Follow Jesus Christ

The foundation of the Church is Jesus Christ. It was laid once and for all. But a foundation is not yet a house, and Christ never claimed that the Church already stands as a finished building. On the contrary: the true Church is still being built.

Many are convinced that Christ’s promise has already been fulfilled and that the Church exists in full in the form of today’s denominations. They seem to think that simply declaring belief automatically makes a person part of the spiritual Temple, even if their life bears no resemblance to the apostles’ lives. Yes, anyone can enter the temple building. But not everyone can become one of its supporting pillars or a block in the wall.

In the first centuries the apostles were forced to insist on the holiness of the Church, otherwise it would not have survived the chaos of the ancient world. Indeed, it was the authority of the Church that helped it endure wars, empires, reforms. And yet we see that sin was always present within Christian structures. Why did a Temple declared holy crack so easily?

Because the construction is far from finished. The foundation is in place, but the walls are still being raised. On any building site there will be noise, dirt and mistakes. Perhaps the lower floor has been built and temporary scaffolding erected, but the overall shape of the future Temple remains hidden. This is not a failure of Christ’s plan — it is part of the process. God builds slowly because He builds not from bricks but from human hearts.

Only those believers who truly resemble Peter — not in perfection, but in devotion — will be able to complete the final structure. People ready to fall and rise, to take up their cross and go. God is not looking for the religiously correct but for the spiritually growing.

Yet most people instinctively avoid the living Jesus. We are more comfortable with a symbol than with a Person. A symbol can be worn around the neck; a Person must be carried in the heart, and that is harder. A Perfect God confronts us. So we try to “tame” Jesus, leaving Him either knocking at the door or hanging on the cross. That’s easier — He is distant, silent, uninvolved. But Jesus taught otherwise: we must knock, we must seek, we must make an effort.

A mirror principle applies here: human movement toward God should be the response to God’s movement toward humanity. Contemporary Christianity often shies away from this idea, hiding behind “grace without effort.” But Peter did more than believe — he was martyred. Paul did more than hope — he traveled, endured persecution, and gave himself without reserve. Their lives show that the Kingdom of God is indeed “taken by effort.”

We still argue about salvation by faith or by works, forgetting a third dimension — salvation through spiritual growth. Faith can be merely intellectual; deeds can be merely ritual. Growth is continuous movement in which faith and works operate together like two wings in flight. No growth — no life. No life — no share in the Church to come.

And it is out of such living, growing people that Christ forms His Church. Not out of those who have learned to use religion as a profitable service to the public or as a tool of influence. Not out of those who expect salvation as an automatic right. The true “stones” will be those who are transformed day by day, who speak small words of truth, take small steps of love, win small victories over themselves.

For two thousand years Christians have expected a sudden end of the world. But Christ said, “The kingdom of God will not come in a way that can be observed.” It comes quietly, like the growth of a tree — not by days or years, but by generations. Perhaps the building of the Church will take thousands or tens of thousands of years. God is not in a hurry because His goal is not an event but a humanity capable of bearing His glory.

And when the last stone is laid, when the Church becomes not an institution but a living organism, when spiritual growth is the norm rather than the exception — then the world will see not merely a religion but the radiance of God. On a small planet amid the infinite cosmos a true Temple of Christ will rise. For now it is unfinished, but construction does not stop for a second and moves inexorably toward its completion in the future.

We build that Temple every day — by our choices, our honesty, our thirst for truth. And the more such people awaken in the world, the faster the Church of Jesus will take on its true shape.