I wrote recently about a class mentality which is present in a large portion of the Christian Church. This way of thinking derives from human pride-not true spirituality. It’s within the nature of humanity to want to be better than others, or to want to have more than others, or to look down on others so that you can look bigger and better. This attitude is not of God.
Some denominations are hooked on wealth, prosperity and image. If you don’t have a profession or a house in just the right part of town, you don’t match up to the standard. Ministers and people there will never, or rarely, admit this openly, but it’s the tacet philosophy in some churches.
In other denominations and churches you are considered to be inferior if you don’t go along with certain practises considered to be the height of spirituality. Again, in these situations human pride vaunts itself over those who don’t go along with the movement. You can see this attitude epitomised in the arrogance of some of the most popular televangelists, though they would never openly admit that they consider themselves to be better than you.
Closer to home, those around you in your local church wouldn’t confess to being better than you, but some of them will turn around and tell you that you’re lacking something if you don’t perform all the trappings of their belief system. If you don’t speak or pray in tongues, if you don’t roll on the floor, if you don’t have visions or prophecies, if you don’t get healed, you are spiritually inferior. In this way you’re led to think that only by doing these things can you really experience God in all His fullness.
You need a second blessing, they’ll tell you. You need to get an infilling of the Holy Spirit, which of course only they can provide-so long as you go along with it all and then start speaking in tongues. Only then can you begin to think you’ve arrived. Only then will your words and your actions matter to God, in their eyes. This, dear readers, is an expression of human pride, or/ and it’s a lie from the enemy of true spirituality-the devil himself. It’s a deception and a self-deception. You can search articles I’ve written on tongues in the box above-just enter “tongues”.
The antidote to this sort of mentality is the Bible. One of Paul’s many swipe-downs of this arrogant attitude is in his first letter to the Corinthians. This church, he observed, was full of all those practises I mentioned above-so much so that he had to try to teach believers there to control themselves and to get it right. They thought they had “arrived” spiritually, but in truth they were no more spiritual than the unbeliever on the street. He told them, “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1).
Ouch! That must have hurt a church full of pride in their use of tongues, prophecy and other supposed gifts of the Spirit. And later, when preparing to put them straight on their practises, he told them this:
In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good (11:17).
Their claimed spirituality and their use of gifts did more harm than good! How many times are those with the “gifts” and the experiences paraded in front of the church and admired, while those who walk out and leave the church, or who walk out in disgust or confusion or a sense of inferiority, or who take one peep through the church doors and turn around again: how often are they are never seen or heard from again?
COMPLETE IN CHRIST
It’s the enemy of our souls who attempts to convince us all that Christ is not sufficient. We need more…. More money, more possessions, more works, and more spiritual gifts. While it is true that we need to “walk in the Spirit”, meaning that we should live our daily lives according to the Word of God, and be in submission to the leading of His Spirit in us, it’s also true that you can’t get any more of God than you already have. He has given you completion in Christ. All you need to do is walk in that completion, so that He can have more of you.
Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Collossians 2:8-10).
If you are in Christ-that is, if you have repented of your old way of life, accepted the gospel of Christ, and try daily to walk in His ways-you are complete. Don’t let anyone try to tell you that you’re incomplete. I could write a monstrously long post here to support this. Instead I’ll bring your attention to just a few more passages, and perhaps continue the subject soon.
If anyone is in Christ, says Paul, the man who almost single-handedly turned the world upside down in the first century, he is a new person already:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Don’t let anyone try to take that away from you! Peter concurred:
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature… (2 Peter 1:3-4).
And finally, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re short on some spiritual blessing, or that you’re only half-baked:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).
It’s Jesus Christ who fills us with all the spiritual blessings we need. Yes we need His Spirit, but He is with us by His Spirit: that was His promise to all of us, not just some. If you’re in Christ, you lack nothing of true value, so don’t let them make you think you do. Just remember to give Him more of you.
Thanks for reading. I’m going to make a space before more of those ugly ads…
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Fuel for Faith 