His Generation

Part 3. The Church Of My House

November 9, 2006

By Ron and Karen Schwartz

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Philemon 2 KJV

And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house.

During Jesus’ generation, there was no institutional church.  Instead, every home in which Christian families lived was a church.  As often as Christians met (1 Corinthians 11:26), or wherever two or three were gathered together (Matthew 18:20), they had church.  It was not necessarily an institutional social event.  They met in the temple on the first day of the week, not because it was the Lord’s day consecrated to replace the Sabbath but because it was convenient.  Generally the temple was not in use on the first day of the week, so it provided a spacious and public place to assemble.  Sunday meetings were never meant to become the Sabbath-substituting institution they have become today.

During His generation, Christians were opportunistic.  In Acts 17:23, Paul uses an altar to an “UNKNOWN GOD” (a pagan god) to explain to the Athenians that they ignorantly worshipped the true God (“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you”).  John used the pagan philosophical Greek word logos (translated as “the Word” in John 1:1), which had been used for centuries before Christ, to describe the agent used by the invisible God to reach out to man, suggesting that this “logos” was, in fact, the Christ.  Christmas, December 25, the day adopted by Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ, was a pagan Roman holy day celebrating the rebirth of the sun [god Nimrod who was the god of gods].  The early Christians simply said that the God of gods, King of kings, and Lord of lords is Jesus Christ.  Their adoption of Nimrod’s birthday was opportunistic and a means of bringing credibility to their faith.  However, as the followers of His generation died, opportunism was replaced by institutionalism.  The opportunities they took to spread the gospel transformed into doctrine, dogma, and institution.  Sunday became the new Sabbath and December 25^th became a new holy day.

During His generation, the Christians’ lack of institution was what defined them.  But today, Christians are defined by their particular flavor of institution.  In fact, today you simply cannot be defined as a Christian church without a clearly defined institution.

As with most previous revelations, mankind is taking each new revelation and institutionalizing it into religion.  The most recent case in point: house churches.  House churches are becoming the newest form of Christian institution.  To many, a house church simply replaces the “place” of their institutional meeting as opposed to changing how they meet.

Today, even the Bible has become an institution and an idol.  Unlike His generation, today’s Christians tend to divine truth, not by the direction and leading of the Spirit of God, but by their particular interpretation of the Bible, their translation of it, or their understanding of the Greek manuscripts (taking an intellectual/educational approach rather than a spiritual approach).  In doing so, they have transformed the Word of God (the living operation of God’s Spirit) into paper and ink (an institution defined by men) instead of that which “was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2).”  They essentially strip the authority of truth from God and place it into the intellect of man.  Consequently, men deify the Bible in order to deify their own imaginations and intellect.  It is another form of idolatry.

Everything that men deify replaces God as Lord, becoming their new god.

By making the Word of God merely one’s own translation and interpretation of the Bible, it no longer is “living and active” and “sharper than any double-edged sword.”  It no longer “penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow” or “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12-13 NIV).”  It is no longer able to bring correction to the church.  Instead, the Word of God has become the Bible that is interpreted according to intellect, and even God is not allowed to alter our understanding of it.  It is self-defeating: it has become a weapon that every denomination uses to demonstrate that they are right and everyone else is wrong.  Instead, it demonstrates that NO version of Christianity and no interpretation of the Bible is correct.  Thus, the Word of God has been transformed into nothing more than a compilation of words that we assemble as building blocks to create whatever truth we wish to believe and whatever throne upon which we wish to climb.  We use it to justify our sin and to emancipate our rebellion.  We use it because, unlike the Spirit of Christ (the real Word of God), it is mindless, under man’s control, and obedient to man’s wishes.

Men not only serve their gods, but their gods serve them.

Whatever we institutionalize becomes our slave.  Institution is what we control.  That is why it is so very important for men to institutionalize everything.  Once it becomes an institution, not even God can change it.

From a more personal perspective, “institution” is any area in our lives that God does not control.  It is any place in our hearts that we do not submit to the control of the Spirit.  It is our sin, our disobedience, our pride, and our rebellion.  It is essentially those places in our lives and hearts where we sit as king.  It was those very institutions in our lives that Paul referenced when he wrote, “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).”  From a corporate perspective, “institution” is essentially the same:  it is any area in a church that is controlled by man instead of the Holy Spirit.  It is where we submit to men, is where men reign, and it is sin!

Determined To Institutionalize

The scripture tells us that God made this world -- its land, its plants, its animals -- and it was all good.  Then He placed mankind in it, and consider what has now become of it.  Following man came sin, corruption, death, disease, starvation, war, and certain self-destruction.  Throughout the past six thousand years, over and over again, God begins something new and good, and mankind follows after each new thing to (quite predictably) corrupt it.

When God rid the world of the vanity and evil imaginations of men through a flood, God saved one good man (Noah) to seed a new world.  Yet one of the first works of Noah in his newly cleansed world was to plant a vineyard, make wine, get drunk, and curse his son.  Following this act, the world once again regressed into sin and wickedness.

We then find God calling a people (Hebrews) unto Himself to be the custodians of His covenant.  With a mighty hand, God brought plagues down upon Egypt to free His people and bring blessings and goodness to them.  But they corrupted this covenant by making it into a religion that glorified themselves rather than God.  They eventually made their religion into their god.  Their reverence for their religion was so spectacular that when the God who gave them the covenant in the first place came to them in flesh, they killed Him in defense of their religion.

Each time God moved upon this earth, it was for good.  Yet each time, mankind managed to corrupt the move of God.  Why, then, should we believe that the past two thousand years of man’s influence in the New Testament has been any different?  Is mankind really any different today than they were two thousand, four thousand, or six thousand years ago?

When His generation began, it was a good work of God (“…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. Acts 10:38.”)  His disciples followed His example of bringing the goodness of God to the world.  But following this good work of God, mankind once again set about corrupting the work of God, just as he did with the first covenant.

By the time 1,000 AD rolled around, mankind had so institutionalized every facet of God’s work that it no longer bore any resemblance to what God originally ordained.  The Lord’s Supper alone was institutionalized into a complete ritual from which salvation hung.  Jesus’ mother Mary became deity.  Saints and angels were worshipped.  But none of them were taken to the heights to which man had placed himself: in the place of God and Christ.  Nothing about the institutional church bore any resemblance to the work Christ originally started, the work that His disciples carried forward.

Then, just as when Christ came and began to speak on God’s behalf, God began to give the early reformers revelation into His will.  And, as with Christ and His followers, these reformers were rejected and even killed by the very people who claimed to be the custodians of God’s covenant.  The New Testament in the hands of the institutional church had become exactly what the first covenant had become to the Jews: it was worshipped as a religion in place of God.

Once something is institutionalized, it is impossible for God to change it.  This is because the institution actually replaces God.  Anyone God sends to speak against the institution is summarily rejected as a heretic.  That is exactly what happened to Christ and His followers.  We must guard against allowing anything or anyone other than the Spirit of God from becoming sacred.  Anytime we allow such a thing to happen, we invent an idol and prohibit a place that the Spirit of God can operate.

Take, for example, the Law. 

“I had a dream.  In the dream, I saw men in priestly apparel moving about, some in large adult-size walkers and some with training wheels.  It was very awkward and challenging for them.  The walkers and the training wheels made every task ridiculously slow and difficult.  When I awoke, the Spirit of God impressed upon me that the training wheels and walkers represented the Law.  The Law was meant for infants, not adults.” – Ron Schwartz, October, 2007

The law was meant to serve as walkers and training wheels to infants and toddlers.  Both are meant to aid the young in their operation until they mature to the point at which these supports are no longer needed.  If people were forced to walk with walkers and operate with training wheels after they have matured beyond the need, such supports would serve only to hold them back and impede their progress.

Throughout the dispensation of the Law, God foretold the fact that the Law was not His ultimate goal.  He had something far greater in store for His people.  He said, “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:33-34).”  But once the Jews had institutionalized the Law, not even God was allowed to change it.

God knew that natural man would not allow Him to have the fellowship that God desired.  So God provided the Law as a support (walker/training wheels) to familiarize himself somewhat with the nature of God.  But the Law was also woefully inadequate and therefore never meant to provide a permanent solution.

God’s goal was not to have man in obedience to an outward structure of morality but to walk together with Him in love.  God’s goal was not to enslave man to moral obedience but to rescue him from his servitude to sin.   God’s goal was not to force upon mankind a framework of law but to liberate him into the freedom that comes with being His children.  In short, God was not looking for slaves (He essentially has that with His angels) but for a bride.  And a bride must give herself lovingly and freely to her husband.

Mankind has institutionalized much of the New Testament just as he did with the Old Testament.  He has made it into a system of walkers and training wheels, constantly prohibiting progress toward spiritual maturity.  Therefore, over the past thousand years, God has begun a process to slowly strip away the inventions of men to bring His people back to “the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3).”

Martin Luther had a revelation of faith and justification.  It began to erode away the institutions of Catholicism.  But he never went on from there.  Instead, he institutionalized his revelation and surrounded it with even more institution, which eventually became the institution of the Lutheran Church.  God also moved through the early Anabaptist reformers to chip away more of the institutions of man, but even these became such institutions as the Mennonites and the Amish.

Follow the history of the church: you will see man after man receive revelation from God and speak out against the mainstream institution, chipping away at its foundation, then allow their revelation to transform into the very institution they hated.  So where does this journey end?  What is God is trying to bring us into?

Revelation 14:1-4

1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

4 These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

John 10:11, 4-5

11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.

5 And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.

God wants to speak directly to us through His Spirit.

Jeremiah 31:33-34

…And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD…

Matthew 4:4

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

God does not want us to live by institution but through the living presence of the Holy Spirit.  That is to say, He does not want us to live by our weekly Sunday meetings or by the books and sermons of men who claim to know the interpretation of the Bible and what God wills for our lives.  God wants us to live through the life of His Spirit in the now (i.e., “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”) – through the words He speaks to us each moment of the day.

God wants every home to be a church, and every father and mother a pastor.  Each day, from the church in our own home, God wants us to collect the manna He has for us for that day.  He wants to be the head of His church and He can only do so if He is the head of every family.

Does God not want us to meet together, then?  God does want us to meet, just not as an institution.  God is not impressed by, nor does He desire after, our institutions.  He does not want you to assemble around a man but together with the Holy Spirit.  God wants our hearts.  He wants us to meet often and everywhere.  He wants us to share our love and impart spiritual blessings upon one another.

God wants to replace men as the head of His Church, and to allow that, we must stop institutionalizing men as our leaders.

That which is institutionalized becomes the law.  Functioning under it is nothing more than trying maneuver around in a walker or with training wheels.  Institutionalized meetings provide no “lasting” benefit.  In fact, they impede development much like a walker impedes the movement of a normal healthy adult.  Whatever is institutionalized prevents the operation of the Spirit and therefore prevents spiritual maturity.  Therefore, institutional churches can never know spiritual maturity, nor can institution in our personal lives lend itself to personal maturity.

Conclusion

In the New Testament the most frequent word that is translated “worship” is the Greek word proskuneo.  It means “to make obeisance, do reverence to, or to do homage.”  Even the English dictionary defines worship as “adoration and reverence.”  It is difficult to understand why Christians see nothing wrong with calling their pastors Reverent, or why they cannot comprehend that their adoration and reverence of Christian leaders is not worship.  The ungodly worship of Christian leaders is idolatry, and what is particularly disturbing is that most Christian leaders enjoy and encourage it.

Do we know what it really means to say we love Christ and hate religion?  Many people say Christianity is not their religion, that they love Christ instead.  But do they really understand what they are saying?

Religion occurs when you worship (“adoration and reverence”) an object or a person in place of Christ.  Many Christians would argue vociferously that they are not doing this when they actually are.  They are using outward appearance to define themselves as Christians.  They are only “skin deep.”  When you replace the working of the Holy Spirit in your life with anyone else’s teaching or books, when you look to the Bible for answers instead of going directly to God, and when you look up to, admire, listen to anything or anyone (including self-proclaimed pastors, priests, apostles, prophets, etc.) rather than God, then you are guilty of idolatry.  Such idolatry cannot help but occur in the institutions men have set up as “churches” today.  We think our “respect” for our leaders is innocuous, innocent, harmless, but it is NOT.

Contemporary Christians need to once again live with a sense of empowerment and destiny.  They have been beaten down with sermons of condemnation until they began seeing themselves as barely able to hang on.  The world, the devil, and life itself are almost too much for them.  Where is the conqueror within them that they knew at salvation?  Where, indeed!  Those who are conquerors find no place in the contemporary church.  If they are to survive there, they must be quiet and sit down.  They must be seen but not heard.  They must become part of the church cattle like all the other good members.  So they conformed, and they continue to do so to this day.

On the flip side of this, you find the fakes.  You know many of them: the ones who parade about making a big show of themselves, claiming to be conquerors and overcomers but actually are so in name only.  They are valiant warriors in their own minds, shadow boxing imaginary foes.  There is no substance found in their lives.  This type of Christian is the prototype of the prophetic and apostolic movements.  Do not be sucked into their façades and their pernicious teachings.

Christianity of His generation was adaptive, spontaneous, and opportunistic.  It was not a set of institutionalized meetings in an institutionalized place, but it was wherever Christians found themselves together.  The church was the home and the pastors were the parents.  They did not abdicate or have torn from them their ministries when they assembled together in a larger body.

The New Testament had yet to be written, and unless you lived in Jerusalem, the apostles were rarely seen.  Add to this the lack of communications and/or Christian material, and the overwhelming prevalence of pagan worship, and it becomes apparent that Christianity during His generation had no resemblance to today’s Christian culture.  It was more like the Christianity found in communist countries during the height of the cold war.

Christians during His generation found that every home had to be a church.  Due to the difficulty with transportation and an oppressive culture, they understood that if they were to mature spiritually, it had to be through their individual relationships with God, not through their church meetings, rallies, conventions, special speakers, Christian broadcasts, and revivals.

Today’s great and numerous Christian institutions are not an indication of the success of contemporary Christianity but of its death.  They are its tombs, standing as fallen ramparts to its underachievement with raised hands of surrender to the enemy.  Today’s Western churches are not mighty castles built to withstand the enemy, but farms where the mighty are domesticated into cattle and brave warriors are unwelcome nuisances.  There is no place in contemporary churches for the spiritually mature.

Today’s Christian churches and other institutions that litter the Western nations are the pagan gods of this new age.   They are the “UNKNOWN GOD” whom Christian cattle blindly serve.  They have replaced the Lord Jesus Christ as the savior of all mankind, often without the Christian cattle even knowing.  They have introduced other gods for Christians to serve, submit to, and obey: pastors, popes, and priests.  They follow self-appointed prophets and apostles who have no resemblance to those who were appointed by God and exercised His power and authority.  They are fakes, pretenders, and imitators, and they speak of things of which they know nothing.  They are blind leaders of blind followers, guiding their churches in endless circles, continually assessing numbers and financial gain as spiritual maturity in their unending spiral downward into perdition.

If Christianity is to ever become the Bride of Christ that it was destined to be, it will not be through today’s institutions.  It must return to its roots.  It must cast aside two thousand years of vain institution and adopt the spontaneous, adaptive, and opportunistic methods of His generation.  They must look to Christ as their head and the Holy Spirit for answers and guidance.  Christians must be unleashed.  They must be turned loose into the wild to discover who they were prior to their domestication, to rediscover their destiny by adapting, overcoming, and subduing this earth and the evil ingrained into it.  In order for this to happen, each home must become a church, every parent a pastor, and every child a fiery disciple!