Photo Credit: Jer Kunz

This is a re-post from Patrick Hoban’s old blog, February 2010. – Admin.

As a student of history, it is remarkable to me how the Church so quickly departed from the simplicity that is in Christ to the complicated system that it developed into by the fourth century. Religious people find comfort in ritual. Somehow the flesh is satisfied by it, and the mind not renewed by the Word of God believes it is doing service to God. The apostle Paul warned the early church against such things. Read what he wrote to the church in Corinth:

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.  2 Corinthians 11:3

He also warned the church in Galatia of those from Jerusalem who put ritual as a way to get to God.  He asked them this question:

This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Galatians 3:2

The New Testament Church understood the grace that was available to the believer through faith alone. When a person came to faith in Jesus, he was immediately accepted into the fellowship of the Church. You can see this throughout the Book of Acts. When the first Gentile household, Cornelius’, came to faith in Christ, they were immediately baptized after they received the Good News of Christ. Peter asked the rhetorical question:

“Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Acts 10:47

Peter understood that once they were accepted by God, as evidenced by them receiving the Holy Spirit, they should be accepted by the Church. By the fourth century everything had changed. Those professing faith in Christ and wanting to be admitted into the Church had to wait up to three years before being baptized. What a tragedy!  Continue Reading…