“Indeed there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.” (1 Cor 11:19)
In the context of great interest in Christian unity, a matter which I have supported whole –heartedly and in many practical ways, I believe that God is signalling that the church in Perth needs to pay more attention to the importance of division in the for the health of the people of God. If we do not embrace division in the church as part of the divine purpose we will miss out on the fullness of what God wants to do in our city.
What I sense is emerging across the city is a polarisation between those Christian groups that will compromise with the methods of the world and those who will stay totally focused on the person and promises of Jesus Christ. This separation is NOT a simple liberal –conservative divide, nor one that distinguishes Charismatics from Evangelicals. It is much more foundational than these differences.
What is happening concerns basic trust, where do we put our faith when everything else fails. When our God-given projects seem to be endangered to what do we look? Godly people have not always trusted him. Abraham sired a son by a slave woman, Moses exerted his own strength in killing the Egyptian, Elijah fled to Mount Horeb, Peter cut off the slave’s ear and so on. All of these had received visions from God but had to learn that this was not enough to ensure their fulfillment. God had to prune them and break them of all fleshly possibility of the fulfillment of the divine promise.
Jesus himself had to abandon all hope that the call of God upon his life could be accomplished in any other way than by the death of the cross. The meaning of the struggle of Gethsemane is the abandonment of all hope that the work of redemption can be perfected apart from a degree of suffering that his own mortality does not want to embrace (Heb 2: 10,17-18; 5: 7-10). Jesus cannot be the Saviour of humanity in the depths of its weakness and distress unless he personally goes through anguish at this level. As this is a foundational truth for the life of Jesus it is also so for all who are being formed in his image (Rom 8:29).
Unfortunately, what I am seeing happening around Perth contradicts this principle of the cross. When good Christian people are struggling to make ends meet in the movements and ministries that God has raised up they are beginning to resort to the supply of the world: government funding, the Lotteries Commission, corporate sponsorship and marketing. I am certainly not opposed to believers seeking secular counselling for their personal and relational problems, going on to medication and so on. Yet, despite the evidence of what is promised in scripture this seems to have become as necessary for the church as for others. Some people who seemed to be committed Christians are making life choices that showed they were never true believers.
All of this can easily ensnare believers in compromise over their stand for the exclusiveness of Christ and his gospel. More significantly however such moves misunderstand the very nature of the kingdom of God. What God does, God promotes, what God does no-one else can do.
The time is coming soon when the things that are done in the name of Jesus but with human power will be distinguishable from those things done by Jesus himself. These things – conversions, healings, miracles, deliverances, personal transformations, will be so obviously the work of God that no one but him will receive the glory.
God is testing the church to see if its devotion to him is pure (2 Cor 11:1-6). Times are tough, things are difficult, resources of all sorts are scarce. Spiritual discernment however will teach us that this is the time of the wilderness and of the cross, of the maturing of the saints of God for great things that are ahead. It is important that we “hold fast to the head” (Col 2:18) like never before.
As we press on to trust Jesus alone the differences within the church will become increasingly striking. The unity movement in Perth must embrace this if it is to survive and mature in the purposes of God. Unless we go through such a death we will not see the power of the resurrection.