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ATTENDING THE CORRECT CHURCH
By
Lawrence Walkup
Almost all man-made churches that evoke the name of Jesus Christ are at best religious, and are at worse cults. In the community in which I live, I can make the rounds of all the local churches, and within five minutes of sitting in the pew, I can determine if the church is teaching under the Old Covenant or teaching under the New Covenant. Within five minutes I can determine if it is teaching the grace of God or the law of God. And I’m talking about the non-denominational churches. The denominational churches are teaching the tradition of their denomination. The real church is not a building. It is people. All of those who are born again that live all over the world make up the true church. That is what will be raptured off the earth. All the rest of those who call themselves God fearing, but do not evoke the name of Jesus Christ, are what they are according to Acts 4:12…still lost and of the world.
When I use the term religious, I mean that thinking in a man’s mind in which he believes his self-effort will put him in right standing with God. At an early age starting with our parents and then from our teachers, we immediately acquire a performance oriented mindset. Our parents reward us for being good children and our teachers reward us with good grades. This thinking that is embedded in our minds is what makes us so susceptible to being religious. Give me something to strive at that I will do better than my competition. Give me a list of ten laws to keep and see if I do not do it better than anyone else. And best of all, I will please God and be in right standing with him. This is what is going on in most of our churches. The performance oriented mindset from the world is simply carried over into our Christianity. And what always comes with a performance oriented mindset is the expectation of receiving something in return (Rom.4:4).
This is what is going on in our churches with people who genuinely became born again at the beginning, but because of erroneous teaching, were then taught to be law keepers…and to be law keepers even in the most subtle of ways. It’s funny in our churches how we say we believe in the grace of God, and yet we do not teach the grace of God. And if we are not teaching the grace of God, then by default we are teaching the law of God. It’s either one or the other (Rom. 11:6) (Gal. 5:4). This is exactly why the Apostle Paul had to write the book Galatians. The state of the church today is that it still has not gotten the message that the book of Galatians is about them. Because people’s needs are not being met in this type of environment is why churches split and why cults are formed.
In his quest to discover the truth, that God wants us to discover, not only does man have to overcome his performance oriented mindset, but he also has to overcome his tendency to be so easily influenced by the group. This is one reason why Jesus referred to us as sheep. We like sheep are influenced by what the group does. Whatever the group does, we will follow along in order to be accepted and feel secure. When all are in agreement, there is security and acceptance in that. The Nazis could do such evil because they were all in agreement. Jim Jones could convince his group to kill themselves because the peer pressure was just too strong. Two extreme examples of what groups are capable of.
Because all human beings are born with a sinful nature, that means they are also born with a fearful nature (Gen. 3:10) (Rom. 8:15). They have a fearful nature because their sin separates them from their creator who was always meant to indwell them. Remember, Jesus came to restore back to man…the life of God…that was lost in Adam (John 10:10) (Rom. 5:12). If we come into this world not functioning as God had originally intended, then how dysfunctional must we be? This explains at the very least our insecurity and our need for acceptance. God, by his Spirit, is the only one who can meet this need through his unconditional love. The greatest need that mankind has, is to be loved and accepted unconditionally. Apart from God, whatever security and acceptance we think we are getting, is nothing more than a pseudo security and acceptance because it is based on conditions.
As feeble and sin immersed human beings in general, we have a lot to overcome. What is it that will set us free from all of this? We know the answer to that. The truth will set us free (John 8:32). The truth is the word of God (John 17:17). The truth stated in the word of God says the following: God because of his grace, initiates and reaches down to man for the purpose of changing his thinking (Rom.12:2), in order to get him to believe, that it is only through the exercising of faith in Jesus Christ, and because of his effort (not man’s), that a man is in right standing with God.
In looking for a church that is the correct church look for a church that has a humble leadership. Humility is a word that has been lost in our churches. Humility is of the utmost importance. Moses is the one that God had chosen to lead over half of a million Jews out of Egypt. Why Moses? Because the word of God says of Moses in Num. 12:3: ‘Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.’ The humble man will understand the grace of God…and because he understands it, he can teach it. When the Bible says that ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’ (1 Pet. 5:5), that means not only does the humble man receive the grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ, but he also receives the understanding of the grace of God. The proud man does not receive the grace of God because he is not able to receive it. God opposes the proud man, because in reality, the proud man opposes God.
Look for a church that teaches the New Covenant and not the Old Covenant (Heb. 8:13). The New Covenant states: ‘I will put My laws upon their heart, And on their mind I will write them, And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’ (Heb. 10: 16-17). Under the New Covenant God is not dealing with us on the issue of our sins anymore. He is dealing with us on the issue of life and the renewing of our minds. If that is not good news, then I don’t know what good news is! The New Covenant stated here in Hebrews is actually a quote from the book of Jeremiah. The Prophet Jeremiah prophesied of the New Covenant that would be coming in the future. Jer. 31:33-34 says: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” However, when Jeremiah states the New Covenant, he uses the word law instead of the word laws, which is how it is stated in Hebrews. Before Jesus died (when the New Covenant went into effect…Heb. 9:16) we were still under the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant is the law of God…the Commandments. Now under the New Covenant we are under the laws of Christ. And the laws of Christ are the two commands of Christ (not the Commandments). The two commands of Christ state: ‘to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us’ (1 John 3:23).
This is not unlike what Jesus said in Matt. 22:37-40: ( when he was still alive teaching under the Old Covenant, but at the same time proclaiming what would be coming after his death…the law of love)…” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” To believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ as stated in 1 John 3, is the same thing as to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind as stated in Matt. 22. Our love for God is our faith in God or our belief in God (1 John 5:3). Look at what it says at the end of that verse: ‘And his commands are not burdensome.’ What is it that is burdensome? The Law is. And the reason why it is burdensome is because we can’t keep it.
When the New Covenant is taught, it needs to be taught in distinction from the Old. This way we come to understand the New Covenant better. What was the true purpose of the Law? Who was it written to? When did it come to an end? Was it at the birth of Jesus or at his death? And if it was at his death then that means Jesus was under the Old Covenant when he was alive. What is the significance of that? The tradition of the church has always been to try to mix the two covenants together. No wonder people have a hard time understanding the grace of God. This is what happens when you don’t understand the book of Hebrews when it says the Old Covenant is obsolete and aging and will soon disappear. That sounds pretty straight forward to me. In Matt. 9:17, Jesus gives a parable about not putting new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved. This is a parable about not mixing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant because if you do, both are ruined.
Only two things to remember when trying to find the correct church to attend: the grace of God and the New Covenant. The New Covenant is the grace of God; and the grace of God is the New Covenant. If these two things are not being taught overtly (not subtly, not suggested, not implied) then you are in a church that is under the law and still under the Old Covenant. The only reason why God would want you to remain in this environment is so he can use you as an instrument to help people discover the truth.
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