* The early Christians lived as a close-knit community. They didn’t think in terms of the individual. Their understanding and thinking was not in line with “me” or “I.” Instead, they thought and lived in terms of “we” and “us.”
To their minds, there was no disconnect between getting saved and being part of the community of believers. If you were a pagan in the first century, you knew that becoming a Christian meant being initiated into a shared-life community. It meant losing your raw individualism and your rugged independence. It meant becoming part of the people of God. Not as an abstract doctrine, but as a way of life. You became part of something larger than yourself—a new culture in which you lived your life. For that reason, the early Christian movement was called “the Way.” En. Acts 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22. It wasn’t a belief system; it was a way of life.
Western Christians have inherited an individualistic Christianity with an individualistic salvation and an individualistic walk with God. A Christian publisher recently told me that there are about 45,000 evangelical Christian titles in print and about 5,000 that are published every year. In my humble estimation, 95% or more of those books are addressed to you as an individual Christian. And the underlining point of those books is what you must do as an individual to be a better Christian.
But there is no such concept in the mind of God. Christianity has always been a corporate experience and a corporate reality. The individual Christian mind was born during the Reformation, and it has been set in concrete for the last 500 years. The New Testament knows no such mindset.
* The early Christians saw themselves as truly being “in Christ.” They were pulled loose from a “works” mentality, liberated from a guilt complex, and set free from a sense of religious duty.
This was reflected in their conversation. If you open up the New Testament letters, you will find that Paul always addressed the churches he planted (despite what they were going through) with the arresting phrase “holy ones.” He saw them holy “in Christ.”
I want to give you a testimony of how this mindset can be recaptured in our day. Recently, one of the sisters in one of the churches I work with stood up in a meeting and gave a testimony. She said, “I have been raised a Christian since I was a child. I’ve been meeting with you all for about a year now. I was listening to the Christian radio, as I sometimes do, and a song came on. The singer was singing about how unworthy she was and how she needed to try harder to please God. She sang that her righteousness was as filthy rags, and she needed to improve her spiritual walk.
I paused and suddenly realized that I couldn’t relate to that song anymore. I couldn’t relate to it because I’ve been given new eyes to see myself in Christ. For many years I struggled with a sense of unworthiness, guilt, and condemnation. But that’s all gone now. I don’t have it anymore, and I feel so free in the Lord’s love.”
When she shared this testimony, the room erupted and others began to testify along the same lines. It was an awesome experience. I believe this sister had touched the early Christian mind. She was laying hold of the same spiritual reality that the early Christians laid hold of.
To add another illustration, one of the organic churches that I work with did an interesting experiment. They broke up into pairs and visited the various traditional evangelical churches in town for two solid weeks. One of their assignments was to analyze the sermons they heard.
Strikingly, every sermon they heard had the same essential message. It was this: “What you are doing isn’t enough to please God. You need to do more than you’re doing. You need to read your Bible more, pray more, help people more, come to church more, etc. You need to do better than the best you can do.”
This is the script upon which most contemporary sermons are built. It is a gospel of legalism—pure and simple.
Interestingly, these same churches give a very different message to the non-Christian. It sounds like this: “God loves you the way you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, His love is unconditional. Jesus died for you because He loves you without condition. You can’t please God. Your good works are as filthy rags. But God will receive you as perfect if you come to Christ. So receive Him today.”
Ah . . . but once those same people receive Christ and “get saved,” the “bait and switch” gospel kicks in with a passion. Here’s what it sounds like:
“Now that you’re a Christian, here’s what you must do to please God. You must try harder, you must do more, you must work harder, God won’t be pleased with you if you don’t do such and such, etc.”
If you attend a traditional evangelical church, I would like to challenge you to evaluate the next sermon you hear and ask yourself this question: “Am I hearing about the glories of Jesus Christ or am I being told what to do to be a better Christian?” The latter is legalism.
I don’t know if you realize this, but you and I cannot live the Christian life. Being a Christian is territory staked out only by Divinity. We learn to live by Christ, and we do it together. What is needed in our day, then, is a recovery of what’s been lost, and a discarding of what’s been picked up.
It is my contention that we have lost the primitive realities of the Christian faith, and we have picked up a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with Christ. Consequently, you and I are faced with the business of laying aside old concepts and reaching back to the primitive mind of the early Christians . . . when the gospel was pure, undiluted, and uncompromised, and the church after God’s own heart was untainted. So it seems to me, anyway.