Chapter 4
A Trinity of Perils
Let’s turn our attention to some New Testament churches and discover how they “fell” from the blessing of God because they ignored their privileges.
THE GALATIAN CHURCHES: FALLING FROM GRACE (GALATIANS 5:4)
The Judaizers (legalistic teachers) who hounded Paul had invaded the churches he founded in Galatia and had begun to lead the new believers astray. The Christians were moving away from the gospel as they tried to mix God’s grace through Jesus Christ with the law of Moses, and this was causing all kinds of problems. “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (GALATIANS 5:4). These Gentile believers had never worn the yoke of the Jewish law, yet here they were, stepping out of Christian freedom into legalistic slavery (v.1). They had all the wealth of Christ at their disposal and were now abandoning it to go into debt to the law of Moses (vv.2–6). They had been “running a good race” but were now going in the wrong direction (vv.7–12).
The Christian life must be a balanced life. We aren’t saved by keeping the law, but neither are we lawless in the way we live. We aren’t saved by good works, but our salvation leads to good works that are evidence that we know Jesus.
It’s a dangerous thing to get out of balance. Some churches take grace to an extreme and turn liberty into license. “They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (JUDE 4). “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him” (TITUS 1:16).
The Galatian churches went to the other extreme: They so emphasized law that they forgot the grace of God. They had fallen out of the sphere of grace and were in bondage to a religious system that made them slaves. Paul pointed out that under the law of Moses the people were treated like children. They were under rules and regulations and subjected to “babysitters” who enforced those rules.
But in Jesus Christ, we have an adult standing with God and the privilege of drawing upon His wealth (GALATIANS 4:1–7). The Spirit lives within us and gives us the direction and dynamic we need to live for Christ. It’s a basic theological truth that law brings out the worst in us while grace brings out the best in us. The old nature knows no law, but the new nature needs no law. The motivation for obedience comes from God, who “has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (ROMANS 5:5). When churches fall from grace, the pulpit becomes harsh and demanding, and those who preach threaten instead of “speaking the truth in love” (EPHESIANS 4:15). When we magnify the law, we demand the impossible, because “the law made nothing perfect” (HEBREWS 7:19).
When we magnify the grace of Jesus Christ, we encourage holy living, for it’s only by grace that we serve Jesus Christ. “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” wrote Paul (1 CORINTHIANS 15:10), and that’s the testimony of every true Christian who walks in the Spirit. God’s holy law reveals His righteousness and His will for us, and God’s wonderful grace provides what we need to obey Him and live a holy life.
THE EPHESIAN CHURCH: FALLING FROM LOVE (REVELATION 2:1–7)
If we had visited the congregation at Ephesus and worshiped with them, we would have admired everything they were doing. The members were hard workers and were always busy. They didn’t tolerate false doctrine, and when they detected heretics, they dealt with them. In spite of opposition and difficulties, they kept right on going and never considered quitting. In every way, the church at Ephesus appeared to be a successful church. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 SAMUEL 16:7), and when the Lord looked at the hearts of the Ephesian believers, He saw that they were not filled with God’s love. The verdict was, “You have forsaken your first love” (REVELATION 2:4), and the word translated forsaken also means “to neglect” and even “to divorce.” The honeymoon was over (JEREMIAH 2:1–2), and the Ephesians’ love for Christ and for one another had cooled.
The Lord isn’t necessarily pleased with us just because we are busy serving in the church, and we can’t evaluate a congregation just by its outward activities. If our service and sacrifices are not motivated by love, the Lord can’t accept and bless them. “Remember the height from which you have fallen!” the Lord warned them (REVELATION 2:5).
The church members thought they were “on top of everything,” but they were wrong. Paul had founded the church and taught them the Word, and Timothy had taken over when Paul left. Tradition tells us that the apostle John also ministered in Ephesus. The church had received three inspired letters from Paul— Ephesians, 1 Timothy, and 2 Timothy—and Paul had privately exhorted the Ephesian elders (ACTS 20:13–38). What a privileged church it was! In the Ephesian epistle, Paul had pointed out the heights of the Christian life that we enjoy as we sit enthroned with Christ in the heavenly places, but now the Ephesians had fallen from those heights because their love for Christ had grown cold. Great privileges are no guarantee of great devotion to Jesus.
When the Lord Jesus restored Peter to discipleship (JOHN 21), He didn’t ask about his theology or his ministry methods. Three times Jesus asked, “Do you love Me?” (vv.15– 17). If the servant doesn’t love the Master, then the service will not please the Master or receive His blessing and reward. “For Christ’s love compels us,” wrote Paul (2 CORINTHIANS 5:14), and that’s the only motivation the Lord will accept. The Lord looks on the heart and wants to see it filled with love, “honeymoon love,” that grows deeper and deeper as the years go by. In his Ephesian epistle, Paul urged the believers to do “the will of God from your heart” (6:6).
The prophet Jonah finally obeyed God and preached God’s message in Nineveh, but he didn’t do it from his heart. In fact, he hated the people he preached to and was angry with the Lord for showing them compassion (JONAH 4).
It’s a wonderful thing for a local church family and staff to be busy for the Lord, but no amount of religious activity can substitute for our love for Jesus Christ.
Martha was busy serving Jesus, but it was Mary whom Jesus commended, because she took time to show her love for Him by listening to His words (LUKE 10:38– 42).
Jesus still asks us as He asked Peter, “Do you love Me?”
THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH: FALLING FROM THE SPIRIT’S FELLOWSHIP
Whenever one of my students said, “We need to be more like the churches in the New Testament,” I would ask, “Which one would you want to be like?” The class would then discuss some of the problems in these churches. The believers in Rome were divided over diets and holy days, and the members of the churches in Galatia were “biting and devouring each other” (GALATIANS 5:15). Two women in Philippi disagreed over something and created a serious problem (PHILIPPIANS 4:2–3). The Colossian church was mixed up in Jewish legalism and Oriental mysticism and asceticism, and some of the saints in Thessalonica had quit their jobs and expected the church to care for them as they eagerly awaited the Lord’s return. And then there was Corinth. The congregation was split four ways (1 CORINTHIANS 1:11–12), and some of the believers were using their spiritual gifts to show off instead of to serve the church. Rivalry and confusion characterized their worship services, and people even got drunk at the church’s “love feasts.” The members were suing one another in the public courts, and if that weren’t enough, one church member was openly committing fornication with his stepmother— and some believers were proud that their church leaders were “so loving and tolerant.”
What was the cause of such shameful behavior on the part of these professed believers in Jesus Christ? Paul pointed out the cause in the first two chapters of his first letter: They were depending on “the wisdom of the world” and not on the wisdom that comes from God as the Spirit teaches the Word. When you start thinking like the world, you soon start living like the world—a tragedy that is occurring in churches today. Instead of building the ministry on the gold, silver, and costly stones found in God’s Word (PROVERBS 2:1–6; 3:13–18; 8:10–11,17–21), the Corinthians were using wood, hay, or straw, cheap materials that could easily be found anywhere. If you want gold, silver, and costly stones—the enduring wealth of God’s wisdom— you have to dig for them. God help those church leaders who are too lazy to seek the Lord and dig into His Word but settle for whatever they can “pick up” out in the world! The Corinthians were not rightly related to the Holy Spirit; they were not making “every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (EPHESIANS 4:3). Paul called them “worldly— mere infants in Christ” (1 CORINTHIANS 3:1–3). The Greek word translated worldly in the NIV means “made of flesh.” (The KJV uses the word carnal.) The Christians in Corinth were living by the standards and appetites of the old life and were not walking in the Spirit. They were feeding on the world’s trash and not growing in the Lord. They needed to obey the Holy Spirit, who is referred to more than 50 times in the two Corinthian letters. The Corinthian Christians were “enriched in every way” in the gifts of the Spirit (1 CORINTHIANS 1:5), but they were sadly deficient in demonstrating the graces of the Spirit, such as love and peace and self–control. They simply were not spiritual Christians. They lived to please their own appetites, and they lived just like the lost people in the world. When their church leaders came together, they didn’t search the Scriptures or pray for spiritual wisdom. Instead, they shared the cheap ideas they borrowed from the world and made decisions that catered to satisfying the old sinful nature. Their worship services didn’t glorify the Lord because there was no evidence that the Spirit was at work.
I once heard A. W. Tozer say, “If God were to take the Holy Spirit out of this world, most of what the church is doing would go right on and nobody would know the difference.” What an indictment—yet I believe it is true. Unwilling to pay the price to be maturing spiritual believers, many church members depend on worldly wisdom and fleshly energy to attempt to accomplish the work of the Lord, and it will not work.
Scottish author George MacDonald wrote, “In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably or succeed more miserably.” A church that is successful in the eyes of men may be a failure in the eyes of God. If you doubt that, read Revelation 2–3.
If we expect the Holy Spirit to work in and through our churches, we must seek above all else to glorify Jesus Christ, for that is one reason the Spirit was sent (JOHN 16:14). The Corinthians argued over who was the greatest—Paul, Peter, or Apollos—and a “superspiritual” group rejected all human leadership and claimed to follow only Christ. They probably caused more trouble than the other three groups combined!
Thomas Merton wrote, “The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attraction of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow … . Such a man can wreck a whole city … or even a nation” (New Seeds of Contemplation, 1961, pp.194–95). For the word contemplative in Merton’s quote, substitute the word pastor, board chairman, missionary, committee member, or para–church executive, and it still applies. No matter how large or affluent a ministry may be, if the leaders are not searching the Scriptures for God’s wisdom, praying for God’s guidance and power, and seeking to glorify God’s Son, their work is in vain, for the Spirit is not in control. At the judgment seat of Christ, the wood, hay, and straw will only burn up. St. Patrick said, “I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity.” It is a strong name, and it is a name we can trust.
John Newton wrote: May the grace of Christ our Savior, And the Father’s boundless love, With the Holy Spirit’s favor, Rest upon us from above. Thus may we abide in union With each other and the Lord, And possess, in sweet communion, Joys which earth cannot afford.
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