Let us begin this discussion of the true Church’s Mission and Purpose by asking that you look at the image of the pathway. Then imagine that you are asked to start walking on this pathway, and to keep going… until.

The first thing you might find yourself asking is…, what is my purpose for walking on this pathway?  The second question you might have is…, keep going until what?  And possibly the third question would be, where does the pathway lead?  These are pretty normal questions, don’t you think?

The Church was established upon the gospel and the revelation of Jesus Christ. But, as Paul told Timothy in 2 Tim 3:1-5, many influences have come into our present day society and what we now know as “church” no longer represents one thing to all people. It now can mean many things with many different expressions.  And sadly, some of the different expressions of church today bear little to no resemblance to what we see in the New Testament after Pentecost. 

The church began with one purpose, being expressed in different locations.  Today, we still have the different locations, but unlike the early Church, we now have different expressions of church declaring different purposes. So, if you don’t like one particular expression of purpose for whatever reason, you can look around until you find the expression that YOU want. There is a message in that alone, but we won't go there right now. For our purposes here, let’s focus only on those churches that say they are focused upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We would be amiss if we did not mention that even the gospel of Jesus Christ now requires defining because the enemy of our souls has brought about so many unclear expressions of what is supposed to be the real gospel.  But still, let’s focus only on those churches. 

If we were to pursue membership only among those churches, we would be introduced to some plan of action that supports the mission statement of that church.  Then in some manner, we would be asked to begin pursuing a process to an end goal (like walking on the path similar to the picture above), and to stay on that path until we arrive at some predetermined destination, which represents the stated purpose for that church.

Then comes the opportunity for us to ask ourselves those questions that we covered above initially.  And our willingness to engage the assigned pathway is likely to be based upon the answers we derive to those few, but key, questions.

Now, without further discussion of some of the greater challenges faced by the church today, let us explain our mission and purpose.  The Eternal Plan and Purpose of the Godhead will be the foundation of our purpose, and our mission (how we arrive at that purpose…) will come out of that.  This more extended discussion will hopefully give a full explanation of both the purpose and the mission.

To understand the Eternal Plan and Purpose of the Godhead, let’s begin by looking at Ephesians 1:11.  Here is that verse from the NASB 2020 (and all of our scriptures will be taken from that translation):

In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will;

Now let’s break this verse into three parts for the sake of explaining its meaning.

1) In Him we also have obtained an inheritance…,

This tells us that our inheritance is found in Christ, not outside of, or independently of Christ.  But let's not just read that, taking what we read for granted and moving on. What does it mean to be “in Him”, or “in Christ”?  Do we automatically become “in Him” because we believe He is real?  Or, do we come “in(to) Christ” automatically because we come into a salvation experience?  Let us simply say at this point that nothing about the process of coming into Christ is automatic.  God gives us an invitation into a relationship that is glorious beyond our comprehension. But God’s offer is so beyond us in our human condition that it requires God to do things that we cannot do, so that we can come into the full measure of what He has offered. Therefore…, He extends an invitation to us, but we then must respond. And He will continue to take us deeper into a greater level of fullness in this glorious relationship, but we must continue to respond the deeper we go. It is not an automatic, once and done thing.

So, this first short portion of Eph 1:11 is speaking to the revealing of Christ within us and the formation of Jesus Christ within us.  This is not something that automatically happens to us when we come to Jesus Christ initially through salvation, it is an on-going process.  But this portion of Eph 1:11 is stating that we have an inheritance from the Lord, but that inheritance is gained as we come to possess Christ and as Christ is formed within us, in our inward place, by the work of the Holy Spirit and by us taking up the Cross of Jesus Christ.  That is quite a lot of meaning from the two words, “In Him”, isn’t it.  But that is what this part of the verse is speaking to.

2) having been predestined according to the purpose of Him…

In the course of my 45 years of walking with the Lord, I have been presented with teachings that would suggest that God predestined some people to succeed in spiritual things and others He predestined to not succeed.  But that is not what I believe Scripture teaches, nor do I embrace that type of doctrine.  It also directly contradicts what we read in 2 Peter 3:9, where we see this…, The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. And there are many other scriptures that make clear that repentance would be followed by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  So we clearly see that it is not God’s will that any perish. 

And so, we see in this part of Eph 1:11 that it is that the entire human race has been predestined to some purpose that the Lord has in mind, and that purpose is for us to come into the possession of Christ internally, and for Christ and His life to be formed within us, replacing our nature with His nature to the point that there is nothing left of what was originally us.  We now become the representation of Jesus Christ because His life is now fully formed within us. 

This is what the Apostle Paul was saying in the first part of Galatians 2:20, where we read, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  This is what is meant when we hear the phrase, “Jesus living His life in us”.  I hear many people in churches using that phrase, but far too many demonstrate that they do not really understand what it means for Christ to truly live in a human being.  It is one thing for us to say that Christ lives within us, but it is entirely another thing for the living Christ to reveal himself from within a person.  When Christ is formed within us, He then does His ministry through us, and it’s no longer us doing the ministry.  Unfortunately, many believers in the western culture church have been taught to be busy for God. But the Bible does not teach us to do that. 

The real gospel of Jesus Christ does not teach us to come into salvation, and then get busy doing things for God.  The real gospel of Jesus Christ would have us become something as our goal, rather than to go and do something for him.  The issue of works on behalf of the Lord will take care of itself - IF - we first come into Christ and his Life, because then it will be Christ, and not us, doing the work from within us.

So, God’s purpose for us is that we come into the fullness of Christ and His life, resulting in us becoming the representation of Christ.  Then we find ourselves in position to be part of the fulfillment of Romans 8:18-19 where we read…, 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God.

Because this is the eternal purpose of the Godhead, it will also be our overriding purpose as a church.  We see this as the real result of the gospel of Jesus Christ, moving on to maturity and the fullness of Christ, resulting in representation, rather than treating salvation alone as the ultimate objective.  Salvation is necessary, but we must understand that it is the starting point for a true believer, not the end point. 

3) who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will 

If God truly has an eternal purpose for us, then He most surely will have a plan through which to bring that purpose into fruition.  

Before we go any further into an explanation of the plan of the Godhead to bring us into Christ, there must be an understanding of something on the front end.  When we are born, we are born into sin because we are born into Adam and the sin nature that we inherit as a descendant of Adam.  We cannot fulfill the purposes of God in our Adamic nature. Paul called this nature our “old man”, or our self-nature.  We cannot at any level become the representation of Jesus Christ when we are full of ourselves rather than when Christ is formed within us to the point of fullness.  Ephesians 4:13 speaks to this pretty directly (taken from the NASB 2020)…

11 And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to (a) the unity of the faith, and of (b) the knowledge of the Son of God, (c) to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Verses 11 and 12 simply state that the Lord uses His five-fold leaders for the purpose of equipping the saints.  Then verse 13 has again been broken down into three separate points, for the sake of explanation.

Part (a) The unity of the faith, speaks to the one faith that should exist in the one Church, as a result of following the one Lord. 

Look at what it says in Ephesians 4:4-6…

4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you also were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

Now back to Eph 4:13 again, part (b), the knowledge of the Son of God, speaks to the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which is the revealing of Jesus Christ to our hearts.  This is such an expansive topic in itself that I will not even attempt to go very deeply into it here. But in Galatians 1:11-12, the Apostle Paul gives us a clue to the importance of possessing the revelation of Jesus Christ…

For I would have you know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel which was preached by me is not of human invention. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul is telling us that he received the real gospel through a true revealing of Jesus Christ to his heart!  Please take a moment and contemplate the absolute importance of what Paul is saying here.  How did we receive whatever we call the gospel? 

And here is another point to consider.  Gal 1:11 makes it clear that the gospel does not come by preaching, nor is it something of human invention.  The true gospel of Jesus Christ comes by a revelation of Jesus Christ to our hearts, because Jesus Christ IS the gospel.  I know this is probably messing with much of what many of us have been taught, but it was absolutely necessary that this be said at this point.  There is a difference in admitting to ourselves that we simply believe something that someone else presented to us, when compared to having an inward supernatural revelation of a Person who is the very essence of that revelation.

And then we come to part (c) of Eph. 4:13 where it says, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. 

Here, in a rather clear fashion, we see the Scriptural definition of what true maturity really is…, it is the fullness of Christ!

When we come into a full understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and we understand that there must be the revealing of Jesus Christ to our hearts and then the possession of Jesus Christ internally, Him actually formed within us in our inward place by the work of the Holy Spirit, only then do we begin to understand how a believer comes into a place of what the Scriptures call “maturity”.  When the Scriptures talk about the “mature sons of God”, it is referring to believers who have come into maturity “in Christ”.  It is not speaking about believers who simply believe that Jesus Christ exists, but yet they go about living the same life they had before they came into an awareness of Jesus Christ as someone to be reckoned with.  Maturity is also not starting out with good intentions after salvation and then spending years in church, but never experiencing any internal transformation into the formation of Christ within.

We mentioned Romans 8:19 before, but it fits again here and I will simply mention that in reference to part of the job description of those who come into maturity in Christ. The mature sons of Rom 8:19 are not running around doing for God what they think is best.  They have come into the possession of Jesus Christ inwardly. Therefore, the revelation of Jesus Christ is in them and they are able to share the living Christ with others.  

It is vitally important that we understand this because our modern-day church culture has completely dismissed this aspect to the point to where it’s barely even understood anymore.  For Jesus Christ to receive from us what He has longed for since before the foundations of creation, we must have Him formed within us so that we can represent Him accurately.  Then He will be free to do the ministry that only He can do through us, from within us.  All of the works that we do, that we originate for the Lord, will be the wood, hay and stubble that will completely burn when tested by fire at the judgment seat of Christ.  And every single one of us is going to have our turn at that judgment seat with the Lord.  It will be the works that Jesus Himself does through us that will become the refined gold and silver and that will produce a reward for “our” works.  But in reality, the only portion of those works which are truly “our” work, is us allowing Christ to be formed within us by the Holy Spirit, so that Christ can be revealed to others through us.

Salvation is where most of us began our “Christian experience”.  But there is typically a problem right there because in great measure in our culture, there is also the issue of Lordship, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ is something not well understood, nor embraced in great measure.  It requires that we give up our life and follow Jesus Christ wherever He leads us. 

“Where will Jesus lead us?”, you might ask. He will lead us to our own Cross, just like He was led by His Father to His Cross.  That will invariably bring us to the fact that we must lose our life (the existing inward life based upon our Adamic nature) in exchange for the life of Christ, and that means we must die on our own Cross. 

The concept of our death on a cross is not popular at all in today’s church culture.  It is much easier and more convenient to focus on the grace of God, and the love of God, both of which are real. But by focusing primarily on those two aspects about God, we give ourselves a pass in order to justify living our life the way we want. But yet we expect to have God’s best at the same time.

There is a great danger in this kind of false theology, but unfortunately it has become very prevalent in the church today.  The real question is…, where this kind of doctrine is being embraced, are we looking at the real church of Jesus Christ?  Ephesians 1:22-23 has something to say about this that is incredibly important…

22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Did we catch this part —> the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him? That is telling us that the true Church of Jesus Christ is also what the Holy Spirit defines as true body of Christ, and it contains the fullness of Him! This means it is comprised of believers who have allowed the transformation of their old nature into the life of Christ to take place by means of the Cross. That means that there is no end-run around the death to our flesh because of grace. God does accept us as we are when we come to initially and there is a grace of God in that. But true biblical grace also manifests in the divine enablement of a believer to be able to embrace the Cross of Christ for the sake of their internal transformation. There is no glossing over this process and skipping the Cross.

What a defining portion of scripture Eph 1:22-23 is! Is this what we see going on in our society today? Or, do we see greater and greater compromise away from this in order to be more and more inclusive so that no one becomes offended? The real gospel of Jesus Christ cuts right to the heart of the choices being made by many today! This is something that each one of us must come to terms with because the day will come where we will be required to give an account for our choices. On that day, some will hear “Well done good and faithful servant” and others will hear “Depart from me you who practice lawlessness.” Bear in mind that Matt 7:22-23 is being spoken to believers! So, our choices do matter.

Now, let’s use a word picture along with some explanation to make point. Let’s take today’s emphasis on evangelism and let’s take a group of believers who have come to know about Jesus Christ (and we are not singling out evangelism for any reason other than it fits well in making a point about believers doing things for the Lord). They have made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as Savior, the starting point of their salvation, with which the western culture church is most familiar.  Now they’re being instructed to go and do things (good works) for God.  And we would probably not be far from the truth if we assumed that they are being encouraged to do what they do through the teaching that they’re receiving in whatever aspect of the church that they have embraced.

Now take whatever size group of people there are who do not know Jesus, or only know about Him in the most surface way.  They may not have entered into salvation yet, but they are searching. They may not know why they are searching but they are responding to “that which is known about God is (being) evident within them” (Rom 1:18-19). So, although they may not understand why they are being inwardly compelled to search, they are searching because they can feel the emptiness within. And of course, “the water” that the group of believers would share with them is supposed to be an accurate representation of the Lord, assuming that they possess the real testimony and revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now comes the problem with the “water”.  You have these energetic and zealous believers who want to share Jesus with those who do not know Him, but there has been a little or no formation of Christ and His life within them. They could be compared to a bottle of water that was filled with local pond water.  These believers want to give that “water” to those who are thirsty but the water that is in them, the water from the local pond, is not necessarily good to drink.  It contains dirt and biological contaminants that will most likely cause those who drink it to become sick.  Is it any wonder why we have such a perverse and sick society today…, all while there are more churches in every city and town than we have ever had before.  Where is the true testimony and accurate representation of Jesus Christ?  If that were truly present, would we not see a greater impact of the Church upon our society?

So an important question must be asked one more time. Please understand that this is not for the sake of stirring up controversy, but to provoke each of us to be willing to ask ourselves a hard question, because this question speaks to a very real white elephant sitting in many of our rooms.  If what we call “church” has become irrelevant to our society today, are we looking at the real church of Jesus Christ?  Or is it something that calls itself church, but in reality has lost sight of Christ, and as a result, has lost its way and taken a different road other than the one presented in the true gospel of Jesus Christ? 

We are well aware that this is anything but a short mission and purpose statement, and if you have read this far, then we choose to assume that it must be the Lord that has kept you here. This article has not been written in such a way as to tickle ears, but rather, to confront us all with the teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures. So thank you for your grace in hanging in there, because we're getting close to the finish line.

It is not our heart to make this “mission and purpose” statement so intense that people are driven away before they seriously contemplate what is being presented. But this would be the place to insert the warnings found in Revelation 18:4 to “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive any of her plagues.”  This is the Lord telling those who wish to come out to Him, and become the representation of Him (the true Church, the Ecclesia), to depart from any form of godliness that calls itself the church, but has denied Jesus Christ and His true purpose, and has gone after the stuff about Christ, but not Christ for Himself. We can see this directly in 2 Tim 3, through portions of verses 1, 4 and 5. Verse 1 - in the last days difficult times will come, Verse 4 - people will become lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and Verse 5 - holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. There it is right there. And we are witnessing today exactly what Paul warned Timothy about.

Now please listen to this with an open heart.  When we stop at salvation and then go straight into doing things for God, we are doing exactly what has been described earlier in the example of the energetic and zealous believers.  We are taking what is in us at that time, the contents of our sinful Adamic nature that has not yet been transformed, and a seed of Christ, which is deposited in us through salvation, and we are expecting people who do not know the Lord to be nourished and benefited by this.  What we are doing is offering people mixture.

Thinking back to those who are searching, what those people see in the scenario above is us for the most part, not Jesus Christ.  Since Jesus Christ has not been accurately represented, those who want to know the Lord are not drawn to Him because they end up being hindered by the misrepresentation that they see in believers who do not possess Christ formed within them. So we are unable to be His representation because we have not experienced a true revelation of Jesus Christ ourselves, and we do not contain enough of Him formed within us.  Please come to terms with the fact that we cannot give away to others what we do not possess ourselves. If we are going to offer the real Christ to others, we must first possess Christ ourselves.

It is completely understandable that an immature believer may do what they do with the best intentions of heart, and those intentions are commendable.  But we have not been called to our good intentions. We have been called to give up our lives in order that we might come into the life of Christ.  Since Christ IS the gospel, we must gain a measure of Christ within us first, before we go out and try to do works for God.  And gaining Christ within is not an instantaneous thing. It is a process of the Lord in which the Holy Spirit forms Christ and his life within us by having us embrace the Cross of Christ so that we may be transformed in our inner nature. 

So, from the discussion above, we can now say that a good part of our emphasis and focus in Christ The Way Church is that very process by which the Holy Spirit uses the Cross of Christ in our lives and brings us into real and genuine transformation, so that we may contain the life of Jesus Christ, formed in us to the point to where if we stay the course, we will eventually take on the full measure of Christ as fully mature believers.

So in part (c) of Eph. 4:13, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, let us now summarize and wrap up this rather lengthy discussion of our mission and our purpose.  Christ The Way Church will be completely committed to embracing the eternal plan and purpose of the Godhead. And the plan for bringing God’s people into His great eternal purpose is internal transformation by means of the Cross of Jesus Christ. This great work is administrated by the Holy Spirit as He forms Jesus Christ and His life in the believer.  In fact, this is the primary reason the Holy Spirit was sent to us!

It is exclusively the work of the Lord to get us into his intended place for us.  We cannot do any of that ourselves.  Our “work” is to yield to the process of God through the work of the Holy Spirit to form Christ and His life within us, and to bring us into maturity as the Bride of the Lamb of God.

Before we close, here is one final and important point that should be made. There is much discussion in churches all over about being the Bride of Christ, and far too many times, that descriptive is applied to anyone and everyone who says they believe in Jesus Christ. We need to apply the entire council of scripture always in our understanding. Revelation 3:21 says something that is so important for us to understand.  It says, The one who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne. 

If we would be in bridal relationship with Jesus Christ, that means that we must become His like kind and that only happens as we allow the process of God to bring to death our Adamic nature so that we can take on the nature of Jesus himself, through the formation of His life within each one of us. As John the Baptist said in John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease”. 

It is very difficult to explain what it will be like to contain the life of Jesus Christ formed within a human being, because the vast majority of us have not yet fully come into what the Bible calls the “fullness of Christ”. But we understand enough already in the Lord to know that it will bring us to a place of greater internal joy and fulfillment than any other thing that we could ever possess…, so much so that it will be worth paying any price necessary to come into Christ and the Life He is offering to us.

And so, Jesus Christ for Himself will be our pursuit in Christ The Way Church.  If we have not yet come to a point that we realize that He alone, and not the stuff about Him, truly is the Pearl of great price, then we still suffer from a lack of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and He has not yet been revealed to us deeply enough. Once we see Him, even at a lower level, we will come to understand that deeply possessing Him is our real heart’s desire. Then…, finally…, He becomes our goal.

Understanding what was just stated above will provide us with some valuable points of reference that can help us do some very beneficial self-examination. If we would be in a bridal relationship with Jesus Christ, then we will possess Him to a point where we become like Him. That is the very essence of what the fullness of Jesus Christ is all about.

If the Lord would impress upon you to make this journey with us as part of our church body, then we welcome you to come visit with us and get to know us, and we you, as we walk together in the ultimate pursuit of Jesus Christ, who alone is our ultimate reward.