“The call to be a Christian is all about Christ and what He is making us, while in the church. When we become Christians, we are called to be a part of the body of Christ. We cannot in any defensible way say that we are Christians, without being a part of the visible church. That is completely contrary to what the writers of the New Testament were saying.”

I know, nothing new here. At least if you know where to look. The entire New Testament is full of books that were written because the church is broken. The Apostle James showed us that there was trouble early on, writing only 30-40 years after the ascension of Christ, he penned the following: Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war.

The truth is that when you are dealing with fallen humanity, many of them, even the redeemed, are going to act and behave like fallen humanity. It’s sort of a Catch 22, we think that because we are the church and we are saints, that we are to act like saints in some rarified way, never realizing that if we could act like saints, i.e. without sin, we would not have needed Christ in the first place. But we do need Christ. We need Him upon our entry into the church, and while we remain in the church.

And this is the rub, we often fail in our walks with Christ thinking that the call to be a Christian is about the church, and not Christ. The call to be a Christian is all about Christ and what He is making us, while in the church. When we become Christians, we are called to be a part of the body of Christ. We cannot in any defensible way say that we are Christians, without being a part of the visible church. That is completely contrary to what the writers of the New Testament were saying.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]