Ever since Christ established the Church they have been fighting battles to remain alive, some of those battles were fought well and some were fought wrongly. We will always as the Church have a battle to fight and I believe there are two things that we must battle even today that Paul, Peter and all the early Church had to fight as well. Today in the Church there are two things that I believe will crumble the true Church , these two things are Legalism and Liberalism. The truth is that this is what the writers of the Bible were speaking out against, Paul for instance is always speaking out against legalism and liberalism. Now Paul would not call them by those terms but the truth is that he was speaking out against these very things. Not to mention the fact that Jesus speaks out against the Pharisees because of their self righteousness that comes from their legalism.

The Church today is not different in the fact that we try to make people earn salvation through works still.This is the thing that Paul spoke out against more than anything else. The truth is that the Bible is very clear the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. Galatians 2:15-16 “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” Sometimes when we have been a Christian for a while we begin to believe that we remain saved by our works. We remain saved the same way in which we became saved and that is through our faith. Now there is no doubt that God wants us to live a life that is pleasing to him but we need to always remember that salvation only came to us by Grace through our faith. This is key when we live in the world we live in because legalism will make us just like the Pharisees and the Pharisees don’t lead people to Christ, they lead people away from Christ. Let’s always remember that the Church does not grow through following rules, we grow in numbers by following a person and that is Jesus Christ.

With that being said about legalism I believe the other destroyer of the Church is liberalism. When I say liberalism I don’t mean anything about politics but I mean that we no longer accept that something is truth or we have begun to waver on the truth. The main threat to the Church today is the fact that many churches are no longer believing what the Bible is saying or preaching what the Bible teaches. I believe that the only way to reach people for the gospel is to really believe the Bible. In our culture today people are starving for truth and the problem is that many people are not giving people the truth. Look at this passage that tells us exactly what is happening today in our culture, the scripture comes from 2 Timothy 4:3-4 “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” Today in our culture churches are choosing to follow the culture in a last ditch effort to grow their church and the truth is that this technique will not work. I believe that the opposite is true that if we lower our beliefs that the church will die! I am not talking about numbers of people attending churches (although that could happen too) but I am talking about the number of people who truly come to salvation in Christ Jesus!

We need to as the Church begin to stand up for what we truly believe and what the Bible is calling us to stand up for. The two things our Culture needs are exactly what the Bible tells us Jesus came filled with in John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Now the world is in need of these two things Grace and Truth, We as the Church need to give them what they are in need of!