Phelim Doherty The Father we never knew. The unbinding of the Lazarus Church by the restoration of the gospel

The gospel of God’s grace announces nothing less than the abolition of religion. But we have taken a supernatural message and turned it into a mere natural one, and the result is a spiritually immature church that sees strength primarily in natural terms, and church growth as being about congregation sizes and resources rather than revelation. When the glitter of religious performance—what we can achieve for God—is peddled in the church as real gold for long enough, then we raise a generation of believers who know how to do things for God, but not how to be the children of a joyful Father! We raise a nation of holy orphans who, not knowing their Father’s righteousness as their spiritual DNA, live constantly trying to prove their parentage through their performance. The result is a church so sin-conscious and self-conscious that she is like a bride so insecure in her identity that she has buried the likeness of her Father beneath layers of makeup. In this book the author begins to peel back that makeup to reveal the simple beauty of the gospel: Christ in us.