What has become of it?
If you wonder how you as a Christian should now serve God together with other believers, then the answers you will encounter are quite diverse, to say the least. Every church, denomination or movement has its own views about it, whether or not laid down in regulations or faith documents.
Much of it cannot be found in the Bible, but has become tradition. It also determines at some point how we will read the Bible. At a certain point, opinions can no longer be discussed and the 'system' built up in this way keeps us captive. It seems that we have all made human structures, all houses that we think are part of the Church of Christ. We call them 'affiliates'.
But you don't make such a statement with dry eyes; it's awful what we've made of it. In any case, it is close to my heart when I see what has become of the Church of the Lord Jesus. Did He really mean it that way? I don't believe any of it.
A quest with exciting questions
That is why I still want to try to take you along in the search for what the Lord Jesus had in mind when He said to Peter “(…) on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
We then have to talk about principles that the Lord Jesus intended for His entire Church and that we should find in the local church if all is well.
Under the head "A foolish church' you will find the things that I believe are core characteristics of the Christian congregation. As far as I am concerned, this is also the core of what I have called the “Blueprint of the Church” here on this page.
There are of course still plenty of questions about this core that we will have to address. For this we take a number of parts from the letters of the apostles in order to discover important matters such as:
- who actually belongs to the municipality and who does not
- who determines how things go in the congregation (authority)
- what role does God's Word play in the church
- what does the Holy Spirit do in the church
- and maybe even more
In this quest it is about things that we often assume to be true, but of which the question is whether the Bible calls and means these things that way.
In this way we hope to find the 'blueprint' that the Lord Jesus and the apostles 'left behind' in Scripture. And it's completely different from what we've made of it!
Incidentally, the end result will not be a bunch of paragraphs of articles. It is not some sort of by-laws for the municipality. They are indications from Scripture that every Christian congregation that wants to act according to its Lord and His Word will have to examine and digest. Everyone has to master these things so that you can persevere in them personally and together, because you know why and for Whom you are doing it.
It also means that as far as the Church is concerned, we will never be here complete—or if you prefer, perfect. By the way, if you come across important things that aren't covered here, let them know!
The sequel
We assume that you have understood what it says above about serving the true God, both the “Personal Christian Life”, as well the common.
Then comes next
- Lessons from the First Letter to Corinth
- Lessons from the Letter to Hebrews
- Lessons from the Epistles of John.
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