Message of the true Church

When the true church of Christ does that – when she goes out to be that witness, to shine that light – she goes in sackcloth.

And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. Revelation 11:3, KJV

What is the message that God's people bring? In their official preaching of the Word and in their daily witness they bring a message of sackcloth. In Matthew 11:21 the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of repenting in sackcloth and ashes at the sound of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The true church of Christ, if she is going to truly shine, if she is going to be a light in the midst of this world, goes out to call the world to repentance. She does not go out to speak of wealth and prosperity, as if God is everyone's personal cheerleader, overlooking man’s sin and the offence of the gospel of Christ. She proclaims a message that is very different from the impostor Christianity of the day – a religion which two scholars in a recent book described as Moral Therapeutic Deism, where a distant God demands nothing more than niceness and provides nothing more than self-help.¹

The church in truth, in contrast, goes out with sackcloth. She proclaims the message of man’s sin and guilt. She warns to flee the wrath that is to come. She speaks of true joy and true happiness in the Lord Jesus Christ – a joy unspeakable, a happiness that is real, and one that can only be known in the way of repentance and forsaking of sin. It is a confrontational message that she brings. Turn, she cries, from the worship of man and the pursuit of man’s depraved desires in the midst of the evil age! That is her light! There is no hope in man, she says, “and in giving over oneself to man’s desires. There is no salvation in man cut off from God and His Christ. There is no hope in six separate from seven. Forsake self! Kiss the Son, lest He be angry. Be cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, where alone is atoning work and forgiveness. Mourn! Truly mourn – as Christ says, the members of His kingdom will mourn (Matthew 5:4) – that you might be truly comforted.

She must proclaim this message boldly and fearlessly. It is the true gospel. She must testify against the apostasy of the age. However much she is despised, she must call sinners to repentance. She must do this in her missionary work to the unchurched. She must do this in her witness to false and apostatizing churches. She must do this in her own midst. She does not stand before men; she stands before the God of the earth (Revelation 11:4). That is, she is standing waiting to serve. Like a servant stands before the master, she stands before God of the earth! She doesn’t preach what man’s itching ears desire to hear, but the gospel of the ever-blessed Christ, which is her commission. That is her light in the midst of this world.²

Cory Griess