The Church Needs Spiritual CPR

Someone is walking down the street and sees a person lying on the ground. The person walking rushes over, finds the person on the ground unresponsive, calls for help, and starts CPR. A few moments later, the unresponsive person revives.

This scene occurs hundreds of times a day worldwide. In hospitals, the monitors attached to a patient often start that long continuous buzz indicating that the heart has stopped. Medical staff rush into the room and administer CPR and sometimes electric paddles, hopefully with the desired result: a revived life.

Let us examine the details of what happens in both scenarios above.

First, someone notices there is something drastically wrong. The person on a stroll sees someone on the ground, and our hospital staff hear the buzzer.

Second, a sense of urgency motivates those involved to act quickly. Everyone rushes to diagnose the problem and act accordingly.

Third, hard work is applied. Anyone who has administered CPR knows that it can wear out the caregiver rapidly. Also, you cannot stop the work until the patient revives or a medical professional announces that continuing the procedure is useless.

Christians often comment that the church needs revival. This comment shows that the person has taken the first step: noticing something drastically wrong. To state that the church needs revival presupposes that the church is in a backslidden state.

The church needs spiritual CPR. The church needs revival.

CPR is a drastic step reserved for those showing no signs of life. Many will argue that there are signs of life in the church. The music is lively, and many churches have large, energetic crowds. Those are signs of a high school pep rally, but are they signs of life?

What are the signs of a living church?

Faith in the Son of God is the key to life in the church. Faith without works is dead but works without faith are dead also (James 2:17,19-20,26; 1 Samuel 13:9-14). Jesus explains that faith is the work of God, John 6:28-29, “Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”

Love is another crucial factor to life in the church. Many in the church

have confused love with tolerance. Because of this misconception of what love is, the acceptance of sin is widespread.

The church is not to be accepting of sin, but we are to accept the sinner. In a world where a simple disagreement must mean you hate someone, intolerance toward sin and an acceptance of the sinner may be challenging to understand. Still, Jesus gives us the perfect example in John 8:1-11.

The scribes and Pharisees bring an adulterous woman to Jesus. Under the Old Testament law, she faced death by stoning for her sinful actions. The accusers are wanting to see how Jesus would handle the situation. Jesus tells the men the famous line about casting the first stone. The men leave, and Jesus is now alone with the woman. He tells her to “go and sin no more.”

He does not condemn her, nor is He tolerant of her actions. He does not allow her to explain herself, and He shows no compassion toward her sinful desires. He tells her to stop immediately and to cease the sin permanently.

Sex outside of marriage is common in the church today. If John 8 were played out today with Pastors playing the role of Jesus, instead of the woman hearing, “Go and sin no more,” she would hear, “It’s okay. God understands.” God does understand her situation and her heart, but according to what Jesus said, her sin is not okay.

Sadly, the “it’s okay, God understands” attitude is the attitude taken for nearly every sin today.

Tying love, faith, and work together. We’ve already seen that believing in the Son is the work of God. So, how does love play into this? John 14:15, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

Believing in the Son is believing what Jesus has said (Romans 10:17); in other words, believing the Bible, every word of it is truth (John 1:1-3, 14).

Since the Bible is truth, we do the work the Scripture tells us to do: proper heart attitudes, abstaining from sin, and doing the right thing. The motivation for following Scripture is not to save our souls; Christ already did that at the cross. It is not to gain favor with God but because we love Him.

The church has moved from “I love God, therefore I will do what he wants” to “God loves me, therefore, I can do as I please.”

There are a multitude of reasons for this shift. Still, three that immediately come to mind:

• Biblical ignorance.
• A lack of faith in the Scriptures.
• An unwillingness to follow God through the heart attitudes that result in proper actions as outlined in the Bible.

Does your church need spiritual CPR? Do you?