Several years ago when one of our dogs, Gilbert, died, and our other dog, Jessie, seemed to be depressed, we made several trips to the Humane Society and the Pima County Animal Shelter to look for another dog. We have since learned that our other dog, Jessie, wasn’t depressed because Gilbert died, she is just depressed all the time – so much so that we decided we really should have named her Eeyore. So in hindsight, we really didn’t need to get another dog. But like they say, hindsight is 20/20.
If you’ve ever gone looking for a dog to join your family, you know that owners don’t pick out their dogs, the dogs pick out their owners. And on one trip to the Humane Society that is exactly what happened. We were just about to leave when this cute little red-headed dog looked at me with those sorrowful puppy dog eyes.
So we decided to check Susie out a little more. We should have known better when her “rap sheet” indicated that she had been known to chew things up and that she had pulled some irrigation lines out of the ground at her last home. But Gilbert had been that kind of dog at one time, too, and he turned out to be a pretty good dog so we were optimistic that there was hope for Susie.
When we first brought her home, she was pretty good. Until one day we came home and she had actually bent the bars on her crate far enough that she was able to escape and then she had proceeded to chew up our Wilbur the Wildcat stuffed animal, among other things. That earned her the nickname “Susie Sun Devil.” And of course it wasn’t long until she also managed to dig up several sections of our drip irrigation in the backyard on more than one occasion.
But Susie still lives with us several years later and we love that dog because in many ways she is one of the most loving and adorable dogs ever. But we are also smart enough to have purchased a much sturdier crate, where we lock her up every time we leave the house and we have redone our drip irrigation to make it harder for her to dig it up.
In many ways, Susie reminds me of the church as a whole and of Thornydale Family Church. It’s pretty easy to take potshots and focus on all the things that are wrong with her. We can focus on the decisions that we don’t agree with and the people that frustrate us. But in spite of all those faults, I am here today to tell you that I love the church that Jesus bought with His blood. I love the universal body of Christ and I love Thornydale Family Church. And regardless of what shortcomings there might be because those bodies consist of sinful human beings, I would never desert them or trade them in for an inferior alternative.
So over the next six weeks, I’d like to share with you why I love my church and why you should too, and how all of us can develop an even deeper love for the bride of Christ as we work together to carry out the purposes that Jesus has for His body. So for these next six weeks, I invite you to fall in love with the Bride of Christ – His church – either for the first time, or to fall in love all over again.
I love my church for one reason – because Jesus loves the church.
But it is apparent that sentiment is no longer common in our culture. Numerous polls and studies that have been conducted over the last decade or so all come up with the same conclusion. Both church attendance in general and the frequency at which people attend church services have decreased significantly. Part of that decline can be attributed to the fact that a smaller proportion of the population in this country identify themselves as Christians than in any time in our history. But there are two other trends among those who claim to be Christians that seem to be even more significant when it comes to the decrease in church attendance:
1) It seems that it has become fashionable in our culture for people to say something like “I love Jesus, but I hate the church.” That sentiment was clearly reflected several years ago in the cover article in Newsweek Magazine titled “Forget the Church, Follow Jesus”. To be fair, that article did make some valid points. But certainly the overall idea that it is somehow possible to separate Jesus from His bride, the church, is problematic, as we will see this morning.
2) The second trend is that technology, including radio, TV and the internet, has given people the ability to feel like they are part of a church when they really aren’t. After all, it’s a lot easier to sit at home in my pajamas or my underwear and “attend” church on my terms. In fact, it’s actually possible to design my very own church. I can choose the music I like from one church and then listen to the sermons that make me feel good from another church. And I can do that on my own schedule. That way I don’t ever have to experience conviction, struggle, disagreement or conflict. But as we’re going to see this morning, that is not either loving or being a part of the church.
So I’m going to begin this morning with a bold statement and then use the Bible to back it up.
It is impossible to love Jesus
and not love His church
As we will see this morning, the church is the bride of Christ. Think about that for a moment. When we bash the church and make condemning and hurtful comments about her, how can we possibly think that Jesus is OK with that? I understand that because the church consists of sinful people, it is not going to be perfect or be all that Jesus wants it to be. And we ought to address those shortcomings and do what we can to correct them. That’s not what I’m talking about here, though. I’m addressing those who use those deficiencies as a reason to mock and ridicule the church and as an excuse for not being actively involved in a local church.
Men, what if someone were to come up to you and say, “I really love you. But I can’t stand that wife of yours.” Would you think it was even possible that person really loved you if he or she spoke about your bride like that? I sure know how I react when someone even inadvertently does or says something that is hurtful to my bride, so it’s not hard for me to imagine how Jesus feels about those who speak and act against His bride, the church.
Last year, I had a high school reunion. I won’t tell you which reunion that was because then all of you would think I’m old. Mary went with me to the events on Friday and Saturday night not because she was really excited about hanging out with a bunch of people who, at best, she barely knew. But because she loves me, she went with me – and she didn’t do that begrudgingly. And because I love her I have attended events and done things with her over the last 40 years or so that I wouldn’t have particularly chosen to do on my own. But because I love her and those things were important to her, they are also important to me.
That’s the way we ought to view the church as well. If we really love Jesus, then we will naturally come to love the things He loves. And if there is one thing that I am absolutely certain about, it is that Jesus loves His church. We’re going to see this morning just how much He loves His bride. And because Jesus loves the church, if I genuinely love Him then, I am going to love the church, too.
So go ahead and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 5 so that we can be reminded of the depth of Jesus’ love for His church. Usually we use the passage we’re going to study this morning to teach men how to be the kind of husbands God wants them to be. And that is certainly an appropriate application of the passage. But this is actually primarily a passage about how Jesus loves His body, the church. Keep that in mind as you follow along as I read beginning in verse 25:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
(Ephesians 5:25-32 ESV)
Paul begins by telling his readers that Jesus loved “the church”. And I’ve already used that word “church” quite a number of times just in the introduction to this message. So it seems the first thing we ought to do this morning is to define what Paul and Jesus meant when they talked and wrote about “the church.”
In order to do that we’re going to have to take a look at the underlying Greek word that is translated “church” here and elsewhere in the New Testament.
ἐκκλησία - ekklesia
ek (“from”) + kaleo (“to call”) =
“to call out from”
In classical Greek the word meant “an assembly of citizens summoned by the crier” or the “legislative assembly”. By New Testament times, the word was used to represent any group of people assembled together for a particular purpose. It did not refer specifically to a religious gathering.
Although some of the early English translations of the Bible correctly translated that word “assembly” or “congregation”, almost every contemporary English translation of the Bible has chosen to use the word “church” instead. Since our English word “church” is derived from an Old English word that described a “place of worship” that has led to much confusion about the nature of the church. Jesus never viewed the church as a building, a place, or an organization, but rather as an assembly or gathering of people that He has called out from the world to Himself. As I’ve pointed out before, that’s why the Bible never speaks of “going to church” because the church is the people, not the place.
So the idea here is that Jesus loved the people who make up the church. Therefore, as we’ll see for the next several weeks, if we’re going to love the church like Jesus loves the church that means we will love the people who comprise the body of Christ.
The word “church” is used two different ways in the New Testament:
• It is used like it is here in Ephesians 5 to describe the universal body consisting of Jesus’ disciples. That is sometimes also referred to as the “catholic” church – “catholic” with a small “c” - not the Roman Catholic Church. That body includes every single person who has ever placed his or her trust in Jesus as the means of being made right before God.
• But since it is not possible for that entire body to meet together at one time in one place, at least here on earth, local bodies of Jesus’ disciples were established in each city where those disciples could meet together regularly for worship and ministry.
So if you are a disciple of Jesus you automatically belong the universal church and it is Jesus’ intention that you also belong to a local church, like TFC, where you can worship and minister with other disciples. When Paul says that Jesus loved the church, he has both the universal and the local church in mind.
But Jesus didn’t just say He loved the church, He demonstrated that love by the way he treats the church. Let’s look at three things Jesus did on behalf of the church that show His love for His bride and see how we can love the church like Jesus does by incorporating those same practices into our lives.
How Jesus manifests His love for the church:
1. He sacrificed
Paul writes that Jesus “gave himself up” for His bride, the church. The tense of the verb there indicates that this is something that Jesus did once, not something that He must continue to do over and over again.
We are reminded here that even though it appears from our human perspective that the Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers took Jesus’ life, the fact is that He willingly laid down his life for our benefit.
Jesus told His followers ahead of time that He was going to do that for them:
For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
(John 10:17-18 ESV)
Jesus makes it clear here that no one was going to take His life from Him. And being 100% God as well as 100% man, Jesus had the power to save Himself, even as He hung on the cross. In fact, many of the people who watched His crucifixion mocked Him and urged Him to save Himself, but He refused to do that because of His love for His church.
What makes that sacrifice even more remarkable is that Jesus made that sacrifice on our behalf even when we were totally undeserving, as the apostle Paul reminds us:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:6-8 ESV)
Jesus’ love for us is unconditional. He didn’t wait until we cleaned up our lives or got our act together before He chose to manifest His love by His sacrifice.
How I love the church like that:
• By not letting the church I want become an enemy of the church I have
In his book, “Under the Unpredictable Plant”, Eugene Peterson writes about what he calls “ecclesiastical pornography” in which people develop an airbrushed version of the church they want to exist. The problem is that there is no such thing as a perfect church. As someone once said, “If you ever find a perfect church, don’t join it because you’ll ruin it.” And in their search for the ideal church, these people never commit to a real church. And if they ever do, once something isn’t to their liking they just move on to another church where they will inevitably go through that whole cycle all over again.
So if I’m going to love the church like Jesus, it means that I love it unconditionally, even when it doesn’t meet all my expectations. It means that I will sacrifice my own personal preferences for the overall good of the body as a whole.
Obviously I’m not suggesting that if my church begins to teach that which contradicts Scripture or it consistently operates in a manner that is contrary to the Bible, that I shouldn’t leave that church and find another one that values God’s Word. And it is also possible that occasionally God does lead people to leave one church and join another because it will further His kingdom and His purposes.
But what I am saying is that if I love the church, I won’t easily be persuaded to become dissatisfied with the place God has called me to serve.
2. He sanctifies
Jesus’ love for His bride did not stop with His sacrificial death. Paul tells us that His sacrifice on the cross not only makes His disciples positionally righteous before God once for all, but Jesus continues to work in our lives to sanctify us. We tend to use that word “sanctify” a lot in the church, but I’m not sure we always have a good handle on what it really entails. The word literally means “to set apart”.
Sanctification, unlike being made positionally righteous before God through faith in Jesus, is a process, not a one-time occurrence. In that process, Jesus works in our lives daily to help us become set apart and distinct from the world as we become more like Him.
That is what Jesus had in mind as He spoke to Peter as He washed his feet prior to the Passover meal Jesus observed with His disciples the night before his crucifixion:
Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”
(John 13:10 ESV)
The point Jesus was making here is that once a person places his or her trust in Jesus alone as the means for salvation, that person is considered righteous in God’s eyes because Jesus has become his or her righteousness. So when God looks at that person, all He see is righteous Jesus, not a sinful human. That is the “one who has bathed” that Jesus speaks of here.
But as that person walks through this world in his day to day life, he or she collects “dirt” in his or her life that needs to be cleansed on a daily basis. That is the process of sanctification. And here in Ephesians 5, Paul writes about how Jesus does both of those things in the life of His disciples. He also tells us that the primary tool that Jesus uses to sanctify us is His Word, which is pictured here as water that cleanses our souls. So we see here that Jesus loves His bride so much that He has given us His Word, which He uses in our lives to continually cleanse and sanctify us and make us more like Him.
He does that because there will be a day in the future where He is going to present His bride, the church, to His Father, and He wants to make sure that His bride is without spot or wrinkle or blemish, set apart and distinct from the world in which we live.
How I love the church like that:
• By submitting to the process of sanctification
Because Jesus uses the church in the process of sanctification, being part of the body of Christ will inevitably result in God revealing things in my life that are ugly to God. And when that happens, I have two choices:
o My natural inclination is always going to be to run from that in some way. Perhaps I will blame others for creating those unhealthy and destructive attitudes and behaviors in my life. And when that happens I’m likely to flee from those relationships and individuals and situations that God has used to reveal those things in my life. But when I do that, I am actually running away from my own spiritual growth and sanctification and I am likely to become less like Jesus rather than more like Him.
o The other, more difficult option, is to stay where God has placed me and to submit to the process of sanctification. That requires me to take responsibility for those things in my life that are displeasing to God and to allow Him to use the body of Christ to help me deal with those issues in a way that honors God and helps me to become more like Jesus.
3. He sustains
Paul reminds us that Jesus “nourishes” and “cherishes” the church in the same way that a man cares for his own body. Jesus didn’t just establish the church and then leave His bride to fend for herself. He continues to sustain the church with His active care for her. We’re certainly reminded here of the words that Jesus had spoken earlier in His ministry:
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
(Matthew 16:18 ESV)
Most of us are probably pretty familiar with this verse and if you’ve been in the church for any time at all you’ve probably heard some teaching on it. I know I’ve certainly covered this verse here at TFC in the past. Unfortunately, much of that teaching seems to be focused primarily on identifying the rock on which Jesus is going to build his church. We don’t have time to go into that in any detail at all this morning, but I am confident in saying that Jesus is not claiming that Peter is the rock on which He will build the church, as some have concluded.
But far more importantly, Jesus tells us two important things about the church:
1) It is His church. Thornydale Family Church is not my church. It is not the elders’ church or even our church. This church and every other church that is made up of His disciples belongs to Jesus because He is the one who paid the price to bring it into existence.
2) He promises to build His church. In our culture there has been a lot of attention recently on how to build the church and particularly about how to attract unbelievers to the church. But the fact is that none of us here are responsible for building the church. Jesus has already promised He will do that. And where He is lifted up and exalted and made the focus, that’s exactly what He does. But if we try to take things into our own hands and try to build the church with manmade plans and human philosophy, we hinder that work that Jesus is already doing.
How I love the church like that:
• By serving those Jesus draws to His church
Because Jesus loves His church, He sustains her. But He often uses those who are in the body to do that. I’m convinced that is why we see all the “one another” verses in the Bible.
So in general, it seems to me that means we should focus a whole lot more on serving the people that God has already drawn here than on trying to develop programs and ministries which we think will somehow build the church. As we’ve clearly seen this morning, that is Jesus’ job, not ours.
Obviously I’m not saying that we don’t do what we can to make this a safe place where hurting people can come and experience the salvation that Jesus offers to them. But ultimately what is going to attract people most effectively is to make sure this is a place where people genuinely care for and serve each other.
It is impossible to love Jesus
and not love His church
As we have seen this morning, Jesus loves His church so much. He sacrificed for her, sanctifies her and sustains her. And because Jesus loves His bride so much, I love my church, too. Do you?
