The True Church. It’s been a much thought of idea and search for many in the past and in the present. With all the conspiracy theories and movies and books and the scandals of preachers and priests and the different denominations of churches on every street corner it has been a question many have pondered or thought on. What is the true church? Is there a true church? Why are there so many different churches? What is the real deal?

The truth is, the true church follows Christ. The true church preaches Christ and is true to the Bible. The true church is a place for sinners. The true church is a place for the broken. The true church is a place for healing and preaches the message of grace and hope that can only be found in Jesus. The true church is a place where God reigns and His people rely upon the finished work of His Son Jesus Christ. The true church is a place where people acknowledge that they cannot do anything to attain God’s favour and they cannot work their way into heaven. The true church is a place where people acknowledge that in the good news of the gospel, God comes down to us and lays his life down for us so that we can be brought back into a right relationship with Him. The true church is a place where people rely on Christ’s righteousness and not their own self-righteousness.

I could go on, but I will stop there.

The truth is, that is just a glimpse of what the true church is and there are many places like what I just described and many expressions of God’s people throughout the world. Yes, some of these places have differences, but if they believe in the truth of the gospel, they are the family of God regardless of the minor details.

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (emphasis mine). For the last 2000 years Jesus has been building His church! That is good news. It isn’t my church or your church, its His church!

There are many who have asked the question, “what is the true church?” and have come to false conclusions. Mormonism for example is a worldview, religion or cult (whichever you prefer) that is based on this very question asked by their founder and “prophet” Joseph Smith. He prayed to God after reading in James 5 seeking wisdom and the answer to his question. He then had a revelation that revealed to him that there was no true church still remaining and that he was to start his own sect to “restore” the gospel.

Unfortunately for Joseph Smith and his followers, the Latter-day Saints, the gospel did not need restoring. In Galatians 1:6-9, the apostle Paul says this:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (emphasis mine).

We have the true gospel in the New Testament. We read eyewitness accounts of Jesus through the gospels and are taught the doctrine of this gospel in the epistles by men who knew Jesus firsthand and were entrusted with this truth.

Unfortunately Mormons, many other religions and worldviews, and sadly sometimes in evangelical churches we hear messages of working to gain God’s favour and approval and working to obtain salvation. Even with all this hard work there is still even a sense of uncertainty, being unsure of where they stand with God in the end. We hear messages of moralistic therapeutic deism where Bible stories are boiled down to lessons on being good and moral people and where the gospel is nothing but a mere starting or entry point into our faith. But, in all of this there’s no Christ, there’s no grace, and there’s no good news. There’s no mention of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (the doctrine on which Martin Luther stated the church “stands or falls”). There’s no being covered by Christ’s righteousness, there is no true gospel.

Many of these pseudo-Christian sects even have the audacity to call themselves the “remnant” or the true church on earth and twist and distort scripture to say what they want it to say. They take verses like these:

“But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.”

(Ezra 9:8-9)

And they make them about themselves. “We are the remnant they say, we are the true church.” In turn they preach a so-called “God-centered” message and one that truly hits on the truths of scripture, but in their  so-called “God-centeredness” they fail to mention that we are saved by Christ alone and in turn they enslave themselves and others into a works-righteousness, one void of the true gospel which is the only good news there is, that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, was raised on the third day, and now reigns at the right hand of the Father in heaven!

Instead of reveling with Paul in saying, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Romans 1:16-17), they rebel and rejoice in their man-made religion which truthfully places themselves at the center and is another gospel that Paul speaks of in Galatians 1.

If man is at the core, it is not the true church. They can say all they want, but the proof is in the pudding so to speak. The word gospel literally means “good news” or “news that brings joy.” The good news that these “churches” preach is no good news at all!

Pastor Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church puts it this way:

“You know what, when you hear the gospel, when you hear a message that it’s all been done for you, that it’s a historical event that’s happened, your salvation is accomplished for you, what do you want to do? You want to obey the Ten Commandments, you want to pray, and you want to please the one who did this for you. If on the other hand, you send military advisers who say, “You’re going to have to live a really, really, good life if you want to get to heaven.” What are you going to do? You’re going to want to pray, you’re going to want to obey the Ten Commandments—it looks the same doesn’t it? [But] for two radically different reasons: one is joy; one is fear. In the end, in the short run, they look alike. But in the long run, one leads to burnout, self-righteousness, guilt and all sorts of problems.”

The true church isn’t motivated by fear but by joy. The true church isn’t built on good advice, the true church is built on the good news of Jesus Christ.