The Church of today is primarily committed to a couple of things: growth and self- fulfillment. It seems that everyone is focusing on how to make a church grow and how that growth can make it possible for there to be more and more programs in order to fulfill the heart’s desires of the people. Now, growth is not bad…it is good. Edifying programs are not bad…they are good, but when they become the major focus then something is wrong. We have become sidetracked. We will be looking good but we are in danger of allowing satan to take our focus off the most important thing in order to succeed in a good thing. If one doubts what I have just said, then they need to get more familiar with what is happening to the church of today. If we are to be a New Testament church, then our focus must be what theirs was and it was not the “hollywood” or “Disneyworld” atmosphere of entertainment and self-fulfillment or the “wall street” mentality toward success and growth.
The main focus of the New Testament church was Jesus Christ and today’s church is losing her power because we are not focused on Him as we should be. We, in this modern age, have adopted the mentality that success and growth are our object and that if that happens then we must have been right with God all along.
The basic difference in modern Christianity and Biblical Christianity is that we have our eyes on the benefits of being saved and they had their eyes on a Man…Jesus Christ. Our ultimate focus must be on Jesus and not on a church which, in this modern era, is more of an organization in the eyes of people, than it is the Body of Christ. In witnessing, we must never give the impression we are “selling” a church and its programs but that we are “telling” the good news about Jesus. No program can ever compete with a full commitment to Jesus Christ and His teachings. A church never saved anyone but Jesus has saved millions.
I love this quote from A. W. Tozer: “We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.”
It must be obvious that Jesus has been at work in us before others will be interested in our witness. People of today are interested in what a particular church can do for them or provide for them and their family. They should be more interested in finding out how their problem of eternal life can be solved and that solution lies in Jesus Christ and in no other.
Even our obedience must be focused on Him. How we live in obedience is what we call our lifestyle witness. Most people think that the reason we should be obedient is so that others can see the results of our genuine salvation. While that is a big part of it, the real focus of our obedience should be Jesus. We should be obedient so that the people of the world can see the power of Jesus Christ in our lives. That means that the well-worn phrase…WWJD…takes on meaning if we are committed to Him. We should expand that little phrase from WWJD to WWJT (think) or to WWJL (Who Would Jesus Love). If we saw everything we do in the light of Jesus and not ourselves, then we would approach things differently. I think that WWJD should be rewritten to WWJHMD…”What Would Jesus Have Me Do.” It is easy to recognize what Jesus would do concerning an issue but the real question is …what are YOU going to do? Maybe we need some WWJHMD bracelets. That would really bring it home. He should get the credit for the obedience in our lives. Our obedience should be a result of our devotion to Him and His saving power rather than showing people anything about our “spirituality” and our ability to lead a good life on our on. When we are obedient is should be a testimony pointed toward Jesus rather than showing people how good we are.
One fundamental thing we need in today’s church is a renewed commitment to Jesus Christ. He gets lost in the midst of all our activity. Basically, we are “inoculating” people with Christianity, and being inoculated, they have just enough Christianity to know we are to love people and serve God, but not enough to care about their daily commitment to Christ and the issue of sin in their life.
They have a “light case” of Christianity that will let sin go because their feelings control them and not Jesus Christ. If Jesus controls you, then you cannot give room to sin in your life. A new fundamental Commitment to Christ will solve this issue. The people of the world don’t want to see people who are “inoculated” with “Christianity light.” They want to see people whose inoculation “took”, saved them and produced a genuine Christian who is different from the world.
Yes, our only hope is to understand and return to our Fundamental Commitment to Christ and nothing else.
WFH…9-12-2025
