Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ salute you. Romans 16:16
Some of our best lessons in life come from observing a situation and deciding we want no part of it. We recognize the danger of it or how wasteful it could be. The same is true with spiritual matters. Deciding what we don’t want will definitely, in many cases, point us in the right direction.
The Church doesn’t have a humanly devised name. I have a former coworker who talked about growing up in a heavily Lutheran community. The Lutherans began around 1517 and wear the name of their founder Martin Luther. He was simply a man and had no authority as such to begin a church. Jesus built the church (Matt 16:18). Therefore, we wear the name of Christ.
The church doesn’t have corrupt worship. John 4:24 tells us, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth”. Truth is found in God’s Word (John 17:17) and our worship is to follow the practices of those New Testament Christians we read of in the Bible.
The church does not appeal to the worldly mind (1 Cor 1:26-29). The church, rather, preaches the gospel message that demands worldly men change themselves and conform to God’s will
(Rom 12:1-2). This idea of appealing to the world and compromising truth is not acceptable in God’s sight (Gal 1:6-8).
The church does not have any complex organization. Christ is the head of the church (Col 1:18). The Bible is God’s revealed will that we follow and each congregation is overseen by qualified men who serve as Elders (Acts 14:23).
Lastly, the church has no human requirements for membership. Jesus himself stated in Mark 16:16, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned”.
And we further read in Acts that the “Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved”. Many other things we could mention but simply put, let us be striving to be the church Jesus died for (Acts 20:28), conducting ourselves in faithful obedience to the Bible (Heb 5:9).
By Jason Barger