Ephesus - Popular Religion

I have been a minister for nearly 60 years.

I have witnessed a dramatic decline in the status of the church both Protestant and Roman Catholic in Scotland.

At the same time there has been a escalation in religious practices associated with other ethnic communities.

The increased use of nonChristian rites for weddings and funerals has radically changed the religious profile of the Scottish people. People feel no inhibition in believing what they want, or not believing at all.

The contemporary Scottish scenario is remarkably similar to the situation which obtained in Ephesus in Paul’s day.

Ephesus was a multi-religious community.

The main religious attraction was the great temple to the fertility goddess Artemis.“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”(Acts 19.28).

Next the young Christian community attracted many Jews. Paul first went to the Jewish synagogue to preach the gospel of Jesus. He was soon evicted because of his teaching but not before he had won over a number of Jewish believers.

But these were Jews who lived in the Hellenistic environment outside Palestine.

Their form of Judaism was more liberal and broad minded than the Judaism back home in Jerusalem.

So these Jewish Christians tried to incorporate Jewish ideas into their Christian religion.

Finally, the widespread and virtually universal religion at that time was called Gnosticism, which means‘religion through knowledge’. Gnosticism believed that the material world was evil and God’s world pure.

To gain salvation , a believer had to move upwards through various stages of religious knowledge away from the evil materialistic world to God’s purer spiritual world.

The converts still retained much of their previous religion. So different religious ideas crept into the congregation. They attempted to‘improve’the simple gospel message of Jesus.

The Jewish believers wanted to introduce rules about eating proper food while the church members who previously had believed in pagan gods still wanted to indulge in their religious speculation.

That was the reason why Paul left Timothy at Ephesus to repair the damage to the gospel caused by these wayward believers. “Certain people are teaching different doctrines occupying themselves with myths and genealogies”(1 Timothy 1. 3-4).

These troublemakers were in fact leaders within the Christian community.

That is also the real reason for these‘Pastoral’letters. As well as caring for the needs of the members these letters combated the false teaching and wrong behaviour of the erring church leaders.

It is so like the church situation in our day and age. In all the major church denominations we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from the main point and purpose of any church. My own denomination has lost a great deal of credibility with the Scottish people during the half century I have been a minister.

The church is no longer regarded as a spiritual force with the dynamics to lead a nation, or determine its standards.

Distracted by other irrelevant issues, the church has lost sight of the spiritual needs of the Scottish people.

The inside of a church building is an unfamiliar place for many people, while the contents of the Bible are an unknown story.

Many young people today may be the third or fourth generation of families with no church connection.

The established church is simply not engaging with Scottish society.

The answer? The church’s method of proclamation may be out of date but the gospel of Jesus has lost none of its relevance.

The church may be detached from modern society but Jesus walks the streets of today’s world.

His church may have been left behind by the 21st century but Jesus is still to the forefront of modern society.

The solution lies in the demonstrations of individual congregations and chapels, peopled with sincere members.

There is no place for nominal members in modern congregations. Christianity is very inconvenient and Christ very demanding.

Let us rediscover that original gospel. Let us plant it again in our own heart and soul, then by our own example placard it before our society.

Earnest in our commitment to Jesus, sincere in our worship, let us be for other what Paul asked of Timothy.

“Set the believers an example in speech and conduct in love, in faith, in purity”(1 Timothy 4.12).