The Church of Jesus Christ
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Where have all the bracelets gone? And what does it mean? Five years ago the church, at least in America, picked up one of its occasional obsessions. Everyone was asking the same question, asking it so much, in fact, that to save ourselves a few milliseconds, and to convince ourselves that we were ultra hip, we abbreviated that question, WWJD? We were supposed to believe that the millions of bracelets, followed by the millions of hats and t-shirts and bumper stickers, was evidence that God's people had finally latched on to the true secret of spiritual success, asking ourselves, What would Jesus do? Apparently, however, the trick didn't work. Somehow, the church that once was so busy wondering what Jesus would do, no longer is so concerned. The great kingdom building question is now relegated to garage sales. The only people still wearing this Jesus Junk are those who are always hopelessly Left Behind.

Which may answer our question of just what became of the WWJD fad. It was simply replaced by another obsession for the American church. This fad is consumed with a question rather different from what Jesus would do. This obsession asks, WWJR, when will Jesus return? More realistically, it asks, what will it look like, right before He comes back? And so the great evangelical rapture machine keep cranking out more ways to become the new obsession every few years.

The problem there is that we tend to grow weary more quickly each time we trot this stuff out, unless, of course, things are particularly ugly in the middle east at the time. The other problem is that we don't like to be brought down too far when things are going well. This is why after WWJD, and after the last round of WWJR, we, again American evangelicals, turned to another fad/obsession. This time, though as far as I know no one ever put it on a bracelet, we all wanted to know, WWJP, what would Jabez pray?

With the first obsession, evangelicals took a step or two toward theological liberalism. It looked to Jesus not as a savior of sinners, not as Lord over all things, but as an example to be followed. With the second obsession evangelicals lurched a bit into assorted millenarian heresies. We stopped doing the work of building the kingdom, of being salt and light, and followed a different calling, building a lifeboat to escape this wretched world, and the tribulation to come. With the third obsession we turned toward the health and wealth crowd, the name it-claim it gurus who tell us that all God needs to unleash His power on our behalf is for us to say the words. (Of course, I've skipped that other evangelical obsession, prevalent among those among us who cannot distinguish between God's kingdom and America's, between God's savior, and America's savior, especially since September 11, those who ask, WWWW, what would W. want?)

What it seems that no one is asking in the evangelical church, is precisely the question that should be asked. There are many different ways to express the question. You can ask, WWJC, what would Jesus command? You can ask, WWJW, what would Jesus want? Or you can tie two of the wayward obsessions together and ask, WWJP, what would Jesus pray?

In the original Greek New Testament there are two words that are translated as one word in English New Testaments. That is, whenever you read the word, "church" the original either had kuriake or ekklesia. The first comes from the Greek word kurios, which word played an important role in the early church. Kurios being translated means "lord." The Roman empire practiced a kind of religious pluralism. As they would conquer a culture they would not, through brute force, seek to Romanize it. This is why in Palestine in the day of Jesus the Jews were able to practice their religion, even while under Roman rule. The Roman political leadership didn't care what you believed, what God you worshipped, under one condition. Believe what you wanted, but every one had to publicly confess, Kaiser ho Kurios, Caesar is Lord. The first creed of the church however, was another three word phrase, Christos ho Kurios, Christ is Lord. The kuriake, then, were those belonging to the Lord. When someone said "church" in the first century, one way they would say it would be with, "Those who belong to the Lord." Thousands upon thousands of these who belonged to the Lord became the first martyrs to the Christian faith because they went to their deaths for their conviction that Jesus is Lord, over all things, including those things over which Caesar claimed to be Lord.

In short, the first century Christian, in merely affirming the most fundamental of creeds, was pronouncing on himself a death sentence. Many today in other parts of the world, make the same kind of commitment. But not in the west. Western evangelicals, as a general rule, are not only not prepared to die for the faith, they're not prepared to be inconvenienced by the Lordship of Christ. We have entire schools of thought, seminaries, Bible colleges and mammoth para-church ministries which affirm that you can have Jesus as your savior, but refuse to have Him as Lord. The evangelical "church" is over run with those who deny that they are kuriake, that they belong to the Lord. Jesus, we'll allow Him to die for us, we'll seek to tap into His power, we'll follow His example, but we will not obey His law. We will not submit our will to His will. Our knees will not bow and our tongues will not confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

What would Jesus command'? What would He want? For what would He pray? He would pray that His bride would submit to Him, that like Sarah millennia ago, His bride would call Him Lord. If ever there was a fundamental notion, a truth so simple, and at the same time so vital, this is it. That if we are to be those who belong to the Lord, we must recognize the Lordship of the Lord. If we are to honor Him, we must honor Him as Lord. If we are to grow in grace, we must, by His grace, come to recognize His word as law. It's not at all complicated. We don't need some new sophisticated marketing scheme. We don't need a best-selling book or series of books to make this point. What we need is pulpits from which will ring the call to submit to our Lord. What we need is the power of the Word preached. What we need is not a faddish, but a current picture of our great King. He is not a baby on a manger. He is not even suffering on the cross. Such has come and gone. Now we need to see Jesus as one sitting on white horse. He is called Faithful and True. In righteousness our Lord judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on His head are many crowns. Out of this Lord's mouth comes a sharp sword, and that with it He should strike the nations. He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Our Lord, if we are His, is a great and terrible Lord. For what I have described is the vision John received, almost 2000 years ago. It is not my word, but the very Word who is the Lord. And if we who claim to be His bride, but continue to shield our eyes, if we will worship a Jesus who is only meek and mild and refuse to see Him as He is, then we will meet in judgment His great wrath.

But there is more. The church is not only those who belong to the Lord, who are ready, indeed eager to die in the profession of that Lordship, but the church is also the ekklesia, which, being translated means, "The called out ones." What are we called out from? And what are we called out to? If we want to understand what the church is called to be, we need to answer those questions.

We are called out of darkness, and into light. We arc called out of worldliness, and are called to an other-worldliness. We are called out of the patterns of this world, and are called to have our minds renewed. We are called to no longer love the world and the things that are of the world, but to love Christ and His church. We are, in short, called to be separate, set apart, holy. Jesus Christ, our Lord, tells us in His word, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes Himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4). But wait, how can that be? The only reason we love the world is so that we might win them to Christ, right? The only reason we try as hard as we can to get along with the world, to not be offensive, is because we are trying to woo and seduce the lost into the kingdom, right? We adopt the manners and mores of the world around us for Jesus' sake, right?

Jesus Christ our Lord says, "Wrong." We cannot love the world for Jesus' sake, because Jesus says that when we love the world we make ourselves the enemy of God. Which means that when we claim to be mimicking the world for Jesus' sake, we show ourselves not only to be the enemies of God, but liars as well. We are like a wife that claims she is only sleeping with someone not her spouse for the sake of the family.

But then how can you be set apart, called out, holy? We as the church do this by recognizing the Lordship of Christ. It always comes back to that. When we recognize His Lordship, we adopt His goals. That means that we shape our lives around making manifest His reign over all things. We no longer, like our heathen neighbors, invest our lives in the pursuit of personal peace and affluence. We no longer, for instance, raise our children with the same goal in mind, that they might get great jobs and make lots of money. Instead we raise up our children that they might be as arrows in a quiver, weapons in the warfare that we wage with the forces of darkness. We no longer judge people by outward appearances, aligning ourselves with those who share our hobbies, or our income levels, or our skin color. Instead we live and die with the church of Jesus Christ, recognizing what our Lord told us, that we are one body, and that in Him there is neither Jew nor Greek.

When we are set apart our political views come not from the right or the left, but from above. Indeed, when we are set apart we remember that we are citizens of another kingdom, that our allegiance is to Christ and those who are His, not to any flag, no matter how honorable it might once have been.

What Jesus wants, what He prays for is that we would recognize what He has made us, His people, belonging to Him, and set apart from this world. We must recognize that His calling on our lives does not end, but only begins when He grants us new life. For Jesus is still at work, sanctifying, purifying His bride, by the washing of the Word. "That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5:27).