Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

It isn’t uncommon to hear modern people speak negatively about Christianity or Evangelicalism or what politics calls the religious right. Interestingly, few will say anything negative about Judaism or Islam for fear of political backlash, or perhaps acts of terrorism in retaliation, but when it comes to the Christian tradition, moderns love to pick the most extreme examples and use them against the faith as a whole. Catholicism is associated with pedophilia, evangelicalism is equated with corrupt, science denying profiteers, and the Christian tradition is portrayed as backward, homeschooling, misogynistic, colonial, racist, sexually repressed and out of touch with reality.

The cultural church has adopted a posture that it is at war with the culture, so it fights back using the collective power of its constituents in the political arena. The omnipresence of cultural decline validates the cultural church’s adoption of pre-tribulation, pre-millennial eschatology as it huddles together and awaits Jesus to come and rescue the devout while bringing judgement upon everyone else. The more the church can point to a rise in evil in the world, the more pews it can fill with those who are fearful, and even hateful. The church’s message has increasingly become an evacuation strategy, and a call to jump in the lifeboat before the titanic sinks.

This series is asking the question: “Is the contemporary church, with its posture toward the culture, the design of its Founder?” If the Bible is the revelation of God, and if it provides truthful and reliable instruction for how Christ followers are to relate to the culture, then why is the contemporary church completely different in its posture, mission, and message from that of its early beginnings? Was the mission of the church to go to war with the culture or was it to transform the culture?

To answer this, I’m taking us back to where it all begins, so that we can see the original blueprint and lay it next to our contemporary experience. Once we see the difference, perhaps restoration and reform can be possible.

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 18-19)

We saw in part one that the Church is first established on an ontological watershed. Will it be based on an objective “knowing about?” Or will it be based upon a subjective “knowing?” In part two we established that the Church is not a building but a people who are being built. Today we revisit the same passage with a look at this portion about the gates of hell.

There was an idiom used in the New Testament known in Greek as “púlai haidou” which is used in this verse. The term literally means “the gates of Hades“. If you remember from my series entitled “What the Hell?“, I explain how Hades is from Greek mythology and similar to the Jewish idea of Sheol which represents the dwelling place of the dead. The idea is that the dead do not come back to life, because once they enter Hades, the gates close and no one can ever return. This little nuance helps us see the idea that the gates are not so much a force which keeps people from entering, but a force which prevents people from leaving.

There is an interesting play on words in this text. The first one we saw was with Peter (Petros) and Rock (Petra). The second one occurs here in the word we saw last week “oikodoméo” (to build up, to make more able) and the word “katiszúo” (defeat, prevail, be fully able). Jesus is saying, “I will make those who assemble around me fully able, and the gates of hell will not be fully able.“ In other words, Jesus is saying: “Not even death will be fully able to keep those whom I build up around me from doing my work.”

The blueprint for Jesus’ Church, the people whom he is building up, is that not even death can prevent it. This revelation becomes a portal through which we discover that this group of people gathered around Christ comprises, at this moment, both the living and those who have died. If the biblical blueprint, expressed here by Jesus himself, is that his Church comprises the dimensions of both the temporal world and the eternal world, and at this point there exists no denominational divides, how does the modern church justify it’s denominational tribalism, and its insistence upon defining its existence by its possessions of buildings and economic power, and historical influence? Is it enough that modern churches only talk of the eternal kingdom existing “one day after we die?“

Last week I provided a test whereby we could know if we are actually free in Christ from institutional overreach by exercising our freedom to NOT GO to church, and to learn instead how to BE the church within our own experiential sphere of life. A very threatening test to those wielding power. However, the next test in our understanding of the biblical definition of Church is even more threatening to those in power. That is, once you are inspired to return, do so into a completely different community than the one you left. Go from community to community for a while. You see, only a truly free soul can leave the culturally contrived machinery and still thrive in God. When we desire community again, by returning to one that is completely different, then we gain a glimpse of the larger, more eternal gathering, and the cultural scaffolding and tradition has less of a hold on us.

After much consideration, I offer these implications to you:

You’ll discover, as I did, that Jesus’ true church can and does exist within all of these assemblies, and can and does exist beyond all of them. Being able to separate them is vital to our growth and understanding as a Christ follower. If the denomination, tradition, or framework was actually the Spirit filled, living, empowered body of Christ, it would have a history of transforming the culture, not just standing against it, which it clearly did at it’s inception. It is my conclusion that by institutionalizing and becoming an alternative religion, Christianity essentially rebuilt the temple and the power dynamic of the religion which this movement subverted in the first place. From a prophetic perspective, I believe the Spirit of Christ has largely left the cultural church, and most subscribers have no idea. Like Samson, they awake and did not realize the Lord had departed. (Judges 16:20)

“‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.” (Revelation 3:1-3)

If we truly want to reform Christ’s Church, then we must be willing to cut off all the cancer that has attached itself to the simple, pure blueprint for Christ followers and how they are to relate to the culture. People complain about the decline of our civilization, but the church hasn’t been much salt, nor much light in a darkened world. It hasn’t be the preservative nor influence despite having the numbers to do so. Instead of transforming and creating the culture, the church has simply become the culture, by trying to appease it, be attractive to it, or by pulling back from it, believing God’s plan is to eventually remove it. The church today seeks retribution on the culture, not restoration.

Our culture is not going to hell in a hand basket…its decline is the byproduct of an ontology (sense of being) that lives from the captivity of hell everyday…its exactly the world created by those who don’t know who they truly are. Jesus said his assembly would be built in the midst of this living place of the dead, and that it would be fully able, while this Hades would no longer be able to keep people captive. The mission of Jesus Church is liberation…that’s what salvation means. Jesus’ Church is planted at the epicenter of the place of the dead, and it calls people to follow Christ into freedom in the midst of it. Since the gates can no longer contain us, the boundaries of hell do not really exist, this dwelling place of the dead (be it in our mind or our culture) is displaced just as darkness is displaced by light. We don’t so much get out of hell, or prevent people from going to hell, instead Jesus’ design is to eradicate hell’s authority by subverting it with influence.

What we have then is Jesus’ blueprint for his Church, and unfortunately it is not as marketable nor comfortable as the elaborate suburban country clubs of entertainment which we have erected in his name. He asks us to carry a cross, not a 30 year mortgage on a new sanctuary. He said, “I have no place to lay my head” not, “I hope you are comfortable and entertained on weekends.” What many Christians call persecution is really just a religious virtue signal of someone who sees themselves as better than everyone else. Like the rich young ruler who followed all the rules, the modern church has “gone away disheartened” because it has amassed great possessions and cultural power of which it is unwilling turn loose. (Mark 10:22)

Next week we’ll again revisit this blueprint and examine the Church’s work of binding and loosing while it remains juxtaposed between two kingdoms.