SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE EARLY CHURCH AND THE CHURCH TODAY

Many of those who profess to be “Christians” today are only really interested in two things, regardless of what they may claim. Those two things are ‘feeling great’ and ‘finding out what God can do for me’. This is a total about-turn when compared to the interests of those in the early church and any of the similarly faithful down the ages. This is indicative of the apostasy in which the world and the visible church are caught up at the present time in the rundown of this evil age to its end. For so often today being a “Christian” is all about ‘ME-ME-ME and my feelings’, though it is usually disguised behind pietistic twaddle and spiritual-sounding clichés.

It is as if being a disciple of Christ who quietly and humbly suffers for the faith in a corrupt world (in which he or she is part of a counter-culture) has been morphed into a page out of the self-help movement’s playbook. Evangelism becomes telling people how they can “choose Christ” and feel great with all their problems over. When a believer goes to church now it is often treated as a kind of therapy-session where one can “get a shot of God” and “be ministered to”, or enter an altered state of consciousness through closing one’s eyes and blissing out on endlessly singing trite choruses (which are all about what God is doing for ME) with one’s arms hypnotically waving around in the air, or have a bunch of demons cast out of you (which is one of the most blasphemous notions that I have ever encountered), or you can catch so-called “holy laughter”, or you can watch the band like it’s a concert, and a whole host of other entertainments. All of those things are reflections of what is in the world rather than what is in the Word; and they are the very antithesis of the way things were in the early church.

In the earliest times of the church, coming to Christ was never about ‘feeling great’ and finding out ‘what God can do for you’. On the contrary, it was about delighting “in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). It was about learning how “to be content regardless of my circumstances”, knowing “how to live humbly…and how to abound” and about being “accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need” and about being able “to do all things through Christ who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13). It was about realising that “our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). It was about knowing that “our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). It was about accepting that “all who desire to live devout lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil men and imposters go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:12-13). It was about being able to count “all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things”, and was about “considering them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him” (Philippians 3:8-9a). It was about “counting it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience” (James 1:2-3), knowing that “the author of their salvation” was made “perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10).

Being a disciple in those times was not about finding out what God can do FOR YOU but discovering with joy how you can be a servant for God — how you can best SERVE HIM. You would take it for granted that He would do right by you so long as you were a faithful servant. But that might involve Him placing you in difficult and dangerous situations. He might even put you in a situation in which you would be killed. He might allow you to be afflicted by a terrible disease for the purposes of your growth in grace and knowledge. But you would accept that because you trust God entirely and you know that life here in this mortal world is short and that you have to get out of here somehow! You would not, as a result of that affliction or potential martyrdom, imagine that God had abandoned you or that you lacked faith or that you were a failure. You would instead learn to be an overcomer who says:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered’. No, in all these things we prevail mightily through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:35-37).

That kind of faith is very different from so much of what passes itself off as “Christianity” today. Disciples of Christ “feel great” not through what happens to them in their lives or what they experience but because whatever happens to them they know that Christ is in control and they are serving Him. They walk by inner faith and not by what they experience in the material world. They do not seek out ‘good’ experiences to bolster their faith as that is utterly superfluous to their needs and is more the kind of activity in which the faithless indulge. They know that it is not all about what God can do for them but about what they can do to be humble servants of God. “Here I am, Lord. Send me”.

So please remember that church gatherings are not therapy-sessions to bolster your faith by making you feel good but they are places where you can pay homage to your Creator and Redeemer and maybe get your next orders of intrepid mission. Christ and the Holy Spirit are not genies-in-a-bottle whose role it is to make you feel good when you rub it.That is more akin to occultism than discipleship to Christ. We have now reached a point in the developing apostasy when experience-based religion has become more pervasive than faith-based spirituality. So instead of trying to find out how to ‘feel great’ all the time or work out ‘what God can do for you’, try delighting “in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties” and “counting it all joy when you fall into various trials”, while humbly asking God if there is any way that you can serve Him.

Joy in the Christian life is not about being happy-clappy and feeling great all the time but about knowing that God through His Christ has overcome the world. As He said to His disciples, “In the world you will have affliction. But be emboldened with fearless courage; I have overcome the world!” (John 16:33). There. It could not be clearer. If you are a faithful disciple who does not hide your light under a basket or under your bed you will have affliction in this world. That is inevitable. But your way of dealing with that is not some spurious euphoria but rather to be emboldened with fearless courage. That is the literal meaning of the Greek in John 16:33. Your inner joy — regardless of your external circumstances — comes from knowing that Christ has already overcome the satanic world-system through what He accomplished on the cross and through His subsequent resurrection and ascension to heaven (though it will not be wholly ratified visibly until His return). Your personal feelings are dependent on that accomplishment alone and not on your experiences. The sooner one realises that truth deep in one’s heart, the more genuinely content one will be.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]