\u201cI have my truth!\u201d<\/p>\n
Who hasn\u2019t heard that statement over and over? When someone tells me, \u201cI have my truth, you have yours,\u201d I want to ask, \u201cIs that a true statement?\u201d Is truth a philosophy, or is truth a person? The bottom line is, what have the \u201cmy truth\u201d people done with the Son of God who said, \u201cI am the way and the truth and the life\u201d (John 14:6)?<\/p>\n
I keep running into these \u201cmy truth\u201d people. They are also the people who say, \u201cI\u2019m religious, but I don\u2019t attend church.\u201d When I am told, \u201cI worship God my way, you worship God yours,\u201d I am likely to reply, \u201cLet\u2019s pray and tell God what you just said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there is the statement \u201cI believe in a higher power, but I\u2019m not religious.\u201d To that I will usually reply, \u201cI\u2019m not religious either. Religion is humanity\u2019s attempt to reach up to God. Christian faith is about my \u2018yes\u2019 to the One who came down from the Father to redeem us.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then there is the person who tells me, \u201cI can pray to God anytime; I don\u2019t need to go to a church to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I reply, \u201cWhat is the church? Church is not simply a building on the corner. Church is the body of Christ. If I want to be free of the church, I am saying that I want to be free of His body. And if I am free of the body, what then? If the hand is cut free of the body, what happens to the hand?\u201d<\/p>\n
The church is one body in Christ. No matter where believers gather in the world, they are together as one. That\u2019s what we read in Romans 12:5: \u201cso in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.\u201d When I declare my independence from the local church, I have declared my independence from the universal church, because we are told, \u201cFor where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them\u201d (Matthew 18:20).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Recently a woman told me, \u201cI have my church among online friends.\u201d What she is saying is that she is part of a body of scattered parts. In which of those parts does God choose to dwell? Or, put another way, we are told, \u201cFor we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d (1\u202fCorinthians 12:13). Which of the scattered parts is the part that is baptized?<\/p>\n
What is the church? We are told what it is: It is the company of redeemed people. Jesus is the head of that body, held together by Him (Ephesians 4:16). We don\u2019t hold His body together; He does. And in this body the Holy Spirit dwells (Romans 8:9). We are going to have a difficult time asking the Holy Spirit to dwell in fractured and fragmented pieces of the body scattered here and there. First Corinthians 12:25 tells us that there should be no division in the body.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Recently I learned about a young millennial couple who have rediscovered the church. They found it to be a caring body, one for the other. They were drawn to a people who wanted to grow in their faith. Prior to that, they only occasionally attended a church service.<\/p>\n
Now they have discovered where the Spirit of Christ dwells, and they are eager for more of what the Spirit offers them. They are finding it not in independence but in community \u2014 exactly as God designed the church and its members to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI have my truth!\u201d Who hasn\u2019t heard that statement over and over? When someone tells me, \u201cI have my truth, you have yours,\u201d I want to ask, \u201cIs that a true statement?\u201d Is truth a philosophy, or is truth a person? The bottom line is, what have the \u201cmy truth\u201d people done with the Son […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":4114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n