Dear Friends,
Many Christian's today find themselves confronted within their denominations and issues so blatant that it throws into focus the whole question of just where an evangelical Christian should stand in relation to their denomination or grouping with which they associate especially when that denomination or grouping has become "modernist" and totally "mixed" in their loyalty to the Word of God.
We realise the difficulties, of course, that can confront some people in certain areas and localities; but still, every professed evangelical Christian ought to be very clear in heart and mind, that he or she, is acting right in the eyes of God in being part of such bodies and there are however some practical and ethical questions that Ministers, and members of the "mixed" denominations need to ask themselves and answer in the light of the Scriptures.
For example, we find quite a number of people, both Ministers and members, who adopt the position of being "in" their denomination, but not "of" it. This position is usually presented in the expectation that some measure of praise is due to the Minister or member who takes it. But should this be the case? There are numerous calls in the Word of God for professed believers in Christ to display such virtues as honesty, fidelity, loyalty, and so forth. Does such behaviour not gravely threaten the exercise of such virtues?
At the very lowest level, it is the denomination as such, that affords those Ministers their "living" and their sphere of labour in which they work: their Manse, their Church building, their Parish system, their congregation. It is, surely, not becoming for any Christian Minister to bite the hand that feeds him. If a Christian is part of anything, that Christian ought to endeavour to be a loyal part.
On the same question of fidelity, and so forth, another disturbing feature that is found in the mixed denominations is the "split" attitude of mind and practice brought about by a membership arrangement that includes both believers and non-believers on a totally equal basis.
There can, surely, be no question in any honest believer's heart that the vast majority of their "fellow-members" in the mixed denomination churches are unregenerate souls who are still in the gall of bitterness and condemnation. The usual reply to that criticism, of course, is that the Minister has a great opportunity to "evangelise" these people: but you don't "evangelise" the "members" of the Body of Christ! It is one thing to endeavour to apply the evangel to those who come into the Church's worship and who are still to all intents and purposes, unbelieving souls; but to think in terms of having to preach the gospel in terms of its very first rudiments to those who compose Christ's Church – surely, this is incongruous in the extreme. And, of course, the professed evangelicals in such situations, of necessity, adopt a split attitude of mind.
But is it not an unbecoming sight to witness and evangelical Minister within a Church, with his numerous unbelieving members, on the other, comprising some kind of a "Church within a Church?" – A flock within the flock? Those who hold themselves above the normal run-of-the-mill "worldly" goings-on in their Church; a kind of spiritual elite, quite apart from their other "fellow-members".
The questions come pouring in: -
Just what kind of fellow-membership of the Body of Christ, the Church does this entail anyway? Is that really "one body," under "one Spirit," pressing on to "one hope" of their "calling?" Can an evangelical Christian really turn, and with open face before God and man, say, we are "members in particular," and "members one of another?" It won't do to say that no Church is perfect; any one in his right senses, and in the light of God's Word, knows that. But that is a different matter to the blatant accepted linking of believers and unbelievers within the one "Body" of the Lord.
What kind of blinkering of conscience is involved in an evangelical Minister "dispensing" the elements of the Lord's Supper to a membership, the bulk of which he knows, has neither part nor lot in that blessed ordinance? How does an evangelical Christian "commune" under such circumstances? Can he, or she, look around on professed fellow-sinners saved by the grace of God in the gospel, and say, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread," 1st Corinthians 10 verse 16 forward.
What is to be thought of the spectacle of the Lord's people giving forth their tithes and offerings, a big percentage of which ends up in the central funds of those denominations that include Divinity Lecturers and Professors – not to mention rank and file Ministers – who hold and declare views totally destructive of the gospel of God's redeeming grace to sinners? Can you picture a farmer feeding the foxes that would rip his sheep to shreds? Would you give to a door-to-door collection for a fund to poison the town's water supply? Yet the Lord's money can be given by the Lord's people to help to support those who would destroy the Lord's gospel. Next time you sing – "Take my silver and my gold," ask yourself, take it for what? Oh yes, part of it helps support those evangelical men within the denomination; what of the other part – the greater part?
We would hope that these questions would not be lightly dismissed by any who read them; and there are a dozen-and-one others just like them, involving many practical and ethical issues for a true believer in Christ to consider. When we have employed all our theological niceties and arguments from expediency etc., we are still confronted with the principles of conduct involved in those old rugged scriptures about "light and darkness" having no fellowship, and the sons of God and the sons of Belial making unseemly companions.
In spiritual things there is only one point of reference for the Christian and the non-Christian, and that is the evangeliser and the evangelised. In that God-given task the Christian may stand on much common "human" ground with the non-Christian: but there is no ground whatsoever on which the two may stand as "fellow-members" in the body of Jesus Christ. To settle that one fact alone would be to settle the whole question of where believers should be in relation to ecumenical, modernist, and mixed denominationalist Churches.
For a good many years now we have been in the midst of much talk concerning reformation. It is time that we realised that we are not even getting near the question of reformation until we have settled in our heart and minds the question of separation from that which is not fully Christian, yet gives the appearance of being so by taking the name of Christian to itself.
God grant us grace to simply stand in our day – in the world, indeed, and as the Church of Christ in the world; but not of the world, and not giving the world that impression that it is part of us by birth, or nationality or anything else, apart from faith in Christ by which any man or woman or young person is added to Him and to one another.