Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Book Installment)
The One True Church
Chapter 34 – The Movement Becomes an Institution
In the fog of all this apostasy, there was a process taking place. The movement that had been the New Testament church was turning itself into an institution. And there weren’t enough apostles left to stop it.
The 1st-century movement we call Christianity is documented in the New Testament. It was the Christianity of the apostles – which is to say that it was the Christianity of Christ Himself. For Jesus had commissioned the apostles to act as His personal representatives. They were highly successful, but the 1st century ended in a blur of tribulation and apostasy.
Jesus said, and Paul repeated, that He would come in just that sort of darkness.
Matthew 24:43 “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.”
1 Thessalonians 5:2 For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
No wonder so many missed Jesus’ Second Coming. The apostasy was clouding it.
The particular aspect of apostasy I want to speak of now is not the blatant, self-willed falling away of a false prophet. Rather, it’s the subtle, weak-willed falling away of the half-hearted.
Jesus spoke of it in the following way when He was describing the last days to His disciples the week before He died.
Matthew 24:12 “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.
Matthew 24:13 But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.”
The “lawlessness” refers to the blatant self-willed falling away, while the “love will grow cold” refers to the subtle, weak-willed falling away. This is the kind of falling away that Aaron did when he made a golden calf to worship when Moses did not seem to be coming back from Mount Sinai. Notice also that “most people” speaks of many, while “the one” refers to the few.
It is in this fog that the church transitioned from a movement to an institution. That is, between the 1st and 2nd centuries, the movement led by Jesus and the apostles became individual institutions led by bishops. These bishops had occasional interactions with each other but were organizationally independent.
Thus without the apostles, the delegated rule by elders that the apostles established was replaced by a single bishop for each town, city, or region. It wouldn’t be until the 4th century that these bishops would gather in a general council sponsored by the Roman emperor Constantine to resolve contentious issues. But the die was cast in the 2nd century, when bishops arose to institutionalize the church by having a single human leader over each congregation.
Once the office of bishop was established, there was a plan of succession in place. Recall that a succession plan for leadership is one of the major differences between a movement and an institution. Neither Jesus nor the apostles appointed these individual bishops. Each was appointed or accepted by the congregation of which he was a part.
All three branches of modern institutional Christianity – Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant – flow from the human establishment of these 2nd-century bishops. And these bishops flowed from the sad reality that Jesus had come “as a thief in the night” to “most people” in the late 1st-century churches. And this was only because they let the “increasing lawlessness” make their “love grow cold.” Only the ones who endured to the end actually perceived the glory of His coming.
The choice is ours: we can either have the Lord or have a human institution. The one true church – that is, the one we read about in the New Testament – was a divine institution. It only lasted a generation, but that was all it took to bring in the glorious kingdom of God – the…eternal…divine…institution!
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