Nine Marks of an Unhealthy Church - Jeff Johnson

Well, I love your pastor, and I get the privilege of speaking at someone else's church.

I always think I should treat the pulpit here like I want someone treating my pulpit when they're speaking at our church.

Some things you can't say, if you're a pastor of your own church, you can't say to your own people. So you can keep your mouth quiet.

But if you're a visiting pastor, you can say things and get away with it. And I want to tell you to try to do your best to take care of your pastor.

I'm not saying y 'all don't, I'm sure you love your pastor and you care for him and try to provide for him and take care of his needs and pray for him.

Pastors have it very hard. They carry a big weight. He prays for you, loves you.

He loves this church. This church is dear to Alan. I know it.

I know he loves this church. And I know y 'all love him. And he knows y 'all love him. He tells me how wonderful you are.

So there's no question about your love for him and support of him. But just in the days ahead, just make it a point to continue to pray for him and his family.

One of the greatest treasures God gives a church is a faithful pulpit.

Someone who's not ashamed of the truth that'll just preach the truth to you. That never take lightly or take for granted.

The Bible says, pay them double honor. So, where's

Alan? All right. Let's pray.

I want to talk to you about a weird subject tonight, but let's pray before we begin.

I want to talk to you about what an unhealthy church looks like. So let's pray.

Dear Lord, we're thankful for your love for us. You're really, truly the good shepherd.

If a faithful shepherd needs double honor, Lord, you deserve all honor, all glory.

Faithful you are to us. Good you are to us. You lead us in the paths of still waters.

You care for us. Our cup does overflow. We have not lacked. We have not been lacking any need or provision.

Lord, the only thing that we lack is lack of faith. So equip us with faith, dear

God, so we can trust you. Be with tonight as we think about unhealthy churches.

This we pray in your son's name. Amen. If you have your Bibles, turn to 1 Corinthians 1. And we're just going to look at the introduction of this book.

Paul's writing to an unhealthy church. We could go to the seven churches that are in the book of Revelation and see that there are unhealthy churches there.

But apparently the church of Corinth is a very unhealthy, not a church that you would really put on the list of exemplary.

They wouldn't qualify as an exemplary church. They have all kinds of problems. Problems galore.

The whole book is a book of trying to solve their problems. They have some theological problems, but most importantly they have practical problems, ungodliness.

And it's like it's chock full of problems. And here

Paul is going to give them an introduction, and it's kind of strange.

He's writing to a church that's unhealthy, and he begins by commending them.

And speaking highly of them. And let's look at this. Starting in verse 1,

Paul called by the will of God to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus. And our brother, I can't even pronounce this right now,

Sothenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who are in every place, called upon the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, both the Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God, our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.

That in every way you were enriched in Him, in all speech, in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking any gift, and you wait for the revealing of our

Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our

Lord. So what are some of the problems? I mean, this book, this is basically the best commendation that he commends them in this section, but then he goes right into their problems.

And you've got to understand that this is, he's writing this book right around 55

A .D., five years after Paul was in Corinth and planted the church.

So Paul was the first pastor of the first church of Corinth.

And the church of Corinth was just about 45 miles north, it depends by how the crow flies, 45 miles from Athens.

And it was in a kind of a port city, a lot of sailors. They had a temple to the goddess of basically love.

And that cult practice had over a thousand prostitutes. And so it's a very, a lot of iniquity, a lot of sinful behavior.

It was kind of like the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire. It's New Orleans. It's just not a place where you would go.

In fact, even among the Romans, they looked at Corinth as a place of debauchery.

And the women there were, had all the women just by, if you were a woman from Corinth, you already had a bad reputation.

And so it's a very sinful place, a sinful city. I mean, idolatry was running rampant, but also the city of Corinth was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.

That time and age, I mean, Aristotle and Plato had been dead for 300 years. But there was kind of this middle, it's kind of called middle

Platonism. It's the teachings of Plato that had infected basically all the region of Greece.

And Platonism led to some form of Gnosticism where the invisible realm, the spiritual realm is good, the physical realm is bad or to be shunned.

And so you have these Gnostics. And this was the intellectual philosophy of the day.

And basically it downplayed the physical body. And even the

Corinthians, they denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ because the body is evil, the body is bad.

So even the Corinthians are influenced by this philosophy. And the Gnostics who look at the body or the world or the physical flesh is bad, there's two types of Gnostics in that day.

You had the Stoics and then you had the Epicureans. The Stoic says, listen, you have to beat the bodies.

You have to abuse the body. The body is evil. Don't feed it.

Don't indulge it. The body is going to distract you from spiritual things. So the best way to sanctification and holiness is by denying the flesh, by crucifying the flesh, by making sure your body is miserable.

So that was a form of religious ideology brought from this

Greek philosophy. But another way of dealing with this, the Epicureans went the other route and they said, well, if the body is not good, if the body is evil and what matters is the soul, then as long as my mind is right, as long as my heart is right, as long as my soul is right, then it doesn't matter what

I do or do not do with the body. Therefore, if I want to have sexual interactions outside of marriage, it's just affecting the body.

That doesn't affect the soul. And, of course, that type of thinking influenced the

Church of Corinth because there were incest going on and the rest of the church didn't seem to care. There was no need to do church discipline.

That's no big deal. Paul said, hey, that is a big deal. Even ungodly people don't do that.

And you're tolerating sinful behavior. So you can see that this kind of this

Gnosticism has really influenced the Church of Corinth and it led to their greatest problem with the

Church of Corinth. The Church of Corinth had a false idea of spirituality. Yet, if you have this

Gnostic belief that the body is bad, the spirit is good, then this was their view of spirituality.

But Paul says, you have the wrong metric of what is spiritual.

And throughout this whole book, I think the essence of this book is trying to realign their thinking to what is truly spiritual.

Because they were thinking what is spiritual was the preaching of Apollos because Apollos was a more dynamic speaker.

I mean, he could influence a crowd and he had charismatic personality and he was just winsome and trained probably in rhetoric and had great oratory skills.

Paul, they looked down on Paul, and they said, Paul, you're preaching, according to 2

Corinthians, your preaching is of no account. There's nothing that impressive about your preaching and teaching.

When we hear you preach, you're boring, basically. You know, you can't carry a crowd.

You can't influence by your charisma and your speaking ability. And so they begin to take sides of who's the better preacher.

And so Paul was their first pastor. He pastored there for a year and a half, which was a long time for Paul.

From 50 to about almost 52. And then he of course has to leave because of persecution in his second missionary journey.

He goes back to Jerusalem. Then on his third missionary journey he comes back to Ephesus. And he stays in Ephesus for three years.

And during those three years at Ephesus he gets a report back from the Church of Corinth how bad things had become.

And one of the worst things was not only do they have all these problems and carnality and sinful behavior and this false way of thinking, they begin to criticize

Paul, their founding pastor. And they begin to look down upon him. And they had this division.

Who do they like better? Their second pastor, Apollos, who was a skilled preacher. And by the way,

Paul is the one who sent Apollos to Corinth. And so they divided between Paul and Apollos.

And from my reading of the text I think Apollos had the majority vote.

And Paul had to, throughout the book, kind of save face.

He doesn't want to. But this led on into 2 Corinthians of him still being criticized. And so Paul is dealing, he's writing back, he's an apostle, but he's an apostle that is being looked down upon by the church he pastored, that he's planted.

Now that had to be hard on Paul. I don't know how I would have bared under that.

It's hard to be critiqued as a pastor. But if you planted this church and you have the whole church, the majority of the church turning on you, how do you address this?

And so he wants to address this. And he's gotta address all these problems.

There's five problems in the first six chapters. And then there's like six theological problems in the last, from chapters 7 to chapter 15, or chapter 16.

So the book is divided. But in all these things he's addressing one problem after another.

And in the end, in chapter 3, he says, I would like to speak to you as spiritual people.

But I can't. Because you're carnal. You're carnal. And you can't receive what

I'm saying. So I have to speak to you like children. You're carnal. So I know

I don't particularly like the phrase carnal Christians. Because of the, there's a teaching that you can be a

Christian without being born again in a changed life and just live for yourself.

So that's not true. That you can be a Christian in name only but not in lifestyle.

So I don't like that phrase carnal Christians. But in this sense, Paul is calling the church a carnal church.

Full of problems. And so here's an unhealthy church. And there are a lot of unhealthy churches.

There's a lot of unhealthy churches probably in our communities. There are some churches that we would say they claim to be churches but they're probably not churches.

So I'm not gonna speak about, you know like the Catholic church is not a church. It's just not a church.

They can carry the name ecclesy or church but they're not a church of the living God. So let's think of the churches that maybe be, they may be unhealthy.

But they're still a church. Okay, where that line is, I'm not gonna tell you where that line is.

I don't know. But there are unhealthy churches. There are healthy churches and there are unhealthy churches.

And I would suggest to you that Corinth was an unhealthy church.

I mean they're not practicing church discipline. They're divided. They can't do the Lord's Supper right. I mean it's like one problem after another.

Very unhealthy. It's not the church you would want to recommend your loved ones to visit and attend and join.

They got a lot of mess. And by the way, I met someone on Saturday who's been a

Christian for 40 years and never been a member of a church. And he says because they're all bad.

It grieved me, you know. It grieved me. So I want you to think not just about churches.

I want you to apply this to Christians. Unhealthy Christians.

What are the marks, if you would, of an unhealthy church? And or as we can apply it two ways.

What are the marks of an unhealthy church? Secondly, what are the marks of an unhealthy

Christian? That's a true Christian. A weak Christian. We gotta qualify that.

If they truly are born again, you know, there are some spiritual Christians that are strong, exemplary, godly, mature, if you would.

And there are very immature, weak Christians that are unhealthy. Paint in your mind the worst

Christian you know. Everybody's looking at Alan.

Okay, somebody's gotta be the worst one, right, in the history of Christianity.

Or maybe the worst is not the worst. The most immature Christian. Or the young, weak Christian. That sounds better.

Maybe it's one of the newborn Christian kids. Maybe one of your kids are Christian.

And you say, hey, I've been a Christian for three days. Well, maybe you're the weakest Christian among us. Okay, what are the marks of the weakest

Christian? What are the marks of the most unhealthy churches?

Well, Paul gives us nine marks. Nine marks of an unhealthy church.

First, the worst Christian or the worst church or the most unhealthy church, the most unhealthy, weak

Christian is still a member of the body of Christ. That's amazing.

Look at verse one. Paul called by the will of God to the apostles of Christ Jesus and our brother,

Seothanes, to the church of God that is in Corinth. He still labeled them and identified this church, this unhealthy church, as a church of God.

He did not encourage the saints to separate, say, abandon ship. This is beyond the point of repair.

He did not encourage them to start a new church. No, rather he encouraged them to repent and obey

God. Now, he's not going to ignore the problems and wink, wink, all churches are equally healthy and we don't need to address these things.

No, but he still identified this church as a true church.

Regardless of how unhealthy a church is, if it's a true church, it consists of saints.

The least Christian is still a member of the body of Christ.

That's the first mark. Second mark, the worst Christian is still holy.

Look, to those sanctified in Christ, Jesus called to be saints there in verse two. Holiness is that which has been set apart by God.

Something that is sacred, for sacred use. You want to understand the concept of holiness.

Think of, kids, think of something like a special plate that you only use on your birthday. You know, if you used it every day and had every day you used the same plate, it's no longer special.

You know, there are some things that you have that are special, that are unique, that you don't use every day.

You bring out on unique, special occasions. Well, in the

Old Testament you had the temple and you have cups and different things that were set apart, not for your common use, but something for holy use, something for sacred use.

Well, all of God's people are saints. All of God's people, even the weakest

Christian, is a saint. Now, in the Catholic Church, the saints are only limited to a unique group of believers.

Yes, you may be a Christian. Yes, you may have faith. Yes, you may be going to heaven, they say. But the saints are reserved for those and only the few who can perform a miracle, right?

In the Catholic Church, to be a saint, you had to perform a miracle. And you had to be verified.

That miracle had to be verified by the apostolic seed, by the Catholic Church itself.

And so, it deemed not just that you did a miracle, but you had enough good works, more than you needed for your own salvation.

You had enough good works to have a surplus. So your additional good works go into the treasury of the church to help others, like you and me, get to heaven.

So they have a special category of believers who reach the point of sainthood.

But the rest of the common people are not saints. But the Bible calls...

Well, that's a heresy, it's not true. But the Bible calls the newest

Christian who's born again, who's two seconds old, holy, a saint.

Set apart out of this world. Been purified from their sins.

And notice that this is past tense. When we talk about the doctor of sanctification, there's two sense in which sanctification happens.

There's a positional sanctification. And I think that's what John talks about.

First John, it says, he who's been born of God cannot sin.

It doesn't mean that Christians do not commit sin. It means that there's something new within that Christian.

There's a new heart, a new nature. And I believe it's the very nature of God been infused into a

Christian that makes him a new creation, a new person. He has something in him or in her that is pure.

And that new nature is perfectly already set apart.

But yet there's this progressive sanctification where we grow in maturity and holiness.

And we slowly become more and more like Christ Jesus. And that's in the process that we're all currently in.

But even the weakest Christian has been set apart by God.

Paul addresses them as carnal believers, weak believers, immature believers.

But he also says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9, he says, don't you know that homosexuals and idolaters and liars and drunks and all the list of types of sinners will not inherit the kingdom of God?

But that's not you anymore. That's not who you are. You're not identified by drunks and homosexuals.

You're not identified by these outward sins. You're no longer liars. You're saints.

And what does that teach us? It teaches us that there's no such thing as a true

Christian that can live in habitual sin. Now, there's no...

Until we get to glory, there's no perfect Christian. We're all in different stages of maturity and sanctification.

But it also means that this idea that you can just live in open rebellion against God and claim to be

Christian is just not true. And if you think you're a Christian and you're not submitting your lives to the lordship of Christ, then you need to reexamine your profession of faith.

But know this. Even the weakest Christian has done that.

Even the weakest Christian serves Christ Jesus as Lord. What I'm trying to say is there's no bad

Christians. There's immature Christians. There's unhealthy

Christians. There's Christians that stumble, backslide for a temporary season.

But they're all new creations. They're all special. If you find a

Christian anywhere, you found a treasure. You found something that even God himself says is holy.

Every child of God is holy. And I want you to see this. So even this church of Corinth is filled with saints.

It is made up of true, set -apart people for God's purpose.

The third mark of an unhealthy church and an unhealthy Christian is that they've all been called out by God.

Look at verse 2, the end of verse 2. To those sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ. See, they're called to be saints and they're called to call upon the

Lord. So why do you call upon the name of the Lord? Because God called you.

God called you to call upon Him. Every one of the children of God who have cried out, save me, dear

God. I'm calling upon you are evidence that they have themselves been called out by God.

They've been chosen of God. They've been, if you would, selected by God.

The fourth mark of an unhealthy church and an unhealthy Christian is that they're all servants of the

Lord. Look at verse 2. Called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours, Christ. See, I like how he says they call upon our

Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours,

Christ. See, we're calling upon the name of the Lord, not just for salvation, but we're calling to submit ourselves to His Lordship.

We acknowledge Him as Lord. And in 2 Corinthians it says no one can say

Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So all

Christians, even the weakest ones of us, are under the

Lordship of Jesus Christ. We have submitted our lives. Jesus said, you cannot be my disciple unless you have forsaken your mother, your father, your brother, yea, even forsaken your own self.

Isn't that amazing? That this is true of all of us.

That's true of whoever Christian you know. I know they're a

Christian, but you think, man, they're stumbling or they're worried here. That's fine to be worried about them and trying to help them and disciple them and encourage them.

They need someone to come alongside of them and help them. But don't forget how great they still are.

What a great work God has done in their lives. You see, remember, they're

Jesus' servants, not your servants. Remember that.

They bow to Christ, not to you. Sometimes we get our personal convictions and particular positions that we start seeing the

Christians with. I know I do this all a lot myself. I've arrived to this level of knowledge.

I've arrived to this level of piety. I've got these spiritual disciplines in my life. And I put these restrictions around me.

These are the things I don't do. These are the things I try to do. And you begin to look at other people that are not measuring up to my particular standards or my particular convictions.

And I begin to go, okay, why are you not doing this? Why are you not doing this? And I forget that, hey, they're not my servants, right?

And I begin, it's easy for all of us to start looking down, not for the sake of trying to help a brother or sister in love, but it's easy for us unintentionally.

I think we do this unintentionally. We begin to look down upon what we would think of immature

Christians. We start to look down upon them. And we maybe start looking down upon neighboring churches.

Oh, that's an unhealthy church. We start to get this kind of like, and Paul warns us in Romans 14, 4, who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

It is before his own master that he stands or falls. So I'm like, I don't go to a business and start judging the employees there when that employer might really love that worker.

He said, who are we to judge another man's servants? And he says, he will be upheld for the

Lord is able to make him stand. So often we, I know I've done this, often we begin critical of this

Christian because he's not measuring up. And we begin to look down, down our nose upon that as a weak and troubled.

And we start, you know, and it's like, who are we to judge when it is the

Lord who's going to judge and the Lord intends to uphold that Christian. As we're tearing them down, the

Lord says, I'm going to uphold them. He's my child or she's my child. This is a saint.

This is a Christian that's been set apart of God. And let me reassure you, you may think that you're the worst

Christian in the room, the worst Christian you know is you. That might be your thought.

I'm weak. I'm not very good. I don't know much theology. I don't,

I mean, I've stumbled here and there. But if you do know the Lord, know this, he's going to uphold you.

He's going to keep you. He views you as a child of the living

God. Now he's not, he's not happy to allow you, he's not happy that you're stumbling.

And he wants your maturity, of course. But remember that you're still his servant and he's still your

Lord. Fifth mark of an unhealthy church and an unhealthy

Christian is, is that they have all, we have all been recipients of divine favor.

It says in verse three, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, we all stand not by our merits. We all stand not because we have matured theologically.

We all stand not by our piety and our spiritual disciplines and good works and how hard we've tried.

We all stand as saints by grace. We all have peace.

The weakest Christian has peace with God because of grace through Jesus Christ.

That's true of every saint. We see the reason why

Paul can give thanks for even the weakest Christian, we see verse four, I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace that was given you in Christ Jesus.

Now think about this. He's about to go in and say, I give thanks for you. You know, you're tearing up church discipline.

You're overlooking terrible sins in the church. The Lord's Supper is havoc and many of you are sick because of it.

You know, you're divided over Paul and Apollos. You're carnal in your thinking. You got all these problems.

But before he gets it, he says, I give thanks for you. I thank

God for you. And remember that. Remember that.

This is for me to hear. We stand by grace. We have peace with God through Christ Jesus.

And we can thank God for every true church, no matter how unhealthy it is.

We can thank God for the church of Corinth. I thank God for that church. I thank

God for these saints. I thank God for wherever there is a true saint, I thank

God for. And I say that because, you know, I'm trying to mature myself.

And, you know, it's easy for Reformed Baptists to come to this level of theology and we look down on maybe true

Christians. And I know that's the key. True Christians that might be charismatic are true

Christians that might have this particular unhealthy belief that is detrimental to their soul and detrimental to the church.

I'm not denying that. I'm not denying the need for healthiness. Paul spent the rest of the chapter trying to correct this church and help this church out of their unhealthy.

God. Six, the worst Christian is still gifted by God.

We see this in verse 5 through 7. You may think, hey, I'm that weak

Christian you're thinking about. You know, I am not very important. I don't know what my role is anymore.

What do I do? What do I do to serve the church?

I don't have any gifts or talents or much knowledge. Paul says, though these

Christians had a long way to go, he says they still had everything they needed.

Look at verse 5. You know, he's thanking God for this. That in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of the

Lord Jesus Christ. So you have everything you need, this church. God has gifted you grace and peace.

He's called you. He's given you knowledge and he's spiritually gifted you.

So you have all the resources that you need to be a complete church.

Just think of it as a church as a people, not a building. But think of, you know, here's this church that's in shambles.

The roof's off. The shingles are off. You know, everything's in disarray. And it's like, man, this church is in bad shape.

Or this building's in bad shape. But you can see Paul going, well, I thank God that you've got shingles.

Hey, they're not up on the roof yet, but you've got them here. I thank God for these two -by -fours. I thank God that you've got everything you need if you just can put it together.

You've got all the resources that you need to be a healthy church is already within you because you have

Christ and you've been spiritually gifted. We have all things that the

Bible tells us in Peter that pertains to life and godliness. So it's not like any unhealthy church doesn't have the resources with the word of God at their fingertips and the grace of God in their life.

They have all the resources to be mature church. So Paul says, I can thank God for you.

I can thank God. You're workable. Don't abandon ship. This is a workable situation.

And this is a beautiful thing, right? Even Providence Baptist Church here. Y 'all are a wonderful church.

And whatever is lacking here, you have what you need to grow and mature.

That's something to rejoice over. They were not lacking in any spiritual gifting.

And know this, when the Lord saved you, he's appointed good works for you.

He's appointed you to have spiritual gifting. And what I love about that is he gifted the church uniquely with different people who have unique gifts.

And that's why we need the local church. Because I've only got a few gifts and you've got other gifts.

The other person has got the other gifts. And together we are a complete body lacking nothing through Christ Jesus, through the work of Christ Jesus working through us.

But Christ has chosen to work his grace through the saints.

So he works in you by working through the other saints, encouraging you or reviewing you or helping you or correcting you or comforting you.

So it's this mechanism of the body coming together that God works. And so we need one another.

And we can thank God. You can thank God that you have all that you need right here to be a healthy church.

Seventh, working our way through. Even the worst Christian is kept by Christ. We see this at the end of verse 7 into verse 8.

It doesn't matter how many times we fall or how many times we stumble. Christ has promised to sustain us to the end.

And he says, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end?

He's talking to this church of Corinth. And it looks like this church of Corinth is about to disrupt and fall to pieces and be abandoned by God.

Or the saints within the church are about to fall away and apostatize. And of course apostasy is real.

There may have been several members of that church that did fall away. But here he's giving this great word of hope and promise that God loves them.

And even though they're unhealthy, he's going to sustain them and keep them until the end.

I love how Paul says in Romans that who shall separate us from the love of God?

You know, we're not saved by works. We're not going to be kept by works. It's by Christ.

It's by this gospel message of mercy and grace. And that never changes.

You know, you don't become justified by grace and by faith alone and think that we're going to be sanctified through this idea of it being merited by us.

Sanctification is based upon the merits of Christ. And we work out our sanctification by faith in Christ, not faith in ourselves.

But God has promised to not leave us or forsake us or abandon us. And he says nothing, tribulations, distress, persecution, hardships, nothing can separate us from God's hand.

The weakest saint that you think is trembling and about to fall and about to stumble, but it's a true believer, born again.

That's the key. Truly born again is going to be sustained by the mercy of God until the very end.

None will be left behind. You know, the Lord said this, I have lost none of them except the one that was appointed,

Judas. I've kept them all. And he's going to keep every one of us.

The weakest one of us. Now here's the eighth mark of an unhealthy Christian or unhealthy church.

The unhealthy Christian is still guiltless. Look at verse 8. Who will sustain you to the end, guiltless.

I love this. To the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, justification is when God declares you innocent without stain, without guilt, without any flaws or failures.

I mean, to be declared completely innocent. Not just innocent as if you didn't do anything wrong, but declared as if you'd done everything right.

You're perfectly righteous without one stain, without one little bit of iniquity.

Oh, well, you got this. No, you're perfectly guilt -free in the eyes of God. And that status of justification or guiltlessness, this decree that you're completely innocent and perfectly righteous, this decree of justification doesn't go up and down in sanctification.

You don't lose that. You remain in the eyes of God perfectly free of charges of sin.

No condemnation ever until the end. And so here's this church of Corinth.

I don't know which is more amazing, the grace of God that saves us initially out of our sins or the grace of God that continues for God to look at us as sinless as we are born again and we continue to sin.

But God continues to view us through the lens of Jesus Christ. That's amazing.

It's amazing truth. And so the worst Christian is still a justified Christian forever.

And we don't believe that. Or we have a hard time believing that. And I'll tell you why you have a hard time believing that.

Because when you do sin, you feel like you have to wash it away by some form of penance.

That's the Catholic church teaching. You know, you feel guilty? Well, go do this and do that and pray and fast or whatever.

Some form of self -punishment and good works to make up for it.

That's unbelief. Doesn't mean we don't need to repent. Doesn't mean we don't need to strive for good works.

But our repentance comes from the knowledge, the faith that we are righteous in Christ Jesus for now and forever.

And God never views us any way other than that. And if God can view us that way, then we need to look at all saints through the lens of justification.

The best and worst Christian are equally justified. The Apostle Paul is no more justified than Jeff Johnson.

We're all equal at the foot of Christ, the foot of the cross. That should cause us to rejoice.

I mean, hey, that's the... Hey, I don't know who the worst Christian is in the history of the world. Let's find that person and let's put them...

And we would see someone to marvel at. We would see someone and go, wow, I could write a biography on this one.

This is a hero of the faith. And this is our worst one, the ninth mark.

The worst Christian is still and remains in fellowship with Christ Jesus. God is faithful, verse 9, by whom you were called into his fellowship of his son,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. Here's the Church of Corinth.

No matter all their immaturity and cornality and problems that need to be addressed and corrected, he does not say they don't have access to the fellowship of God.

Remember, justification, not sanctification, not sanctification merits your fellowship of Christ.

The grounds of your fellowship with God, your entrance into the holies of holies, to be able to go into the presence of the living

God is not based on how good you are or how much you prayed today or based upon how much knowledge of the

Bible you have or how much purity you've produced in the last six months.

I'm not saying that his felt presence is not connected to our godliness.

I'm not saying that. If you hold iniquity in your heart,

God is going to hinder your prayers. I'm not saying that. But no matter what state you're in, no matter where you're at on the spectrum of maturity, you have full access through Jesus Christ into the very throne room of God.

And you can say, Abba, Father. Your sins do not hold you back from Christ.

Your sins do not hold you back from God. It's your unbelief. Run to Him.

Every Christian has access to the Father, to Christ Jesus, has fellowship, the basis of fellowship, and has every right.

And I love this. You don't just come to Christ and say, hey, here's my good works. Look at me. My kids are like that.

They play basketball. Watch me, Dad. They want to do a trick. And I want them to want my approval.

And that's awesome. And that's how we are sometimes. Look, Lord, I'm praying. Look, Lord, I'm reading my

Bible. Look, Lord, I'm witnessing. Look, Lord, I'm proud of this. I want you to see. And I think that's OK.

It's like we want our Heavenly Father to see us. And we're seeking His approval. Like we would seek our earthly father's approval.

But I like the fact that you and I can take our sins and go, here's my sins.

And I'm not proud of them. Lord, here they are. You know.

You see. You see who I am. I'm a weak Christian. I'm very immature.

I need help. And the Father will embrace you. He will receive you.

This is the basic message of the gospel. We live by it. We don't just need it initially. We need it daily. You see, all

Christians are equally made right with God through the work of Christ. Now, I want you to see this because some of the applications

I'm bringing, this is the end. I've got a couple of applications here. One is every

Christian is an amazing testimony of God's grace. Every one of them is a trophy of God's grace.

This is the amazing thing. I don't know who the worst one is, but the worst one is still amazing.

Still amazing. And they all die triumphantly.

They all are sanctified. They all have good works. They all, they're not just justified, but God's worked a good work in them.

And they've all fulfilled the pointed works that God has designed for them to do.

I know one brother that had a funeral, went to his funeral. And this brother,

I honestly probably looked down upon him to my shame. And I meant that to you.

Or I didn't think he was very mature. But I did think he was a Christian. But I went to his funeral, and I hadn't seen him in 10 years or for a while.

And I heard the end of his life. How he brought all of his kids and his family and friends.

And he says, I need to apologize. I need to repent of where I went astray. You know,

I didn't attend church for a while. That was wrong. I didn't do this. That was wrong. And that was an influence on you.

I need you to forgive me. And all his family forgave him. That last six months or a year of his life was just a testimony of such humility.

And a man that stumbled along the way in his Christian life. But a man that went through the finish line running as fast as he can.

And I was like, man, that one year of his life could write a whole biography on the grace of God in his life.

I'm not saying he is a weak Christian or was a weak Christian. I'm just saying, even this person won the victory.

He triumphed over Satan at the end of the day. And I'm saying every Christian is going to do that.

Every Christian is going to be triumphant through Christ Jesus because it's Christ who is working in them. And so for us, never despise a true

Christian. I'm not saying we don't need discernment because many say they're

Christians that are not. Right? I don't like people living in sin, living in adultery, living with their girlfriends and boyfriends and acting like they're

Christians. I'm like, no, you can't continue to live that way. I'm not saying lose discernment. But if they're a true

Christian, don't despise them. Love them.

Praise God for them. Thank God for them. But also remember personal holiness does matter to God.

And that's why this rest of this book is written. It wasn't just good job.

We love you. We're thankful for you. The end. No, he spends the rest of this book trying to address their immaturities, correct their false thinking, their carnality.

Yes, we want to grow. But the foundation, he had something to work with.

He knew that he had true Christians to work with. And thus, he was thankful for this unhealthy church.

Let's pray. Lord, we're thankful that you did not give up on the church of Corinth.

We're thankful that we will be meeting these saints one day.

Many of their names we don't remember. I mean, we don't know. But Lord, it'd be such a joy to meet these saints and see how you grew them and how in the end, even with all their failures, like King David, in the end, they crossed the finish line triumphantly through your grace.

Help us, dear Lord. Keep us. Lord, help this church here to be a healthy church.