In life, also, we are given labels. In school, you’re a jock or a stoner or a band nerd. You’re a rebel or a goody-two-shoe. You’re defined by your likes and dislikes, by your tendencies, by your preferences.
I live in the East Texas. Where I come from, you define yourself by a few labels:
1) Do you cheer for the Longhorns or the Aggies on the Friday after Thanksgiving?
2) Do you like the Cowboys or the Texans?
3) Do you go to the Methodist, Baptist, Assemblies of God, or Church of Christ on Sunday?
Whatever your answer is to those three questions pretty much labels you for the rest of your life. Everything else is pretty much unimportant.
If I had answered those three questions as a teenager, I would have said: “Aggies, Cowboys, and Baptist.”
In just about every situation labels are a good thing. But there are a few situations where labels are bad. And the WORST place for a label is in the Christian community.
Why do we define our beliefs or our salvation, by the type of church we attend? This is a pet peeve of mine, because these labels lead to self-aggrandizement, to exclusivity, to judgmental attitudes and legalism, to false piousness, and worst of all, to what I label as Pharisee-ism. We identify ourselves by what parking lot our car is in on Sunday mornings. We wear the doctrine of our church like Hester’s scarlet letter, and we wear it proudly, unless we want to go had a good time, and drink a few beers on Saturday night – in which case, we carefully fold it and hide it in our sock drawers like a dirty magazine. We fight and argue over inconsequential differences in doctrine…that have NOTHING to do with LOVE and SALVATION. And those arguments create yawning crevasses in the bedrock of our relationships with fellow Christians and also nonbelievers.
My big pet peeve, my big issue is that we harness ourselves to our denomination. We define our Christianity by the church we attend regularly – the one whose membership role contains our name. When we are asked, “what is your religion?” why do we feel the need to immediately answer, “Baptist” or “Methodist” or “Pentacostal”? And why do we use our personal convictions and the bylaws of our denomination to tear each other down? Why does “Church A” tell “Church B” that they aren’t going to heaven because they don’t speak in tongues? Why does “Church B” tell “Church C” that they aren’t going to heaven because they don’t go to “Church B”? Why does “Church C” tell “Church A” that they aren’t going to heaven because they let their women wear pants? It’s all SO stupid to me. What do pants, church buildings, or gifts of the spirit have to do with our salvation? I'll tell you: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! And to say that it does is not only ludicrous, it's a LIE.
If you were to ask me the three questions listed above today, my answer would be: “Aggies, Cowboys, and It doesn’t matter.” Fundamentally, I haven’t changed that much. I don’t attend a Baptist church anymore, but that doesn’t affect my salvation…and it doesn’t affect my relationship with Jesus. When it comes to the body of Christ, to the Church as a whole, to our walk with Jesus, WHO CARES what parking lot your car is in on Sunday morning? It doesn’t matter as long as that church preaches Christ crucified and resurrected. It doesn’t matter if you’re Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Non-denominational, Assemblies of God, etc. As long as you believe in Jesus as the Son of God and have accepted Him as Savior, that should be good enough for anyone who is saved.
Labels are normally a good thing, but in this case, they are very bad. Paul addressed this when he said, “For when one said, ‘I am of Paul,’ and another, ‘I am of Apollos,’ are you not carnal? Who, then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one?” (1 Cor 3:4-5). Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come –all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Cor 3:22-23)
And Jesus himself said this: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” John 6:29
Any requirement more than that for Salvation is judgmental and narrow. Anyone who says salvation depends on dress or church attendance or good deeds or the manifestation of tongues, is directly contradicting Jesus. And anyone who spreads division within the body of Christ, within the church, by saying their label is the only true label and all other labels are erroneous is not only contradicting Jesus, but also doing the one thing he prayed against in the garden when he said, “that they all may be ONE, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may also be ONE in us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” John 17:21
So…take off the label and simply BE HIS.
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