Here is a great, challenging quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It is drawn from his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount and
it does away with that false notion that the heights of Christian
experience are reserved for the few and exceptional Christians who take
on Christian work as their vocation.
Read the
Beatitudes, and there you have a description of what every Christian is
meant to be. It is not merely the description of some
exceptional Christians.
I pause with that for just a moment, and
emphasize it, because I think we must all agree that the fatal tendency
introduced by the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed by every branch of
the Church that likes to use the term ‘Catholic,’ is the fatal tendency
to divide Christians into two groups—the religious and the laity,
exceptional Christians and ordinary Christians, the one who makes a
vocation of the Christian life and the man who is engaged in
secular affairs.
That tendency is not only utterly and completely
unscriptural; it is destructive ultimately of true piety, and is in many
ways a negation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no
such distinction in the Bible. There are distinctions in
offices—apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors, evangelists, and so on.
But these Beatitudes are not a description of offices; they are a
description of character. And from the standpoint of character, and of
what we are meant to be, there is no difference between one Christian
and another. Keep Reading >>>
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