PASTOR’S CORNER, Chuck Scroggs, Central Christian Church, Liberal
I would like to share my Sunday morning message with you that I shared with my church family. We will call it the Reader’s Digest version, which means it is compact and shortened. The title was “Will your religion get you into Heaven?” I first explained what a “religion” is. Buddhism is a religion, Christianity and Hinduism are religions as well as Islam and Judaism. According to some estimates, there are more than 4,000 religions around the world!
Denominations are different expressions of the “Christian religion” Many were started by men who made a stand or proclamation that folks followed and adhered to. The Lutherans began when their leader Martin Luther, nailed a paper with his complaints about the church he was leaving to its front door. The Mennonites traced their beginnings back to their first leader Menno Simons. The Mormons began with Joesph Smith. The Church of God started with a man named D.S. Warner, and one branch of the Methodist started with John Wesley, thus the Wesleyan Methodists. And then there were two men, Stone and Campbell, who were responsible for the Disciples of Christ. And so, it goes for many more!
The first 400 years of the church after Jesus resurrected from the grave had no Bible, yet it was said of them they turned the world upside down with their faith! Many of the Jews had followed the law of their religion, but after Christ came, they realized what they believed had no power!
As they began to follow Christ, they realized they did have power over sin and the devil. They also realized the religion they had followed was dead! Paul gives us one of the best explanations of the weakness of religion and the power of following Christ in Romans 7 and 8. Paul said (and I am paraphrasing here) of following the Law, (living his religion) that he wanted to do good but he didn’t do it “I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out.” He inferred while he lived the law he was dead inside. Then he cries out “Oh what a wretched man I am who will rescue me from this body of death” As Paul moves on into the 8th chapter of Romans he is quick to point out That for those that walk in relationship with Christ they find that their free from the law of sin and death! And they find an inward power to help them live above the power of sin. He calls it walking in the Spirit instead of the flesh.
Let me finish with these thoughts: almost all of us are a part of a denominational church. Some are part of and independent fellowship. And you know what? We each believe our church is the right one. Even though we might have been built on a man’s direction or someone's idea. The Bible says of the church Jesus would build, the gates of Hell would not prevail against it! It says we would all be one in Christ. That there would be no divisions in Christ’s body. And that is what the church had its first 400 years! Let us, no matter what religious stripe we find ourselves under, find and walk in a daily relationship with Jesus. I look forward to the day when we all could meet in one big location and all of us worship the Lord in freedom!
Will your denomination or church get you into heaven? If not what will?
