Ready to Be Healed: Restoring the Church to Jesus

By William Berning

From opening the readers eyes to the deceitfulness of blind faith to untying the Gordian knot known as the battle of the sexes, the first half of this highly readable and spiritually encouraging book tackles head-on a series of false teachings being unwittingly propagated by many churches as "biblical Christian beliefs." Then, the second half of the book explores the Way of Freedom for the Christian as God has intended it. It shows how disregard for true biblical teaching on spiritual laws leaves the genuine Christian bent down and enslaved to spiritual forces of curses, castration and eternal condemnation all of which await those who try to impress God through their own righteousness.

Every chapter brings Gods Word, rightly divided and rightly applied, against common church teachings that have brought misery and pain into the Christian experience. And every chapter brings the soothing, cleansing balm of Gods Truth to every weary and heavy-laden believer restoration for the soul of every genuine Christian who is Ready To Be Healed!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462824151

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Copyright © 2008 by William Berning.

Cover photograph © 2008 by William Berning, photographer/digital editor. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author photograph © 2007 by Peggy Berning, photographer. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Unless indicated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984. Used by permission.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Appendix

Afterword

Foreword

Although it stands by itself, this book is in a very real sense a continuation of my previous book, At the Door Knocking: When Jesus Stands Outside the Church. The basis for both of these books is found in Revelation 3:

¹⁴ "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. ¹⁵ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

¹⁹ Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. ²⁰ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

²¹ To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²² He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

It is a most remarkable thing that over the centuries of time a passage which is a dreadful and powerful warning of imminent judgment by Jesus against a church has been transformed for the most part into a salvation verse regarding Jesus standing at the door of the heart of the unbeliever and knocking on it for the unbeliever to ask Him into it. This salvation verse teaching utterly disregards what Jesus really is warning and describing here: He is standing outside a church, a church, remember, and is telling that church that He is most unwelcome in it, and that that church must repent of such greed and self-idolatry. Do not let the imagery just slide by: Jesus is standing outside a supposedly Christian church, asking to be let in! And He is demanding their repentance. Thus I wrote the book At the Door Knocking. But now, in hopes of this repentance by the church, I have written this book, Ready To Be Healed: Restoring the Church to Jesus, to fruitfully examine what dining with Jesus is like. In it we explore what Jesus has to offer us when we fellowship with Him, if we simply stop trying to play God and start trying to obey Him.

Many people have commented on my use of the first person plural throughout most of this book and At the Door Knocking. This is very deliberate in that I am just as guilty as anyone of passing on many of the false teachings I was handed, without engaging them critically enough at first. So again, please remember that any one finger seen pointing at the reader simultaneously has three fingers pointing back at the writer. Then too, in At the Door Knocking I deliberately kept out as much autobiography as possible, in order to keep the focus on Jesus, and not on me. In this book, however, I have included some autobiographical material because that material is really helpful at times to illustrate the points being made. But the focus of this book still remains on Jesus, and the aim is still to tell His truth in His love for all of our sakes. I pray that this has been accomplished, through the work of His Holy Spirit in those who confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Truth is like a pebble in your shoe; ignoring it will cripple your walk for life. Likewise, if you don’t own your mistakes; they will eventually own you. With these thoughts in mind, we are going to continue our biblically-based examination of common church sayings that have been misleading Christians for years; again calling for repentance about what we have called ‘Christian’ that the Bible proves most decidedly is not. In our first book, At the Door Knocking: When Jesus Stands Outside the Church, we examined a number of such sayings. We found each of them posed grave problems regarding what Christian salvation is supposed to be, biblically, and we saw how far away from it we have gone in the institutional church. We saw that pride is the real root of all evil and that our first prideful turn in deception is to replace God with ourselves in deciding what is good and what is evil. We saw that our one and only recourse was repentance: We in the church must repent of embracing deception. This book is a continuation of that examination, although more related to living the Christian life than to determining whether we have it. We are going to examine more basic church teachings that cause great spiritual problems for those who are saved, with the purpose of identifying them, explaining them, refuting them, and rejecting them. Ready To Be Healed: Restoring the Church to Jesus is also a call for repentance; for repentance that will free our Christian lives from the bondage of lies, and enable us to live for the glory of God more fully and abundantly. Let us, therefore, begin.

When it comes to problem-solving, the first step in correcting any problem is in acknowledging that a problem exists. The second step, then, is properly identifying the problem. The third step is accurately characterizing that problem. The fourth step is finding good solutions to the problem. And the fifth step is correctly implementing those solutions. Omitting any one of these steps causes the failure of the problem-solving process. Then, in adding to any one of these steps our seemingly limitless human capacity to live in denial, we find ourselves facing some of the greatest difficulties we encounter trying to improve the lot of humanity. Our purpose here, then, is to follow these steps faithfully while trusting in God’s love to minister gently to the denial part.

One of the most fundamental problems today is that the truth in Scripture has been so misrepresented that it has short-circuited the capacity of biblical truth to bring positive change to both the church and the world. For the most part, those who hold the Bible have failed to authenticate the grace, love and truth of the Bible. And sadly enough, this lack of authenticity includes failure with respect to ourselves, to other Christians and to the world at large. It is the purpose of this writing, then, to help clear away those obstacles which are preventing the fullest expression of God’s love, truth and grace to both the saved and the unsaved.

Given this, one basic principle that needs to be clarified is the biblical difference between what we will call ‘His Church’ and what we will call ‘the institutional church.’ His Church is also called the capital ‘C’ church (i.e., the Church), which is how we shall identify it here. The institutional church can sometimes be identified with the small ‘c’ church (i.e., the church, the local body, or the local church"), but we will use it more narrowly as that church or collection of churches which is in opposition to His Church. Since some churches have elements of both, we will use the term ‘church’ generically when we are not referring specifically to either one.

According to Scripture, there is a group of people who have acknowledged their wrong standing before God, who have acknowledged their need to be in right standing with God, who have humbly understood that this wrong standing cannot be made right by their own efforts, and who have humbly placed themselves and their faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, to be wholly His and to live wholly for Him. This group of people knows no geographical boundaries, is not limited by the walls of buildings, and is not held captive by cultural prejudices. This group is the Church, and on Judgment Day, the Church will enter into blessed life on the basis of their trust in and dependence upon Jesus Christ alone. The Church is the group of people whose lives are defined by their love for Jesus and their obedience to His commands. The Church is not sinless in this life, but genuinely and deeply repentant of the sin there is in it.

But also according to Scripture, there is a group of people who act as if they have acknowledged their wrong standing before God and who act as if they have acknowledged their need to be in right standing with God, but who have pridefully relied upon their own efforts to make themselves right with God. Their own efforts include adding the Name of Jesus to their lives without adding their lives to Him, and thus they still live for themselves and for the world. They believe that God is impressed with their accomplishments. This group of people is greatly focused on geopolitical boundaries, is deeply concerned about the walls of buildings, and wholeheartedly embraces cultural prejudices. This is the institutional church, and on Judgment Day the institutional church will be sent to eternal separation from God and punishment for their sins on the basis of their trust in themselves and their dependence upon how Christian they have acted. The institutional church is the group of people whose lives are defined by their love for themselves and not for Christ, and by their disobedience to Jesus’ commands, especially His commands to care for the needy and to not love money. More often than not, the institutional church is represented by local buildings and sets of personal loyalties. They are people whose lives are defined by their love for their careers and their buildings and their obedience to manmade commands; all in defiance of God’s commands.

While there are sometimes members of the Church placed into the institutional church, being a member of the institutional church does not mean that one is a member of His Church. This is because only those who trust Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone for their right standing with God are truly His Church. God sometimes in His mercy sends members of the Church to the institutional church to proclaim the dire need for repentance there. Other times, members of the Church are unfortunately deceived into joining the institutional church in the mistaken belief that this will somehow get them closer to God. Also, sadly, members of the Church sometimes mistakenly choose to join the institutional church because it can have people who are so nice and supportive of where they are in life. But neither nice people nor supportive people make it to heaven unless they have first humbly repented of their sins before Jesus Christ and are trusting in His offer of salvation only. So part of what we will be discussing in this book is how to tell one group from the other, because they often can and do look the same, especially on the outside.

Indeed, every book in the New Testament, except the extremely brief and highly personal letter Philemon, contains at least one warning against false teachers, false leaders, false brethren or false teaching. And, virtually all of those books contain many warnings. We are going to investigate what they are warning against, and why.

Like in At the Door Knocking, this book targets common church teachings that are leading people astray from the simplicity, power, love, and truth of the gospel. We are not claiming that each one of these is present in every church. But we expect that least one of them has been heard by at least one person in every church, based on our own experiences and training.

And what is the gospel? The great news that God sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins, and then raised Him from the dead, so that we may have right relationship with Him through belief in His Son. These simple truths have been lost in so many cases because of the thick husks of traditions that have surrounded them. We are not against all traditions, because traditions can have a useful place in any group, culture or society. But we are adamantly opposed to any traditions in the church that obscure the Gospel of Jesus Christ and hinder people from coming to Him. In short, we are for any traditions that work for the gospel and against any traditions that work against it. We shall be taking these common teachings one by one and weighing them against God’s Word, rightly divided, and rightly applied.

Also like in At the Door Knocking, we are challenged to be faithful to convey the love we have for God and His people while at the same time standing up for His truth and His righteousness. We are counting on the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of the readers to confirm that what we are saying and doing is in the best interests of His Church, and those who are