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"Churchianity or Christianity"

THEME: There are times when all of us just go through the motions — just act out a role without feeling it. This can so easily apply to our spiritual life. We will take a look at the dramatic difference between just acting out a role such as attending a religious service on the one hand — and having a vital and real personal relationship with God on the other.

It’s my pleasure to be with you this evening and to have the opportunity to share with you about the things of Christ and to exalt his name together. Before we turn to the scripture for this evening, let’s have a quick word of prayer together and ask the Lord to bless the reading of his word.

Let us pray: Father, you have told us that wherever your word is faithfully proclaimed and preached, that it will not return to you void but will accomplish that for which you have sent it. Lord, we ask that you bless the reading of your holy word. We ask you, Lord Jesus, that as we share what you have said in this reading of the gospel, that it will come alive in our hearts and bring new life to us that our relationship with you will be deepened, and it will grow as a result of our having been together this evening in your word. Blessed Lord we pray, as we turn to it now. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our scripture tonight comes from the 10th chapter of the gospel according to St. Mark, reading from the 17th verse. The encounter of a rather well-to-do young man with our Lord Jesus Christ: “And as he (Jesus) was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’”

By this, by the way, Jesus was not denying that he was God. He was seeking to draw out from this young man exactly what the young man was depending on for his life.

“‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments,’ our Lord went on, ‘Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’

“And he said, ‘Teacher, all these things I have observed from my youth.’

“Jesus looking upon him, loved him and said to him, ‘You lack one thing. Go sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come, follow me.’

“At that saying, his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.”

Our text this evening is these words from II Timothy 3:5. The Apostle Paul says that in the last days there will come times of stress. Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, etc., and then he says, “They will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.”

That’s our text for our thoughts together this evening, “...holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.”

Dr. Elton Trueblood is a name well-known and beloved to American Christians. He is an old Quaker who has known the Lord Jesus Christ and his love for many decades. Professor emeritus at Earlham University in Richmond, Indiana, Dr. Trueblood sends out a quarterly yoke letter and I want to read to you a quote from the June issue of this year, “The primary reason for the decline of mainline Christianity,” says Dr. Trueblood, “is that it is dull. Organizations we have in abundance with thousands of well-paid promoters, but for the most part, nothing occurs. Dwindling numbers of persons attend weekly services, but the lives of these attenders do not appear to be deeply affected or aroused. Many are designated by the absurd term church-goers, but what is the result of the going? The ‘goers’ sing two or three hymns, hear someone read from the scriptures and listen patiently to a dull sermon. Unfortunately that is about all that occurs.”

Now this isn’t true in every church in America, thank God, but unfortunately it is all too true in a great many. Dr. Trueblood goes on to say, “In our modern world we have few people who are violently antireligious. Our real danger comes not from irreligion, but from mild religion. The representatives of mild religion far from denying the historic faith, suppose that they practice it but they do so in a minimal fashion. Seldom do these people come to church in an expectant mood. Some betray their lack of expectancy by saying, ‘I only came to listen.’” Dr. Trueblood says they do not expect to be anything but observers. Consequently, there is no important change in their personal lives.

Let me ask you tonight, friends — if you go to church, do you go, or, when you go, do you go in an expectant mood? You expect to meet Jesus Christ there. Is he real to you? Or is he still, somehow, imprisoned in the pages of the book, a historical figure, but no one who is real in your life? When you go to church, do you expect the Living Christ to touch your life? Do you expect anything to happen inside you? Do you expect to leave the church a different person than when you came in?

Mild religion is our text tonight — II Timothy 3:5, “... holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.” And that’s what I want to talk with you about. In the third chapter of the book of Acts in the New Testament, we read about one of the dramatic results of those first disciples being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and what happens immediately after Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost when 3,000 people come to Jesus Christ.

Peter and John, it says in Acts 3, were going up to the temple to pray as was their custom. Upon entering the beautiful gate of the temple, they were about to pass by a beggar, a man crippled from birth, whom his friends carried and dumped there by the gate of the temple every single day of his life. He sat there to beg money of everyone who went into the temple, and he looked at Peter and John, of course expecting to receive money from them, but God’s word says that Peter fastened his gaze on him and said, “Look at us. Silver and gold have I none, but I give you what I have,” and taking him by the right hand, he raised him up, and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.” And the man was healed.

The scripture says, “... walking and leaping, and praising God.” Bouncing on his newly healed legs, he went into the courtyard of the temple and went in to worship with Peter and John. And, of course, everybody in the city knew him, and a crowd gathered to see what had happened to him. Peter found the people of Israel staring at him and John, and he said to them, “Men of Israel, why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? This man Jesus, whom you delivered up to be crucified, and whom God has raised from the dead, through faith in Jesus, this man has been made well, whom you see and know.”

The story is told in the Middle Ages of a visit to the Pope by Thomas Aquinas, one of the church’s great theologians and preachers. Aquinas entered the Pope’s chambers at the Vatican to find him seated behind a large ornately carved mahogany desk on which were piled stacks of gold and silver coins. And the Pope was busy counting these. Looking up from his counting, he said to Aquinas, “You see, Thomas, no longer can the church say, ‘Silver and gold have we none.’”

And Aquinas looked steadily back at him and said, “That’s true, Holy Father, but also no longer can the church say, ‘Rise and walk.’”

That story is pertinent to modern American Christianity, my friends. “.... holding the form of religion.” Church services and programs abound throughout the nation, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. And what’s the power of it? Jesus Christ.

What we are talking about this evening is not a dead ethics teacher imprisoned in the pages of the historical record we call the Bible. That’s not what the Bible is. It is a testimony to the fact that this Christ whom we speak of tonight is alive and risen. Jesus of Nazareth is alive tonight in the same body that was nailed to the tree, the cross. And we can know him. He is alive because he loves us, because he has conquered death, and sin, and disease, and everything else, that can mar human life and existence short of death and including it.

And Jesus Christ has for each one of us not just a course in ethics, or good tips on how to live a happier life, or good advice on how to be better adjusted — not all that, but a radically new life — a new life with Jesus Christ himself at the center of our lives, a life filled with expectancy, a life that is so new that he himself talks about it in words that say: it is like being born all over again. It’s new life, rebirth inside in our human spirit.

This well-to-do young man in Mark 10 comes to Jesus and says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

This young man was well-to-do. “He had great possessions,” the Bible says. He was wealthy. He was an achiever. He would have fit in very well in modern American society. Probably we would call him a “yuppie”. Rising in society, a young urban professional, good at what he did, well enough to be amply rewarded for it. He probably drove a BMW, read The Wall Street Journal, and had a Golden Retriever. He was quite good at what he did. And he was used to accomplishing things.

So when he comes to Jesus, he hears about this eternal life. He hears about this rabbi, Jesus. He hears about the miracles, perhaps, that were happening at Jesus’ hands, what the Lord was doing in peoples’ lives. And his attitude about this Jesus is, “Give me the program, tell me what I need to do. Lay it out for me. I’m used to following programs. I’m used to achieving things. So give me the steps: 1, 2, 3. What do I do to have eternal life?”

What he is looking for is a code of behavior. What do I do — not who do I need to be — what do I do? That was the way he thought about his life. He was used to living like that. Are you?

This is what so many of us think Christianity is. It’s a program of achievements. Well, what do you have to do to be a good Christian? You’ve got to believe the right things about Jesus; you’ve got to believe he was divine; you’ve got to believe he died on the cross to forgive us for our sins; and you’ve got to go to church and be involved in the church’s programs; and you’ve got to give; and to have to follow the rules. Don’t cheat the IRS. Don’t cheat on your wife. Be regular at Rotary. And everything will work out for you. This is what a lot of people think Christianity is.

But that isn’t really Christianity at all. That’s Churchianity. That’s a commitment to a program, a set of rules, to involvement in certain relationships, but where is Jesus in all of that? He may not be anywhere in all of that. It may be Churchianity that you’re committed to, and not real Christianity.

Jesus says to this young man, “You know all the commandments.” Now, Jesus wasn’t saying to him, “All you have to do is follow the commandments.” What he was doing was drawing out of this young man some self understanding; he was trying to get him to see that trying to follow the commandments was what held been depending on all his life.

You see, this was a good young man. He was moral. He was an upstanding citizen. He was a leader in his community. He would have fit very well in any of our modern American communities. And Jesus was trying to get him to see that what he was relying on was not God but his own goodness. “You know the commandments.”

The young man said, “Sure, I know them. I’ve been following them since I was little.”

And then Jesus says, “Yes, but you lack one thing.” I imagine our Lord may have said that to him with a trace of a smile, because what the young man lacked was the whole point of life. “You lack one thing. Go and sell all the stuff you’ve collected. Give it away to the poor. You’ll have treasure in heaven. And you come and follow me.” Jesus didn’t offer him a program. He didn’t say, “Do these things and life will work out better for you. But you come and follow me.”

My friends, listen. Christianity is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Christianity is not a religion. Jesus Christ did not come to start a religion. Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. It’s a dependency upon the person of Jesus of Nazareth who is alive and who can as radically change our lives tonight, if they’re really given to him and put into his hands, as he could have changed this young man’s life.

The tragedy of this gospel account is this poignant verse, the 22nd verse of Mark 10, where it says, “When Jesus invited him to come and follow him at that scene, his countenance fell and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” He made a choice, and the choice was against Christ. He chose to keep on living out of his own goodness, to keep on trying to be an achiever, to keep on living to collect and acquire. Oh, what a modern American he would have made! Living to collect, achieve and acquire. Isn’t that what we all are without — Jesus Christ? It doesn’t mean that being a Christian means you can’t have things. What it means is — what’s the basis of your life? What are you really motivated by? What are you driven by? What really makes you tick? Is it to acquire, to collect, to achieve?

You see, knowing Jesus Christ comes at a price. He doesn’t just happen to some people and not happen to others. You can come to know Jesus Christ, my friends, as clearly as Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, James, Martin Luther, John Calvin, my father, any of us who have known Jesus, if you are willing to pay the price. And the price is giving up control of your life — not God sitting over on a great throne somewhere, and our running around down here trying to be good and trying to present goodness to him to earn his approval. Not the idea — well, I’ve made a few mistakes but the rest of my life has been good and I hope you’ll forgive me for the mistakes and overlook the rest.

Not that. But a real walk with Jesus. For we depend on him to be our goodness, not some mythical, false, supposed goodness of our own. The Bible says that all of our own rightness is as filthy rags. We don’t have any rightness but Jesus Christ whom God has offered in the place of our pathetic efforts to be our rightness, our goodness. A new life is what he offers. But the price of it is to call him not somebody in your life, but to call him Lord. To give him your life and to depend on him, to go to him with every decision.

That’s my testimony. But in spite of the incredible background in Christianity that I have (and so many of you, I’m sure, are familiar with that), I didn’t give my life to Jesus until I was twenty-one years old, and I did it out of desperation. I didn’t know who I was. I had graduated from Yale University with a degree in history, but not knowing why I was alive. And I gave my life to Jesus that summer of 1961.

Three months later the Lord led me into seminary. I had no intention of going to a seminary. But God brought me into that close walk with Jesus Christ, and the Lord led me into the gospel ministry. And I’ve never regretted that for an hour. Jesus is my life, and I am becoming the person that I know God has created me to be, and that’s what anyone of us can become with Jesus Christ.

Let me sum up to you tonight by sharing with you a quotation from the diary of the first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, who became a towering, spiritual giant in this nation. He wrote this when he was 24 years old, in the year 1612, before it ever entered his head that he would head up the main Puritan expedition to the New World: “I do resolve first to give myself, my life, my wits, my health, my wealth to the service of my God and Savior, who, by giving himself for me, and to me, deserves whatsoever I am, or can be, to be, at his commandments, and for his glory.”

That's what it means to be a Christian and follow Christ.

Pray with me right now. Lord Jesus, we ask that you come into our hearts tonight and that by your grace you help us to surrender ourselves to you in a new and deeper way. Lord, help us to move from Churchianity and a commitment to church-going and program involvement to a real, vital, dynamic relationship with you. Lord, we pray that you would change our lives in the days and weeks ahead, that we may come to know you as Lord and as Savior, and a new and deeper experience of your love and your joy and peace will strengthen our lives. Lord, grant these things, we pray. For we pray in your holy and victorious name. Amen. God bless you.     

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