Religion or Reality?

At the memorable showdown at Mt. Carmel, God’s gracious servant Elijah asked an even more memorable question, which question bears more weight today than it did then: “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word” (I Kin. 18:21). Now let’s understand that the reason he asked this particular question certainly was not because Israel was fully devoted to serving Baal, the kingpin of all ancient idolatry. You may note that he said that they were halting between TWO opinions. This double minded condition has bedeviled God’s people throughout history. Hosea addressed the same issue in this manner: “Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images” (Hos. 10:2). The mixture of serving God and serving other things at the same time is no new thing, and it has not gone away either. The apostle Paul warned the Corinthians about receiving “another Jesus,” and accepting “another gospel” as well as “another spirit” (II Cor. 11:4). He also reproved the Galatians for having already gotten mixed up with “another Gospel” (Gal. 1:6,7). Well I have some bad news for you if you don’t already realize it: God’s people are still laboring in another Gospel today, and trying to serve God at the same time. But let’s define who “God’s people” actually are first, and then I can point out how this is taking place today. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (I Cor. 12:13). God’s people are those who have been baptized with the holy Ghost into the one body of Christ (Eph. 4:4,5). In other words they are the members of Christ’s body on earth (Rom. 12:4,5; Eph. 2:20-22).

The only way that God’s people can obey God and worship him acceptably is to follow after the same Spirit that baptized them into the body of Christ to begin with (Rom. 8:14; Jn. 4:24). That is the simplicity of the Gospel that Paul mentioned to the Corinthians at the same time that he warned them about the “other Jesus” (II Cor. 11:3). What has happened now is that erroneous doctrine is universally accepted as the word of God, and the result is that the ‘spirit of error’ has led the body of Christ in the opposite direction of the leading of his Spirit. So what we have now is good folks with good hearts being partly devoted to the Spirit of God, and unwittingly partly devoted to what they have been wrongly taught to be the doctrine of Christ. So then some space is given to God to work with his people both in service and in worship by means of his Spirit, but for the most part he is being shut out by his people while they follow after another spirit which has been dictated to them by the traditions and doctrines of men (Rev. 3:20; Mk. 7:13). And so it goes that when the people of God come together to worship him, the holy Ghost sometimes has a little bit of space here and there to operate, but for the most part it plays second fiddle to the religious spirit and doctrines of modern Christianity. Maybe the saddest reality of all of this is that the Lord’s dear people have been conditioned to not know the difference between the feel of the “Spirit of life,” and the death of the doctrines and traditions of men that hold them captive to another spirit (Rom. 8:2). No doubt that difference is felt, but the sense of loyalty to the Lord carries over unknowingly to the faulty traditions that actually minister a completely contrary spirit. And the result is that the wrong spirit wins out, because it keeps the people in bondage and deprives them of the true and complete liberty that is in Christ. That liberty will never be attained unto until God’s people get ready and willing to forsake the erroneous 'Gospel’ that dictates death rather than life (II Tim. 3:5). Amen.