The Bible, the Building, and the Gift Must Never Take His Place
In this essay — jump to a section
- The Life Came First
- They Had No Bible to Carry Under Their Arms
- The Witness Became a Possession
- The Ekklesia Must Not Have Church Buildings
- They Sang Before There Was a Worship Industry
- The Explaining Mind Took the Place of Living Experience
- The Body Became an Audience
- The Five-Talented Must Die to Their Gift
- They Had No Program to Keep Everyone Occupied
- They Had No Christian Nation or Denomination
- This Is How the Substitute Becomes Antichrist
- Return to the Source
The Life Came First
When the first believers received the Spirit, there was no New Testament.
Paul had not written Romans. There was no letter to the Ephesians. No Gospel of John circulating among the gatherings. No completed collection of twenty-seven books that someone could place in their hands and say, “Here is your New Testament. Read this every morning, and you will learn how to live the Christian life.”
Those writings would come.
The life was already there.
People were receiving Christ, sharing their possessions, praying, breaking bread, and facing persecution before the documents we now call the New Testament had been written.
The ekklesia did not begin because people obtained a Christian Bible and developed a religion from its instructions. The New Testament writings emerged within the life and witness of a people who had encountered the risen Christ.
The source preceded the written testimony.
They had the Scriptures of Israel. They heard the apostles proclaim Christ through those Scriptures. But they did not possess the completed Christian Bible we now imagine as the indispensable starting point of every spiritual life.
They had Christ.
He was not waiting for the printing press, the seminary, the cathedral, or the approval of an educated religious class.
His life was entering people.
That is where everything began, and that is the reality from which everything claiming His name must proceed.
We have reversed the order. We supply the religious apparatus and assume that life will follow. We educate people into the explanations, organize them into the activities, and teach them how to occupy a recognized place in Christianity.
Then we call the result the Christian faith.
But the Christian faith, as a religious system possessed and practiced in place of Christ, is a substitute for the living life of God.
The substitute has taken the name of the reality.
They Had No Bible to Carry Under Their Arms
Picture the first gathering without supplying it with the things you are accustomed to seeing.
No stack of Bibles at the entrance.
No preacher asking everyone to turn to a chapter of a book that had not yet been written.
No study Bible with explanatory notes beneath the text. No concordance in the back. No preferred translation serving as a badge of spiritual reliability.
No Christian bookstore down the street.
No shelves of commentaries explaining what every passage really meant.
And no assumption that every believer could sit alone, read several chapters, and acquire spiritual maturity through private study.
Many could not read. Written materials were costly, copied by hand, and unevenly available. When letters came, they were read aloud. Paul instructed the Colossians to exchange letters with the believers in Laodicea so that both gatherings could hear them (Colossians 4:16).
One person could read while many listened.
The word entered a shared life.
We have become so accustomed to personal ownership of a Bible that we can scarcely imagine spiritual existence without it. Yet believers knew Christ without possessing anything resembling our personal Bible.
Their inability to purchase or read a book did not prevent the Son from becoming their life.
God did not reserve His inward presence for the literate.
A person unable to recognize the letters on a page could receive the One to whom the page bore witness. Meanwhile, a person capable of explaining every sentence could refuse Him.
Jesus exposed precisely that possibility in John 5:39–40. People searched the Scriptures, which testified concerning Him, yet would not come to Him for life.
The testimony was present.
The coming was absent.
That possibility should unsettle everyone who has learned to equate biblical knowledge with spiritual reality.
The Witness Became a Possession
The Scriptures bear witness to Christ.
They do not become Christ because we bind them in leather, memorize their sentences, or defend their authority.
A person can study the vine without abiding. He can explain the cross while protecting the self. He can teach concerning the Spirit while proceeding entirely through the strength of his own mind.
We have built a religious culture around the assumption that increasing biblical information necessarily means increasing spiritual life.
It does not.
Knowledge can increase while dependence diminishes.
The more capable we become at explaining, the less willing we may become to receive correction. The more passages we can summon, the more effectively we can defend the very self those passages expose.
We become authorities on something that has not become our living.
The earliest believers received testimony concerning a Person. The writings that came to them nourished and corrected their response to Him. They were not given another object around which to construct an independent religious existence.
Yet that is what we have learned to do.
We can finish our reading, close the cover, and feel that our spiritual responsibility has been fulfilled.
But has anything in us turned toward the Lord?
Has His light reached the motive beneath our activity?
Has Christ become our supply, or have we completed another task?
The Bible cannot be used to excuse our absence from the One it reveals. Its witness stands against that substitution.
The tragedy is not that we possess the Scriptures.
The tragedy is that we have become satisfied with possessing them.
The Ekklesia Must Not Have Church Buildings
The ekklesia must not have church buildings.
Its dwelling is in Christ. Its unity is His Spirit. Its substance is His life.
The first believers did not begin by acquiring religious property. There was no building committee at Pentecost. No announcement that the work would become substantial once enough money had been raised for a permanent sanctuary.
Acts describes believers gathering in the temple precincts and breaking bread in homes. Paul greets an assembly meeting in a house (Romans 16:5).
They used places to gather. They did not need a Christian property establishment to become the body of Christ.
There were no Christian cathedrals rising above those first communities. No steeples announcing their presence. No administrative wings, landscaped campuses, or capital campaigns.
Dedicated Christian worship spaces developed later.
I regard that development as a visible sign of a deeper displacement: the living people increasingly identified with a religious establishment, and the establishment increasingly determining the shape of their life together.
We now speak as though a congregation without property is incomplete.
It is “only” meeting in a home.
It is “still” renting a room.
The language assumes that the real thing will begin when the institution acquires a permanent physical expression.
But what becomes more real when the mortgage is signed?
Has Christ become more available?
Has the Spirit acquired greater freedom?
Have the members become more capable of supplying one another because they own a sanctuary?
The building establishes demands of its own. It must be financed, maintained, managed, protected, and filled. Decisions begin to revolve around its survival. The people become responsible for sustaining the thing they constructed.
Then that responsibility is called faithfulness to God.
The issue is not whether the building is attractive, economical, or convenient. The issue is what we have established and what now governs us.
The ekklesia is not a religious property owner with spiritual activities attached.
It is the living body of Christ.
Let believers open their homes. Let them gather wherever they can receive one another. But let them refuse to turn their shared life into another religious establishment.
Christ does not require a house built for Christianity before He can dwell in His people.
They Sang Before There Was a Worship Industry
They had no printed hymnals, yet they sang.
No projected lyrics. No microphones. No sound engineer adjusting the atmosphere. No lighting sequence preparing the room for an emotional climax.
No recording contract.
No worship charts.
No celebrated performer whose arrival assured everyone that something powerful would happen.
Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 speak of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Singing belonged to their shared life. It did not require an industry before it could rise from the heart.
We should ask what has happened when a gathering can scarcely imagine worship without equipment, trained performers, and a carefully arranged progression.
Have we become dependent upon production to produce what we call the presence of God?
Christ is not summoned by a successful musical sequence.
The Spirit does not arrive because the volume increases.
We can be emotionally moved while resisting the Lord’s actual claim upon us. We can enjoy the atmosphere and leave with the self entirely undisturbed.
A room without equipment can be full of thanksgiving. A gathering without a skilled performer can express something of Christ.
The absence of production does not leave the body without a source.
But dependence upon production can teach the body to look elsewhere for what only its source supplies.
The Explaining Mind Took the Place of Living Experience
They had no accredited seminaries.
No Master of Divinity degrees.
No denominational licensing examinations.
No academic career through which someone acquired the professional right to interpret everyone else’s spiritual life.
There were witnesses of Christ. There were servants taught through fellowship, obedience, suffering, and the work of the Spirit.
Their reality could not be conferred by a credential.
I regard the rise of intellectual authorities as one of the marks of Zoe being displaced in the churches. Increasingly, the person qualified to explain became the person entitled to define, direct, and judge.
The living experience of the members was subordinated to the formulations of the educated.
The tragedy was the enthronement of the explaining mind.
Christ became the subject of expertise. The members became its recipients. Spiritual maturity was increasingly identified with understanding and accepting the authorized account.
A person who knew how to formulate the truth could occupy a place above people who knew something of its reality but lacked his vocabulary.
That is a terrible exchange.
A degree cannot establish that Christ is someone’s life. It cannot certify that ambition has passed through the cross. It cannot reveal whether teaching proceeds from communion with the Lord or from the pleasure of being able to teach.
We can train someone to prepare a message.
We cannot confer the life of God upon him through graduation.
Even the word Zoe can be recruited into this substitution. We can explain divine life, distinguish it from natural life, and become proud of understanding what other Christians have missed.
Meanwhile, the old source continues to govern us.
We speak of peace while living in agitation. We speak of the body while competing for importance. We speak of death to self while becoming offended when the self is overlooked.
The terminology has advanced.
The source remains unchanged.
The Body Became an Audience
First Corinthians 12 describes members who need one another.
The eye cannot dismiss the hand. The head cannot tell the feet they are unnecessary. Members considered weaker are indispensable.
Ephesians 4:15–16 describes growth from Christ the Head through the participation of the members. First Corinthians 14:26 depicts varied contributions directed toward the building up of the gathering.
The life moves through the body.
Christian religion substitutes another arrangement.
The gifted person speaks. The educated person explains. The recognized authority determines the direction. Everyone else learns to listen, appreciate, support, and cooperate.
Eventually, the members scarcely expect Christ to supply anything through them.
A body has become an audience.
The problem cannot be solved merely by moving the meeting into a house. We can sit in a circle and preserve the same domination. We can remove the pulpit while retaining the person whose interpretation governs everything.
A quieter member may have something of Christ that the accomplished speaker needs.
A hesitant prayer may carry a reality that a polished message has never touched.
Will there be room?
Or has the gathering already been occupied by the person whose ability makes everyone else seem unnecessary?
First Peter 5:2–3 calls those who shepherd away from domination and toward example. Experience should make room for life in others.
No human gift has the right to become a substitute head.
The Five-Talented Must Die to Their Gift
And the five-talented members must die to their gift.
Dramatically.
Completely.
I mean the spiritual death of their ownership of it: the ambition to exercise it, the need to be recognized through it, and the assumption that possessing it entitles them to direct the body.
Their ability gives them no right to occupy the gathering.
Their eloquence gives them no right to fill every silence.
Their knowledge gives them no right to become the final explanation of everyone else’s experience.
The gifted self can become an enormous obstruction precisely because everyone admires what it can do.
People gather around its capacity. They wait for its interpretation. They gradually lose confidence that Christ might supply something through an ordinary member.
The gifted person becomes indispensable.
That is the disaster.
No member is the source of the body’s life. No amount of talent gives anyone the place of the Head.
The five-talented member must become willing to remain silent, to be overlooked, to receive correction, and to receive Christ through someone whose abilities appear insignificant beside his own.
He must surrender the conviction that a gathering has failed because he did not speak.
He must become willing for his gift to have no public future.
Until he can release it, he is still possessed by it.
This is the death I mean: the cross reaching the gifted self so thoroughly that the gift no longer establishes identity, demands opportunity, or justifies control.
The gift must cease to be his kingdom.
Paul brought his impressive qualifications under the judgment of knowing Christ (Philippians 3:7–10). He refused to make persuasive eloquence the foundation of the Corinthians’ faith (1 Corinthians 2:1–5).
The issue was the source upon which people would depend.
That same judgment must reach our most admired members.
If the Lord gives the gift expression, let it serve within the body, subject to discernment, making room for others. If the Lord gives no opening, let the member rest without manufacturing one.
The body does not owe his talent a platform.
The ekklesia does not exist to preserve his usefulness.
Everything must pass through the cross, including the ability that Christianity has spent years applauding.
Let the five-talented surrender their claim upon the room.
Let the quiet members breathe.
Let Christ supply His body.
They Had No Program to Keep Everyone Occupied
The earliest believers had no modern Sunday-school department, vacation Bible school, youth-program calendar, or church-growth consultant.
No ministry fair at which everyone selected an activity to establish his usefulness.
No carefully managed sequence of events designed to keep the congregation engaged.
Yet there was a life together.
Acts 2:42 names teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers. Acts 4 describes practical care for people in need.
Their allegiance to Christ reached their possessions, their homes, and their relationships.
We have learned to substitute involvement for that reality.
A person can become indispensable to church activities while remaining unavailable to the person beside him. He has meetings to attend, responsibilities to fulfill, and a ministry to preserve.
There is no room for the unplanned interruption through which love might become practical.
Religious busyness consumes the attention that life together requires.
The earliest believers did not need our machinery before they could pray, share a meal, receive a stranger, or care for a widow.
Christ’s life could move through ordinary circumstances.
We have made the circumstances more elaborate and mistaken the elaboration for spiritual progress.
The work expands. The relationships become thinner. Everyone is serving, and scarcely anyone is being received.
What kind of success is that?
They Had No Christian Nation or Denomination
The first believers had no Christian emperor.
No Christian political party.
No national flag standing beside the place where they broke bread.
No election campaign presented as the decisive struggle for the survival of Christ’s kingdom.
They lived under rulers who did not derive their authority from allegiance to Jesus. Some persecuted them.
Yet the kingdom was not absent.
Christ did not need control of the empire before He could become their life. Their citizenship in heaven did not await earthly recognition (Philippians 3:20).
Neither did they possess the denominational identities that later divided Christianity into recognizable establishments.
There were no Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, or Pentecostals in the apostolic gatherings.
When believers gathered their confidence around particular teachers, Paul confronted the division. He asked whether Christ was divided (1 Corinthians 1:13).
We have made those kinds of divisions into permanent religious identities.
We ask which part of Christianity someone belongs to before asking whether we can receive what Christ has given him.
Our boundaries precede our fellowship.
Our inherited conclusions determine whom we will hear.
Meanwhile, political Christianity recruits the Lord into another set of loyalties. We want Him to secure our nation, protect our preferred order, and defeat the people we fear.
Zoe has no political party to preserve and no religious brand to protect.
Christ’s life judges every allegiance that demands His place.
The earliest believers possessed almost none of the institutional and political advantages we now regard as essential.
They were not deprived of Christ.
This Is How the Substitute Becomes Antichrist
The deterioration is not merely that Christianity became more complicated.
Something took the place of something else.
The religious building became the visible center.
The intellectual authority became the recognized interpreter.
The gifted personality became the indispensable supplier.
The program became the measure of participation.
The institution became the object of loyalty.
And Christ remained the name invoked over the whole arrangement.
I call that substitution antichrist because it occupies the place that belongs to Christ.
It offers an institution where there should be a living body, intellectual mastery where there should be inward participation, and human government where Christ Himself should be Head.
The substitute does not have to deny His name.
It can quote Him continually.
Its opposition appears in what it displaces.
People become dependent upon the teacher instead of learning to receive from the Lord. The gathering becomes dependent upon the performer instead of the participation of the members. The community becomes responsible for the institution instead of free to respond to the life within it.
The vocabulary remains Christian.
The operating source has changed.
That is why religious success cannot settle the question. Attendance can grow while fear increases. A ministry can expand while its workers become harsher. A teacher can acquire influence while becoming incapable of receiving correction.
Galatians 5:22–23 describes the Spirit’s fruit in the character of the life expressed. First Corinthians 13 refuses to let gifts, knowledge, and sacrifice excuse the absence of love.
We cannot build the institution large enough to make that absence insignificant.
Return to the Source
Remove the completed Christian Bible from the first gathering, because it was not yet there.
Remove the cathedral, because it had not been built.
Remove the printed hymnal, the seminary, the denominational office, the stage, the sound system, the ministry department, and the political organization.
Remove the later apparatus we have learned to identify with Christianity.
What remains?
The risen Christ.
The Spirit given to His people.
The testimony concerning Jesus.
Prayer. Baptism. The breaking of bread.
Brothers and sisters receiving one another and learning to live by a life that came from God.
That is not an empty room waiting for Christianity to arrive.
The essential reality is already there.
I am not calling us to perform an imitation of ancient simplicity. A bare room cannot impart life. Nor does removing a building automatically remove the religious self.
The cross must reach the inward source.
But we must also stop protecting the outward arrangements through which that self establishes its government.
The ekklesia must relinquish its church buildings.
The explaining mind must surrender its throne.
The five-talented must die to their ownership of the gift.
The members must cease accepting the role of an audience.
And the whole body must turn toward its living Head.
Do not make another movement out of this call. Do not establish another spiritual identity around being free from religion. The self would gladly survive by becoming important as religion’s critic.
Bring that ambition to the cross as well.
Come to Christ without bargaining for a place.
Let the Scriptures bring you to Him. Let the light reach your motives. Let the quieter member supply something you cannot produce. Let silence expose your need to be heard.
Receive from the Lord when there is nothing impressive to display.
Abandon the Christian faith as the religious substitute for the living life of God.
Cross the river.
Leave behind the need to preserve the establishment, defend your importance, and secure a future for your ability.
They had Christ before they had the things we now call Christianity.
We have accumulated those things until we scarcely know how to imagine life without them.
Let them lose their claim.
The ekklesia belongs to Christ.
Its life comes from Christ.
Its destination is Christ Himself.
