Monday, January 25, 2016

Is This The Church?

The opposition was fierce. Jesus was healing people and doing so on the Sabbath, calling Himself the Son and claiming authority that the elders among the Jews doubted He had. He stood firm in His resolve and taught them the truth. Truth can be a relief or seem like utter falsehood if it grates against the way one lives. John 5 is replete with this.

Two verses stand out here to me. John 5:39,40.

  39 You study[c] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

This seems to be life in the church today. We cling to our Bibles, we are rule keepers, we condemn others among us when they step outside of these bounds and we try to control each other.

Wouldn't it make more sense if we all just submitted to Jesus? He is the source of life for us; the source of Scripture. He is our Lord and our God. So often we use Scripture like a hammer to pound out resistance to agendas. The only agenda we should be interested in is Christ's. If we each work on our own submission issues, everything should work itself out. 

I am not saying we should ignore our Bibles. I am saying we need to put them in context. We have to love Jesus and each other then proceed from there. Scripture is not a weapon to bend people to our wills. It's not even a tool for building a church in our own image. It is the living Word of God to show us the way back to Him and nothing else.