience, drawing him away from himself and promoting a love for God and His glory as well as a burning desire to declare that love to those around him. Don’t miss how central Christ is in Reformed experimental preaching, for this kind of preaching brings the entire range of Christian living into connection with the Savior of the world.ˣˣⁱⁱⁱ In so doing, Christ is honored as ‘Source Person,’ as the very life of His people (Col 3:4). Indeed, Beeke’s insights expose where pulpits fall short. Sermons tend to be orthodox, but lack application, or they are directed at the lowest common denominator. Therefore, a transforming vision and awareness of Christ our living Head eludes us— the remarkable truth that we are the very members of His body is overshadowed by endless exposition of principles rather than by the comprehensive ramifications of the believer’s living union with Christ, and the adjoining mandate of abiding in Him.
Major Ian Thomas in his book, The Saving Life of Christ (which means continuous daily sanctification by learning to let Him live through us) provides a wonderful summary phrase dealing with both justification and sanctification is: To be in-Christ, that is redemption; but for Christ to be in-you, that is sanctification! To be in-Christ makes you fit for heaven, but for Christ to be in-you; that makes you fit for earth! To be in-Christ changes your destination, but for Christ to be in-you, that changes your destiny! The one makes heaven your home - the other makes this world His workshop!ˣˣⁱᵛ Rather than dealing with these truths in an occasional, hit and miss, peripheral manner, these spiritual realities of union with Christ, summarized above, must be central—they must be the ‘turning dynamo’ that moves the church community forward to answer her calling, keeping her on mission, and drawing close to her infinite privilege of knowing Christ her Head (Phil 3:7-11). Paul is the apostle of union with Christ. The genuine saints must continually hear about their being in Christ, and what that means in order to live radically identified with Him.
Pastors are too timid when it comes to proclaiming what Christ requires of us as a result of being in Him. If pastors were as bold as they ought to be, then they would frequently preach not only the infinite resources we have in Christ; but also the ‘hard words’ concerning discipleship uttered from the mouth of our Sovereign Savior. “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Mt 10:37-39). A true believer is a Christ learner, a Christ follower. As such, a true disciple’s spiritual health and progress is tied to the consistent display and exhibition of his Lord’s glory, honor, power, love, example, and sufficiency.
If a pastor really ‘speaks for God’ then on his knees he will plead with God that Christ may be more visible, and he himself less visible. He will rely less upon the sway of his personality, and will rely more on exhibiting and displaying the glory of Christ to the affections of his listeners. Nothing less than this is required if a pastor is serious about growing a church that is pleasing to Christ. After all, who is really the final evaluator of a church, men, or the Lord Himself? If we bow to Christ as He rules through the imperial instrument of His Word, then will not have to wait until Judgment Day in order to find out what He thinks of our church—for, by His Word He searches the motives and intents of hearts (Heb 4:12). Therefore, we ought to be asking, “Is our ecclesiology engineered by human wisdom, OR, are we striving for an ecclesiology in which the glory of Christ is central?” “Is that our aim, to pursue a biblical ecclesiology which is true to Christ’s pattern for His church?” The ironic answer in many cases is that Christ is standing outside the doors of many Evangelical churches today. We know that He is knocked at the door of the ‘Laodicean church’. Today He is knocking at the door of the 21ˢᵗ Century Evangelical church. Revelation 3:18-21 tells us precisely how to open the door to Christ. It is by repenting of our proud spirit of independence, pragmatism, and self-sufficiency which imagines that we do not need Christ in all we do, even as we ostensibly do His work—and even as we name His Name (Rev 3:19-22). Yes, to open the door to Him begins with church leaders repenting of the folly of their self-reliance.
Only new covenant worship adequately exalts Christ as Mediator of that covenant. The opposite is spectatorship and consumerism. In religious consumerism, the layman recedes into the background as an observer and consumer. The church service becomes an event to be attended instead of the body of Christ edifying itself under the animating love and authority of Christ her Head (Eph 4:11-16). If the truth be told, many of the mega-church values so rampant in Evangelicalism represent a retrograde slide back into old covenant forms (i.e. O.T. forms of worship). For instance, under the Mosaic covenant, beginning with Solomon, there was a very visible elevated king, a large Levitical choir and orchestra taken from a priestly order, a clerical order separate from the laity, a physical altar or holy place, and a highly embellished lavish temple. In contrasting these ‘beggarly’ old covenant elements to the new covenant, the author of Hebrews says, “We have an altar”—spiritually speaking this ‘altar’ is the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work at Calvary. We meet our Lord at the altar of His cross as expounded in the gospel (Heb 13:10). Christ, the substance of centuries of symbolism is here, all that went before was but shadows and types (Col 2:17). Thus, in the new covenant, each of these old covenant forms (associated with the tabernacle/temple, and a clerical order, and the theocratic kingdom) has been replaced or changed—for every true believer is now alive in Christ and ‘organically joined to Christ’. Sadly, mega-church values of spectatorship, numerical growth, and consumerism tend to drag the ‘altar’ away from the living Christ and His cross, and toward the front of the church where the ‘performance’ is often eloquent, showy, multimedia, and elaborate. Therefore, it is the premise of this article that we ought to do church in such a way that the truth about us being Christ’s members ‘bleeds through in all we do’. For, Christ has inaugurated the new and living way of access for us through the veil which is His flesh—we must do church in a way which communicates that Christ is our covenant Head who entered the heavenly sanctuary with His own blood—who alone joins us together into one body, and who as our High Priest constantly brings us all the way to God (Heb 10:19-25).
Ruthless honesty is needed at this juncture. Our problem says Colin Marshall, is that our churches today have “a heretical ecclesiology—ecclesiology has become the soft underbelly of the church” (the place at which the church is most vulnerable). It is common today for a strong pulpit to be a covering, or disguise for a broken ecclesiology—an excuse to abandon the New Testament functions of the church (i.e. especially The Great Commission: make disciple-making disciples who have been personally taught to obey Christ’s commands). The reality of the new covenant in Christ’s blood must be central instead of marginalized in our ecclesiology. Only then will we do church in such a way that new covenant realities are modeled and communicated and, as a result, Christ’s glory will be central in our focus, and His honor will be the aim of our ecclesiology. The focal point of the Lord’s table ought to be exposited on a regular basis. For, by this ordinance which our Savior commanded, we are brought face to face with the wonder that Christ is our life, our Chief Shepherd, and the life of His blood-bought church every moment. If we are remiss here, we should not wonder why the celebration of the Lord’s Supper has become a mechanical, formal, sanitized ‘add-on’ in our services, and not the metaphor chosen by our Lord to feed our affections for Him.
End Notes:
i David Wells, God in the Wasteland
ii David Porteous, “A Christian View of Postmodernism and it Roots”
iii Wells, p. 29
iv Ibid, pp. p. 38, 42-43
v Ibid, pp. 55-56
vi Ibid, p. 62
vii Ibid, pp. 69-71
viii Ibid, pp. 72-73
ix Ibid, pp. 85-86
x Ibid, pp. 110-111
xi Ibid, pp. 114-117
xii Ibid, pp. 120-122
xiii Ibid, pp. 132-134
xiv Ibid, pp. 142-148
xv Ibid, pp. 224-225
xvi Ibid, pp. 226-227
xvii Paul Zahl, A Short Systematic Theology, p. 88
xviii Ibid, pp. 88-89
xix Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids 1970, Vol. 2, p. 277
xx John Hendryx, “Differences between Semi-Pelagianism and Arminian Beliefs”
xxi Joel Beeke, Reformed Preaching, in the abstract/summary of his work, “Experimental Preaching,” Chapel Library, Pensacola, FL
xxii William Perkins, A Commentary on Galatians, p. 270 in Joel Beeke, Reformed Preaching
xxiii Joel Beeke, in “Experimental Preaching” an abstract of Joel Beeke’s Reformed Preaching , by Chapel Library
xxiv Bob Alderman citing Major W. Ian Thomas in, The Saving Life of Christ, p. 20