This may come as surprise to you but in all sorts of way you & God do not think alike. Your thoughts are not the same as his thoughts. We do not always value the things that God values. And God has a way of flipping things on their head that messes with our heads. Which is the why the least can be the greatest. The last can be first. The poor can be rich. The servant more important than the served.
So if you were God, and let me just gently remind you that you are not, what method would you choose to reveal your light, your plan, your wisdom to ALL creation and to all spiritual powers and beings? What would you use for your cosmic billboard? Would you rearrange the galaxies to spell out JESUS? Would you reshape the Himalayas to look like a cross? Would everyone be born with a tattoo of a little fish on their arms? Would we all be programmed to memorise the gospels? What would you do? And if you were to display the glory of God as a lasting sign where would you display it? If you were to make something that would be able to show everyone, everywhere, in all times and all places what you, God, were like, your character, your heart, your very self, what would you make?
Well, we know, what God would do because He’s told us. He’s revealed His plan and His methods and we can find it in the Bible. Read Ephesians 3. Did you see it? Did you notice where the glory is and the wisdom is and the what God will use to bring His light to everyone? The church. The church!!
The Greek word for the church is ekklesia. I think that’s a cool word, I always have. Ekklesia. What that means is an assembly of people. Let’s say you have a large group of people and you choose a few of them to form a new group. They would be your ekklesia. You’re gathering together, and they’ve been called out from one group to form another group. In the Old Testament we have this word picture of all the nations being before God and he walks along and finds Israel and says, you come over here, ‘I choose you’. In the same way, Jesus the bridegroom looks for a bride whom He can love and with whom He will covenant to and create family with and He says to the church, ‘I choose you’.
The Bible describes the church in relation to Jesus as His body and His bride and it’s hard to overstate how important that is. Jesus loves the church. So much so that He tells husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies and to love their wives as Christ LOVES the church. And because Jesus LOVES the church, God has poured His Spirit into it, set up home there, made that the place where His presence can be found.
Now, you might look around at your church and think about other churches and all the failings of the church over the last 2000 years and have some pretty big questions for God about his business strategy. ‘That’s your best idea God? The church? Look God, I work in PR and advertising and you’ve got an image problem here. That guy smells (and that’s putting it kindly), she’s annoying, those kids are screaming, the music is poor, the sermon was worse, the coffee was undrinkable and you’re telling me that this is your plan?’ And God just looks at you and says, ‘Yes although we can work on the coffee’.
Jesus loves the church, WAY MORE than you do. WAY MORE. And that prompts two questions? How much does Jesus love the church? And secondly do you love the church as you should?
Let’s take the first question: How much does Jesus love the church? And the answer is A LOT. Because God is love. Here’s what it says in Ephesians 3:19 “and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
As in God wants you to know that you’re going to need strength to get this, because it’s a BIG truth, and even then you’re not going to be able to really get it because it goes beyond knowledge. You can hear how big the universe is and hear that they’ve discovered a galaxy that’s billions of light years away (they just have) and you hear those words but you don’t really know what that means (no one does). You know it’s a long, long way away but you can’t really comprehend how vast a distance that is. Well, this is like that. You can’t comprehend the love of Christ. You will know but not fully know the breadth, length, height and depth of it. And did you notice how you’ll get that insight ‘with the saints’. You won’t get it on your own, you won’t get it from podcasts, you won’t get it from YouTube or Spotify, you can’t – because you can’t get love that way. Love is enacted. The gospel must be proclaimed, yes. But the gospel is also demonstrated.
How do we know that God loves us? Because He sent His own son? And what did His Son do? He died for us to redeem us from sin and death. This is how we know love. John writes it exactly that way, “By this we know love that he laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16).
Because God is love, He has shown His love and poured out His love into our hearts and called us the children of God. And He calls those people out of the world and says, ‘I love you’. And because love is what love does, it cannot be known apart from others. And it is why most of the questions we ask about church are not very good.
How’s the coffee? Was the music any good? Are there people my age? Did I get anything out of it? Is the service at a time that fits my schedule? Is it cool? And God says, ‘Who cares about any of that?’ Is there love? Did you hear about my love? Did you see evidence of my love?
You can’t even know you’re a Christian if you’re not in a church. You can’t. Which is a pretty compelling reason to commit to a local church.
“If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.”
Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), 1 Jn 4:20–21.
How do you know that God loves you? Because Christ died for you. How do you know that you love God? Because love pours out of your heart for the things that God loves and God loves the church! The church is the object of His love. You cannot love your brothers and sisters by being on your own. Because you have nobody to love. And you cannot love people if you do not commit to them. You might like them, you might learn from them, but you cannot love them. Jesus commits to us and asks us to commit not just to him but to His bride, His body. All in.
PS. And if you’re interested in hearing my talk you can here
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