The Institutionalized Gospel

What happens when the Gospel of Jesus becomes subservient to the Church? What happens when the Church decides how it will use the Gospel, as if the Gospel is a servant of the Church? What happens is that the Gospel of Jesus is domesticated, tamed, institutionalized, and neutered of its power to save and transform. My fear is that local churches have placed and are always in danger of placing themselves in the driver’s seat, informing the Gospel (so to speak) what it does and does not have the freedom to do in the life of the Church, rather than allow the Gospel of Christ to confront sin in the Church and bring about repentance and renewed faith and alter direction and transform hearts and minds. The Church is to allow itself to be continually reshaped and reformed by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel of Jesus, just as the Gospel reshapes and reforms us as individuals. The Gospel never changes…but the Church is always changing, from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:16-18).