I ran across this question that was posted on Yahoo! Answers this week:
How do you raise a Christian without going to church? My wife and I are Christian and we have a 10 month old daughter. I want her to have Christian beliefs and thoughts but I hate organized religion. I pray on my own. I thank GOD when good things happen and I pray over difficult things. I got my background from church obviously but I hate going and always have. I have always seen going to church as a waste of my day. I don’t need to sing and all that stuff to believe in Jesus. If it was just the sermon I could deal. Well we take our daughter to church like twice a month. I work 6 days a week and if I go to church the day is shot I can’t work in the yard or just relax on my only day off. So my question is can I give my child a good Christian background from home?
Apparently the person who posted that question isn’t the only one with that opinion of the church. A 2005 survey by the Barna Research Group reported that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians had not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter. (Barna defines "born-again" as those who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today, and believe they will "go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior.") Nearly all these born-again Christians say their spiritual life is very important, but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with church.
Another study completed by the Lifeway Research in late 2006 gives some good insight into why these people are leaving the church. The top four reasons these formerly churched people gave for leaving the church were:
• Changes in life situation (moving, work, divorce ) 59%
• Became disenchanted with the pastor/church – 37%
• Church not fulfilling needs/reasons for regular attendance – 26%
• Change in beliefs/interests/attitudes toward church – 22%
Those studies don’t even address the whole generations of “church shoppers” that frequently move from one church to another in order to find a church that better meets their needs. As part of that same Lifeway study last year, the researchers also surveyed people who had switched from one church to another for reasons other than moving to a new location. The top ten reasons people gave can basically be broken down into three main categories:
• The church wasn’t fulfilling needs
• Disenchantment with the church/pastor
• Too much change
At first glance, all these statistics and numbers may seem to be unrelated, but I think that what Paul writes at the end of Ephesians Chapter 2 shows that all these findings are the consequence of one underlying attitude that has gripped our culture. So let’s read our passage together:
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19-22 (NIV)
There’s a tendency on our part to view our relationship with God as something that just impacts me. And there is no doubt that there is an individual aspect to our faith. Much of what Paul wrote in the first chapter and the first part of the second chapter of Ephesians deals with how God has entered into the lives of individuals in order to draw them into a personal relationship with Him. But even there, Paul has hinted that our Christianity is not just for us. Our faith is intended to be experienced within the body of believers that God has created – the church.
And last week we saw how Jesus has created in Himself something completely new – the church – where all of His followers are joined together regardless of their backgrounds. But Paul doesn’t just stop there. As we continue our journey through Ephesians this morning we see that Paul uses three different pictures to emphasize the fact that my Christianity is a matter of…
LIVING BEYOND MYSELF
1. God has made me part of a new kingdom
…you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people…
Paul is primarily writing to Gentile believers in these verses and here he returns to the thought he first raised in verse 12 when he described how these Gentiles were excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise. But the point he is making here is that it doesn’t really matter because they are now citizens of a new kingdom that is far superior to that of the kingdom of Israel.
Citizenship is a really important thing. That’s real obvious to us who live so close to the border with Mexico and we watch our political officials debate the whole issue of immigration. Regardless of what our individual opinions may be about that topic, one thing is certain. While it’s true that the citizens of Mexico who are in our country, either legally or illegally, do get some benefits of being here, they do not have the full rights and responsibilities of those of us who are citizens of the Untied States.
As citizens of this country, we have some benefits that we can expect to enjoy. We reap the benefits of being protected by our military and law enforcement officials. We have the right to travel wherever we want and to choose where we want to live and work. If we’re charged with a crime, our rights are protected by the Constitution. We get to elect the people we want to govern us.
But we also have some responsibilities. We are required to pay our taxes. Although many choose not to, we have a responsibility to participate in the election process by voting. We have to submit to the laws that govern us.
When we choose to be followers of Jesus Christ, we automatically become citizens of His kingdom. And that citizenship also comes with privileges and responsibilities.
We get the privilege of being part of a body where we can be encouraged and where we can grow in our faith. We’ll talk about that a lot more when we get to Chapter 4. We get the protection of our King – the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the same time, we also have a responsibility to participate in the life of the body and submit to its leadership. We have a responsibility to provide our share of the financial resources that are needed to maintain and advance the kingdom.
God never created Christians to be foreigners and aliens to His kingdom and to the manifestation of that kingdom here on earth – the church. So I can’t understand why any believer would want to be an illegal alien here in this word when they could experience full citizenship in the kingdom of God.
2. God has made me part of a new family
…members of God’s household…
Again, Paul has already made reference to this aspect of our life in the church earlier in His letter. You’ll remember that at the beginning of chapter 1 Paul wrote that when God chose us He also adopted us into His family.
As great as it is to be a citizen in God’s kingdom, it’s even better to be a part of His family. Look at how John described the greatness of being God’s children:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1 (NIV)
I was reflecting this week on all the benefits that I enjoy by being part of a family here on earth.
One of the greatest benefits I experienced growing up was that I had access to my father. For most of the time I was in high school and college, I worked for my dad. And while I was at work, all the other employees had access to him, too. But I always knew that if I had some reason that I needed to talk to my dad, he would drop everything else because I had the kind of access that those who were not part of the family could never have.
My family is also a place where the characteristics of my parents were passed down to me and developed in my life. That includes genetic traits, of course, but perhaps even more importantly it included the kind of character that my parents demonstrated in their lives that I learned from. Things like the value of hard work, sacrificing one’s own needs and desires for the benefit of others in the family, honoring others, forgiveness, and perseverance.
A family is also the place where we experience the deepest intimacy here on this earth. The relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters provide a far greater opportunity for intimacy than any other relationships we have.
Our church family presents those same kinds of benefits when it comes to our relationship with God.
Being part of His family gives us access to the Father. Remember our passage from last week?
For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Ephesians 2:18 (NIV)
Even though every individual believer has access to God, it’s interesting here that Paul writes about our access to God in terms of how that occurs in community with others – “we both” have access.
The church is also the place where my Christian brothers and sisters help me to cultivate the characteristics that my heavenly Father wants to pass down to me and see me develop in my life. God could have chosen to accomplish that purpose in my life apart from other believers, but as we’ll see in even more detail in the coming weeks, God uses our spiritual family, the church, to do that in my life.
And the church is a place where I can develop deep, intimate relationships that far surpass any that I could have outside the church family. Our common bond in Jesus Christ is a far stronger force than anything else that might connect us with others.
God does not create spiritual orphans. It is never His intent that His children would be estranged from His family. So why would any Christian want to try to live out his or her faith apart from the family that God has given to them?
3. God has made me part of a new building
The third picture that Paul uses is the picture of a building. It is a building being built by God and it has three major characteristics:
• Based on God’s Word
…built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets…
In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul, as we might expect, describes Jesus as being the foundation of our faith. So it’s a little surprising when he describes the foundation of the church as being the apostles and prophets. But we need to realize that Paul is making a different point here that he did in his letter to the church in Corinth.
When Paul refers here to apostle and prophets, he is describing those like himself who were the authoritative recipients and proclaimers of God’s revelation in Christ. The apostles is a term that Paul almost always uses to refer to himself and to the eleven that Jesus had appointed to go and be messengers for Him plus Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas. The prophets are undoubtedly New Testament prophets who worked alongside the apostles to proclaim the gospel of Jesus.
The principle that Paul is laying out for us here is that the church needs to be built on the accurate and authoritative proclamation of the gospel of Jesus. For us, that is the Word of God, the Bible, which consists of the writings of the apostles and prophets that have been passed on to us.
• Joined together in Christ
…with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling…
Jesus is described here as the cornerstone. Paul was undoubtedly thinking of the cornerstone which formed the base of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. It was the size of a railroad box car, weighing 570 tons. That cornerstone was the most important stone in the building. It established the point from which the rest of the building would be constructed and in a sense it held the whole building together.
But Jesus is more than just the cornerstone. He is the means by which all of the individual stones are being joined together in this building. Peter also described this process
As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:4, 5 (NIV)
It’s interesting that Peter, just like Paul has done in our passage this morning, uses passive verbs to describe this process. In other words, we can’t make ourselves into a building. It is Jesus who is doing all the work. Peter and Paul also use a present tense verb to describe the process – the NIV very accurately gives the sense that this is a continuing process – “we are being built” into a spiritual temple.
I brought this patio block with me this morning. Now there is really nothing special about this block. By itself, it’s not much to look at. But when I took a whole bunch of these blocks and put them together in my backyard the results are much more impressive. [Show photo of brick patio]. The blocks didn’t put themselves together. Mary and I had to do that. We had to prepare the border and the base and then we had to carefully place the blocks. And in order for many of those blocks to fit properly, we had to cut them or chip off part of the blocks so that they would fit properly.
That’s exactly what Jesus does when He builds His church. He takes a bunch of blocks that aren’t much good on their own and he fits them together as a master builder. And in order to do that, He has to chisel away and cut out those parts of our blocks that would detract from the finished product or that would keep us from fitting in with the other blocks. Although Jesus is concerned with the individual blocks, His overall purpose is to create a building that will bring glory to Himself.
• Indwelled by the Holy Spirit
…in which God lives by his Spirit.
Most of us are probably familiar with this passage that describes how God’s Holy Spirit lives within us:
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16 (NIV)
As we’ve seen previously, the very moment that we become a follower of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us as a guarantee that God will deliver everything He has promised to us. But here at the end of chapter 2 and in 1 Corinthians, Paul has a little different focus.
In this verse from 1 Corinthians, all the words translated “you” are plural. So the Pat Damiani translation of this verse would go something like this:
Don’t y’all know that y’all yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in y’all?
Now look at the word “temple”. Notice anything strange about that word? That’s right, it’s singular. I would have expected it to be plural – y’all are God’s temples. But as usual, Paul didn’t make a mistake here. He’s making the point that there is only one temple that consists of all believers. We’re all joined together into one spiritual temple where God dwells by his Spirit.
God does not create individual Christian “blocks” which are designed to exist on their own. Every follower of Jesus has been designed to be joined together with other believers in this beautiful spiritual temple called the church in which God lives and works.
The underlying issue with all of the people who have either left the church or who are continually hopping form church to church is this – they are looking at the church for what they can get out of it. And when they perceive that the church isn’t meeting their needs, they just drop out.
We all get benefits from being a citizen of our country or being part of our family. I guess there is even a sense in which you could say the individual blocks in a building gain a benefit from being part of the building, although I realize I’m probably stretching a bit there.
At the same time, we also recognize that no country, family or building is ever going to be perfect. But, if we’re rational and sane, we don’t just bail out when problems come. That’s because we have responsibilities to those entities. And even if the problems become pretty severe, we’re better off being part of those groups than trying to survive on our own.
The same thing is true of the church. There is no such thing as a perfect church. As someone once said, “If you ever find a perfect church, don’t join because you’’ ruin it.” But Jesus designed every one of His followers to be part of a local body of believers. I cannot become the person God wants me to become apart from life in the body. But even more important is the idea that my call to be a follower of Jesus Christ is a call to live beyond myself.
In his article titled “Escape from Consumer Church” from November 14, 2004, Bob Hyatt wrote these very direct, yet needed words. I’ll close with them this morning.
If you consider yourself a follower of Christ- you need to know this. The church is not here for you. You are here for the church, your community, and your community, the church is here for the world. Jesus did not die to make you into a sanctified consumer. He died to bring you alive to God and to a desperately needy world.
