Leaders of the Lord's Recovery

[aron]

Originally Posted by NewManLiving

I was listening to this weeks message on the CTM website. The brother who was speaking said something that startled me; "When we take our eyes off of Christ and put them only on the Church we become a cult". I use quotes but this is essentially what he stated.

There's a hymn that says, "The Bride eyes not her garments/but her dear Bridegroom's face." Church leaders unfortunately specialize in eyeing our garments, and comparing them to those of everyone else. Unbalanced subjectivity, myopathy, bias (self-selection), judgmentalism, and self-justification then become the garments with which we drape ourselves.

I don't know how many times I heard young females blurt out emotionally in meeting that we should "love the church". Christ loved the church; so should we, right? Wrong. Christ loved the church and the church should love Christ.

Instead the church gets seduced, and distracted: instead of loving Christ, the church loves the church and it all goes south in a hurry. The Bridegroom is left waiting at the altar, and the church is hurried off by an interloper, waving a fun-house mirror before her, telling her to eye herself and her garments. "How beautiful you are, my queen!" (See e.g. Rev 18:7's "I sit a queen!")

And what is the Christ that comes out of this? A Christ that doesn't care about one's neighbor, or the poor, or the sick or weak or imprisoned, but wants to scour universities for "good building material". A Christ who is selective with scripture; it's no longer "every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" but only those words which prop up a hermeneutic or teaching. A Christ that elevates fallen men. A Christ that judges everyone else as deficient. A Christ that doesn't care about "right and wrong", i.e. righteousness. I could go on, obviously.

The Christ that is the "centrality and universality" of this church-fixated world is not the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom Moses and the prophets wrote, and to Whom Peter and Paul and James and John were discipled. It's not the Christ Whom the Father sent, but rather the Christ whom the self-obsessed church manufactures to justify herself.

[JJ]

Originally Posted by aron

There's a hymn that says, "The Bride eyes not her garments/but her dear Bridegroom's face." Church leaders unfortunately specialize in eyeing our garments, and comparing them to those of everyone else. Unbalanced subjectivity, myopathy, bias (self-selection), judgmentalism, and self-justification then become the garments with which we drape ourselves.

I don't know how many times I heard young females blurt out emotionally in meeting that we should "love the church". Christ loved the church; so should we, right? Wrong. Christ loved the church and the church should love Christ.

Instead the church gets seduced, and distracted: instead of loving Christ, the church loves the church and it all goes south in a hurry. The Bridegroom is left waiting at the altar, and the church is hurried off by an interloper, waving a fun-house mirror before her, telling her to eye herself and her garments. "How beautiful you are, my queen!" (See e.g. Rev 18:7's "I sit a queen!")

And what is the Christ that comes out of this? A Christ that doesn't care about one's neighbor, or the poor, or the sick or weak or imprisoned, but wants to scour universities for "good building material". A Christ who is selective with scripture; it's no longer "every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" but only those words which prop up a hermeneutic or teaching. A Christ that elevates fallen men. A Christ that judges everyone else as deficient. A Christ that doesn't care about "right and wrong", i.e. righteousness. I could go on, obviously.

The Christ that is the "centrality and universality" of this church-fixated world is not the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom Moses and the prophets wrote, and to Whom Peter and Paul and James and John were discipled. It's not the Christ Whom the Father sent, but rather the Christ whom the self-obsessed church manufactures to justify herself.

Well said, Aron. Lord Jesus, you are all and in all! Help us to keep our eyes on you, and point others to you.

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by aron

The Christ that is the "centrality and universality" of this church-fixated world is not the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom Moses and the prophets wrote, and to Whom Peter and Paul and James and John were discipled. It's not the Christ Whom the Father sent, but rather the Christ whom the self-obsessed church manufactures to justify herself.

This really encapsulates much of went wrong in the Local Church of Witness Lee. Of course there is so much that could be said in this regard, and it would be impossible in just one post, but aron has hit upon the heart of the matter, I believe.

Ironically, Lee's messages on "the Centrality and Universality of Christ" (many from the Collosians Training as I recall) were among the best he ever spoke. I still vividly recall one of those particular messages, now over 30 years ago. The vision of such a Christ was glorious and wonderful. Such teachings focused all our attention on our Lord Jesus, and any thought of "eyeing our own garment" seemed ridiculous.

So how did the centrality and universality of Christ become the centrality and universality of the church? How did the biblical "CHRIST and the church" become "christ and THE CHURCH? How did the biblical "and God created man of the dust of the ground" become "Oh I'm a Man, I’m the center and the meaning of the universe"? No, it did not happen over night. Yet there were warnings to us from without and from within. After decades of these warnings we all found out. God will not be mocked. God will not share his glory with another, not even the Bride, no matter how lovely her garment.