Tried With Fire

Relationships are indispensable, but not enough. No matter what the teachers of tickling ears say, we do have rules to follow. Jesus didn't say if you love Me you'll feel close to Me. He said if you love Me, you'll keep My commandments. The church, as the gathering of those who love Jesus, should be pure, holy, loving, and true - both as an indication of our obedience and as a reflection of the character of God. That's why discipline has traditionally been a mark of the church. Discipline promotes the purity of the church and vindicates the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet how can there be discipline without a church? How can there be accountability if church is not in any way an institution with standards and dogma, but only a gathering of two or more Christians in the park? Christianity is not whatever we want it to be. It is, whether we like it or not, organized religion. And the church is what gives it its organization shape and definition. That's why people ...

I have been pondering the word religion . I used to have a personal bias against the word until I started reading the Puritans. In J.I. Packer's talk on the Puritan Century, he states that religion was to the Puritans as Christianity is to us today. In 1941, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, "Religion, a true belief in God, in Jesus Christ, is fundamental, vital, essential." J.C. Ryle wrote on Practical Religion . Jonathan Edwards wrote A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections . Who can forget Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion . So it seems in former days, these godly men used religion to refer to the gospel and its outworking. Something has changed because my former definition of religion would have been scrupulous conformity to a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices by which a person is made right with God . This is an amalgamation of two of the definitions of religion from Merriam-Webster's online ...