I find that there is often a big difference between what we profess to be true concerning what we believe as followers of Jesus, and how we act on or demonstrate the reality of what we believe. This is a common biblical theme; there is a difference between knowing what to do and doing it.
What prompted this thought in me was a recent statement someone made to me that the church that I attend was lukewarm. You know where I am going with this; lukewarm = being spit out of the mouth of Jesus (not the end I had in mind, from Revelation 3:16). You can understand why I was concerned. So I asked myself how you could make the judgment that a group of followers of Jesus was lukewarm. I mean, you need to have some sort of mental checklist that you work your way down, and if more check marks are on one side than the other you can reach your conclusion, “Yep, lukewarm.” But how do you develop that checklist? I suppose that you can go to the bible and pull out the beatitudes of Jesus, the fruits of the spirit in Galatians, the chapter on love in I Corinthians, or maybe the ten commandments and sugar them down into check boxes, but you still have to know how to judge whether love, joy, peace, patience and so on meet the biblical standards, and then you further need to be able to tell that someone may not be ready to murder someone, but might instead harbor deep-seated anger in their hearts against their brother that is as good as murder. And our judgment can’t just be based on agreement with doctrinal statements, because here too beliefs can be sorted broadly into opinions/preferences and convictions. Only the latter category affects the way you live your life. As James 2:18 states:
“someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.”
Said another way, the proof of the evangelical pudding is in the way we live, not in what we profess to believe.
And this is not always easy to judge rightly. As evangelicals we often appeal to the biblical text and definitions, but more often than not we end up making our judgments whether a person is a real Christian or not based on how often they are in church, whether they faithfully (and generously) give when the collection plate is passed, their willingness to volunteer for church activities and committees, whether they smoke, drink, dance or play cards, or any of a dozen other measuring sticks the church has used in its history. In the end of the matter, however, we really have no idea of how the Father looks on the hearts of those we have put on the balance scales, and then there is always that nasty plank that seems to obscure our vision.
But let me return to my original question and let me offer a historical perspective on how we can judge whether our church, and specifically ourselves, are on the road to stagnant lukewarmness. If it is true, as John says in I John 4:20, “If you do not love your brother whom you can see, how can you love God whom you cannot see?” then we may have a starting point for measuring our walk as followers of Jesus. The historic church developed two lists that defined our spiritual duty towards one another and all those outside our church doors, the first is drawn from the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, and the second from the various teachings of the bible. List one is referred to as the corporal works of mercy, those things that we ought to do that contribute to the physical welfare of those we come in contact with. The second list are the spiritual works of mercy, those things that we ought to do if we see a person as bearing the imprint of the Father and we desire their eternal good. In them, I think, we find a handy measure for whether we are followers of Jesus, a congregation of those He has called, or merely going through the motions.
Without further comments, consider these. The corporal works of mercy are to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to welcome in the homeless, to visit the sick, to ransom the captive, and to bury the dead. The spiritual works of mercy are to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to admonish sinners, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive offences willingly, to comfort those that are afflicted, and to pray for the living and the dead. In these lists we find a guard against lukewarmness. In these lists we find an answer to the question “What should I be doing as a follower of Jesus?” In these lists we find a summary of what our church congregation and committees ought to be investing our time and money towards. To borrow the words of the Apostle Peter in II Peter 1:10-11 (commenting on his own list of measuring standards):
“for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.”
