Rev. Dr. Sanjay Raj

What Is the Church?

For clarification, what is the church? When I say that a church gets into the rote and then onto the rut and finely to the rot, what am I talking about?

For one thing, the church is not the building. A church is an assembly of individuals. There is a lot of meaningless dialogue these days about the church. It is meaningless because those engaged in the dialogue forget that a church has no separate existence. The church is not an entity in itself, but rather is composed of individual persons. It is the same error made about the state. Politicians sometimes talk about the state as though it were an entity in itself. Social workers talk about society, but society is people. So is the church. The church is made up of real people, and when they come together we have the church. Whatever the people are who make up the church, that is the kind of church it is - no worse and no better, no wiser, no holier, no more ardent and no more worshipful. To improve or change the church you must begin with individuals.

When people in the church only point to others for improvement and not to themselves, it is sure evidence that the church has come to dry rot. It is proof of three sins: the sin of self-righteousness, the sin of judgment and the sin of complacency.

When our Lord said, "One of you will betray Me," thank God those disciples had enough spirituality that nobody said, "Lord, is it he?" Every one of those disciples said, "Lord, is it I?" If they would not have so responded there could not have been a Pentecost. But because they were humble enough to point the finger in their own direction the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

Self-righteousness is terrible among God's people. If we feel that we are what we ought to be, then we will remain what we are. We will not look for any change or improvement in our lives. This will quite naturally lead us to judge everyone by what we are. This is the judgment of which we must be careful. To judge others by ourselves is to create havoc in the local assembly.

Self-righteousness also leads to complacency. Complacency is a great sin and covers just about everything I have said about the rote and the rut. Some have the attitude, "Lord, I'm satisfied with my spiritual condition. I hope one of these days You'll come, I will be taken up to meet You in the air and I will rule over five cities." These people cannot rule over their own houses and families, but they expect to rule over five cities. They pray spottily and sparsely, rarely attending prayer meeting, but they read their Bibles and expect to go zooming off into the blue yonder and join the Lord in the triumph of the victorious saints.

𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲, 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬, 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐬 & 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 ... 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝐦𝐞 𝗶𝗻 "𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞" 𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 @ 𝟕:𝟯𝟬 𝐩𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬. 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐭 ... "𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗲."
𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻 ...👇👇👇
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