How do we as Christians validate our existence? What do we tell the people of the world when they ask about the mission of the church an what it exists for? Are we a social institution which is suppose to meet the social needs of society? Are we a benevolent institution which is suppose to make provision for the people of the world? Are we suppose to take on the vast array of needs that the people of the world have an be expected to solve them? Are we to be a resource for those with emotional, psychological and physical needs? To some degree the people of the world think the Church should, in some way meet all those needs. They reason that if the church is the spiritual body of Christ and He is the Head, then there should be nothing which the church should not do.
Certainly, we, as Christians, strive to meet a lot of the needs we have mentioned, but there is one need which, if attended to, would solve the others. We must be the instrument by which the Lord saves people. Christians must make a soul saving commitment before making any other kind. The church should attend to first business first and then branch out into other areas. If people are saved, their social life will be revolutionized. Their emotional and psychological needs will find answers and in the right place. All of the bothersome questions and situations in life are suddenly viewed from a different perspective and no longer seem as destructive as they once did.
But, Christians today are trying to tend to everything EXCEPT the one thing that the Lord told us to be doing. Our validation lies in the fact that we individually and corporately, SAVE SOULS. I think that we need to make a new commitment to witnessing to people and leading them to commit their lives to the Lord. I also think that we should not let anything else come in and draw our attention away from what the Lord told us to do.
An environment has been created in which the human heart feels comfortable in being desperately wicked. We have a society which desires to operate in an atmosphere of no restraints and that kind of environment causes the desperately wicked heart to flourish in its wickedness. And while scripture tells us that things are going to get worse and worse until Christ comes back, it also tells us that souls can be and will be saved out of the morass of wickedness in which we live. THAT IS OUR TASK….TO SAVE THE LOST. We have no other greater task.
It’s easy for the focus of a Christian to be shifted to a myriad of other endeavors and for those endeavors to be interpreted as the necessary things that God wants the Church to do. In fact, satan will make almost any endeavor to seem that it is necessary and that if we don’t do those things, we are falling down on our calling.
He knows that if he can get the Lord’s people to shift their focus that he can stymie our efforts and make us look like a social organization instead of the spiritual Body of Christ. I am not saying that the Lord’s people cannot have fun and become involved in some “good” things but I am saying that the “good” things should not take the place of the “BEST” things which are to win the lost, baptize them and teach the saved the things of God. Matthew 28:19-20 gives us the ”recipe” for what is defined as our work for Him.
The church was never meant to solve all of the problems of society but satan makes us feel that we are failures if we don’t do just that. We, the church, must make sure that we are not deterred from what God has for us to do. Preaching the Word, winning the lost, instructing the Saints and baptizing them is our primary task. Let’s not be fooled nor deterred from that task. It is our Reason for Existing.
