There’s an old story about a parishioner who met their pastor at the door of the church after a particularly strong sermon he had just preached on grace. The parishioner’s comment was telling: “So when are you going to preach the other side?”
The story doesn’t tell how the pastor reacted to that question, but it might be that his reaction was similar to mine when an elder of my church met me at the door during a series of sermons I’d been preaching directly out of the Gospels about Jesus, His life, His ministry, and His love for us. The elder asked: “Can’t you preach about something other than Jesus for a while?”
I was still pretty young in ministry at the time, and I had no idea that a member, an elder in our church, a faithful one who genuinely loved the church and its members, could ever ask me something like that. Made me wonder, “then what is the basis of your faith, if not Jesus? If it is truly Him, wouldn’t you want to hear everything about Him that can be learned?”
The Pharisee and rabbinic orders of New Testament times were experts in the practice of religion. Jesus noted that many times in the Gospels, and not a single time was it meant as a compliment. It’s a curious fact that the only group that received stern warnings and words from Jesus were from this class—the professionally religious of His day. They had the “form of godliness, but not its power.” And how could that be?
That can only come from one thing: when the things and trappings of religion become more important than the person, life, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When they do, inevitably the person who is consumed by the trappings begins to judge both themselves and others by what is most important to them. It becomes their life’s passion to master the trappings. The snare here is that most of the trappings are good things. Sometimes even important things. But they are still trappings. They are not the center.
All other religions are based on the human journey toward God. Only Christianity is about God’s search for us. That started in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden when He came looking for Adam and Eve only to find them hiding. Sin caused such irreparable separation that we’d never know how to reach God were it not for Jesus. He found us so that we may find Him. He chose us so that we may choose Him.
The trappings of religion are a mere substitute for a personal relationship with Jesus. Humans can easily fall into the trap of thinking that once we’ve mastered the trappings, we think we’ve mastered religion and therefore, salvation. To simply believe seems just too simple.
I leave you with a test to see where your focus is. I quoted these sentences from Steps to Christ during my worship at our constituency session last August. Perhaps you can use them as your own gauge to see if you are focused on a Person or something else:
“Who has the heart? With whom are our thoughts? Of whom do we love to converse? Who has our warmest affections and our best energies? If we are Christ’s, our thoughts are with Him, and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things.” (p. 58).
Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]