God Loves… Himself

Referring to the message of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer says this: “It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.” This book was originally published in 1961. What Tozer wrote about is far worse now than when he first wrote about it.

While Tozer says that the Church has not surrendered her concept of God deliberately, I am not so sure. However, he is surely correct when he says that it was done “little by little.” Perhaps what has happened is that the thought of liberalism has crept in and men taught the same things at first and yet without the true concept of God. Later on, they dropped most of the façade. We then had a conservative reaction and people wanted to conserve the old morality, the old way of doing church, and the old teachings. But all of those can be done with less and less of the glory of God. Instead of teaching a doctrine from the Bible as that which the glory of God shines through, the teaching then simply becomes a way that man pleases God. It then becomes even more centered on man and is how man is to live a better life.

It is true that the Church is simply unaware of this. However, this means that it is blind. The Church is to be the representative of God in the world and it does not even know who God is? The Church is set apart to declare the excellencies of God in the world and it does not know Him? This is indeed a very tragic situation. The Church is not declaring the excellencies of God to the world, but is telling the world how great it is and how much God is impressed with it. The Church is certainly backwards in its approach, but it is easier to exist in the world like this.

Tozer is most likely right on target when he says that the church is doing this little by little. It is not as if the Church jettisons teachings that are held dearly by the people. It is not until the teaching has been eroded over time that the teaching is then said to be cultural only or intellectually not possible. We can see this in the churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. The church at Ephesus did many good things. “‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; 3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. 4 ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:2-4). The problem with this church, as set out in the text, is that they left God as their first and foremost love. Perhaps they did their deeds faithfully, but did not have love. Perhaps they did not tolerate evil men and tested those who came to them claiming to be apostles, but they did those things without true love for God. I Corinthians 13:1-3 is quite clear on this subject. Yet, if the Church has a continuing loss of the majesty of God, it will have a continuing loss of love for God. God is the only source for true love in the universe and when He withdraws, so does the source for true love.

As God has withdrawn from the Church, She has been turned over to a lower and lower conception of His majesty. The Church, in terms of a lofty conception of His glory, is at a very low ebb. This is true of conservative and Reformed churches as well. The Pharisees were quite conservative and supposedly had a relatively high view of sovereignty. But they did not have a lofty concept of God. They did not walk in the fear and reverence of the glory of God. The Church as a whole is virtually in the pit of hell regarding its concept of God. If this degrading of the concept of God continues, there may be no return for the Church in the United States. While there are talks about the many things that the Church needs, there is nothing that the Church needs more than to put a halt to its continual degrading of the concept of God. If the Church in the US does not repent of this, perhaps the most wicked of sins, who needs it? The world suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, they do not honor God as God, they do not like to think of Him, and they exchange the glory of God for lesser forms. The Church is simply being like the world in its treatment of God. It tends to make me think that the vast majority with the name of Church is really the world in the guise of the Church. How unaware the Church is of this and of the majesty of God.

This entry was posted on June 11, 2006 at 7:44 am and is filed under God-Centeredness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.