What is the "Plan of Salvation?"

I have long realized that a "downstairs church" offers a "what's in it for me?" salvation, focusing on what God will do for ME rather than my dying to self and living in obedience to His plan for my life, directed in all things by Christ. I recently ran across this comment by T. Austin Sparks and wanted to say "Amen!" to what he wrote:

What is the Gospel? The Gospel is Christ crucified, as revealed in the heart. The Gospel is not only attesting objective facts, even the fact of Christ crucified, but what constitutes the Gospel is that, that which was true in the Lord Jesus, has been revealed by God in the heart. We are not constituted Gospel preachers because we have read somewhere that Christ was crucified, raised fromthe dead and ascended, and all those historic facts, but because God has revealed in us, not facts but a Person in relation to the facts, and the facts in relation to the Person. There has come to our hearts by revelation of the Spirit of God Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and that has constituted us preachers; that has constituted the Gospel.

There is no Gospel apart from that.

Now you see how that brings us back to our initial position. It means this, that a struggling to reach, to attain, unto something conceived as Christianity, is a failure to see Christ. Christ has not been seen, He has not been revealed. Immediately the Holy Spirit reveals the Lord Jesus in us, we have come into the place where the work is done, and what we are doing now is to live out from a perfected position, instead of striving to reach a perfected position.

WHOSE CHURCH?

I wish I had a dime for every time I have heard a preacher refer to "my church." This common remark is a dead giveaway about the value system of the man who says that. A man-made church will always be "my" church.

I recall a pastor many years ago who had switched pulpits about every 4 years as he climbed the Baptist ladder to greatness. During a lunch date, he explained he had a full file cabinet of materials he had developed and the first thing he did when going to a new pulpit was to unload his fail-safe "system" to make the church prosper. Of course, to do that his first act was to destroy all vestiges of what the previous pastor had left behind. From record keeping to program structures, he had what "his" church needed.

The systematic preparation of the structures as one pastor sees things causes a lot of shock when he moves on to the next highest position in his career. With few exceptions, little will be left when the next man moves into the Pastor's Office and sets up what will make the domain "my church."

Jesus made a powerful comment in Matthew 18: "Upon this rock I will build my church." This leaves little room for the Senior Pastor to brag about ownership. Which brings up the question, "What does the church built by Christ really look like?"

To honestly seek the answer requires us to set aside hundreds of years of churchianity's many aberrations and return to the simple church composed of hands, feet, and inward parts that are controlled not by the preacher but by Christ himself.

I shall never forget the Australian pastor who faced the reality of this truth. He stood behind the pulpit and said, "I used to come to this sacred desk as a place of exaltation. Since I have experienced my death and resurrection in Christ, I come to this pulpit as a place of crucifixion."

Wow!

Awesome Head, Tragic Body

I have just returned from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, where I met the men who are taking their D.Min. majoring in Cell Church Leadership. One of these fine brothers is a Korean whose English name is "Daniel." I discovered he was one of the translators of my Equipping Track series a few years ago while living in Korea.

As we concluded a session studying Bill Beckham's presentation on God-Made Cells, Daniel referred to Steven Hawking, the author of the second-largest selling book after the Bible, A Brief History of Time.

Hawking's Motor Neuron Disease has caused his brilliant mind to be completely disconnected from controlling his body. In spite of that, he has blessed the world with a book.

What an illustration of Christ and his contemporary "body." Instead of the Holy Spirit calling in those who are to form His new body, converts are called into organized structures that dump dismembered arms and legs and inward parts into buckets called "programs." They never experience the awesome body Christ uses to reveal His Presence and Power.

Randall has now gone into the final stages of preparing my new book for release (advertised at Amazon and on www.touchusa.org).

I am anticipating a flurry of criticism over the term "Bodies" of Christ. That disturbing term is the whole point of the book. We must realize that the "Body" of Christ is the sum total of the Basic Christian Communities (bodies) who together compose that greater Body.

Instead of a top-down understanding of this great truth, I am starting at the base (basic) and proposing that until we understand the makeup of the authentic body, we have a brilliant head (Christ) who cannot function with all the legs and arms and inward parts stuffed into wicker baskets called "programs."

This is a time in the history of Christianity where we simply MUST withdraw from the lack of community we now experience in traditional church life.

There is a heaven and earth difference between a "small group" and a Christ Body! Only in the latter will Christ be the Head and in charge of how the body members function.

I am very interested in knowing what you think about all this. If you took the time to read my blog, please take another second to respond, either with a positive or negative thought. Let's begin to work through what it will take for Christ to have a functioning body!