The church invisible “is made up of the summation of the whole, meaning everyone who belongs to God who ever was, presently is, or in the future shall be gathered into one body under Christ, who is the head.” i think of it as “invisible” because the greater part of those who comprise it are already in heaven or aren’t born yet…. and also “invisible” because its members who are still on earth can’t easily be seen many times. i reckon it’s the truth, not every believer, at first glance, looks like a believer…how are we supposed to look other than how we look? We don’t wear a special badge, or special clothing, live in special houses, or drive special cars so everyone knows us as believers. Regardless of what some negatively think, regardless of the grievances some may have laid at the feet of “the church”, according to scripture, God calls us a holy community, “the church”.
The qualifications of membership in the family of God are internal and are hidden. It is “invisible” or unseen except by Him who “searches the heart.” 2 Timothy 2:19, “The Lord knows those who are His”.
The church to whom the attributes, exclusive rights, power, privileges, and promises as a rightful part to Christ’s kingdom belong, are a spiritual body consisting of all true believers, and again, the church invisible. You may object to the wording there, but that is how God sees it, and truly, my friend, the buck stops with Him, not with us, our prejudices and disagreements. And yes, i realize throughout this entire program i’ve said, “God loves the church”, over and over. It is no mistake of repetitiveness but has a purpose.
God loves His people, He loves the church. The Lord has extended Himself beyond our wildest dreams in order that He would be involved with us, His people. From the beginning, His heart has been that He would be known, and we would be known by Him. Here’s a sticky statement: Right relationship is a two way street with good boundaries. If The King of the Universe didn’t love us, as He most certainly does, He wouldn’t fool with us. Think about it, we have a lot of nerve to declare “God doesn’t care” in light of from before the beginning He had a plan to redeem us, even before we fell to sin…He would not correct us if He didn’t care. Hebrews 12:6 “For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes.” Hold your place on this page, and i shall return in a moment.
Who are those comprising the visible church? They are all those throughout the world that profess the true faith. i call them “visible” because they are known, for the most part public, and although some are in secret because of murderous gov’ts and brutal societies, they are alive and functioning in the now. In the middle of “the church” is a mixture of “wheat and chaff,” or saints and sinners. One fellow wrote, “God has commanded His people to organize themselves into distinct visible legislative and ruling communities, with constitutions, rules, officers, badges, ordinances, and discipline. The organization is for the purpose, which is a conclusion to a matter for us to take action to accomplish, for the purpose of giving visibility to His kingdom, of making known the gospel of that kingdom, and of gathering in all those who belong to God. Each one of these distinct organized communities which is faithful to the great King, is an essential and indispensable part of the visible church, and they, all together, constitute the visible church.” The Lord gave momentum to the church, and their character and progress are set forward in motion in all the earth. You know, that’s a really big statement. i’ll be awhile thinking about that.
David Wilkerson wrote, “Consider what Paul said of the purity of Christ’s church: Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”
Mr. Wilkerson continues on saying, “God’s great concern is not about the apostate church. Even apostasies will not be able to kill or destroy the church of Jesus Christ. In spite of these problems, God has everything under control, and his anointed, visible and invisible, overcoming church is not dying. Rather, the river of the Holy Spirit is flowing into the “dead sea” of apostate churches, exposing iniquity and luke warmness. And it’s causing new life to spring up everywhere.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” If you want to do something for God, then love what he loves. It is a way to imitate God without “playing God”.
In Psalm 146:8 we see that the Lord loves the righteous. God loves the Church. He loves the people whose lives are hidden in Christ and who obey him. The Lord holds that the church is indeed a big deal. Why? …because God loves the church deeply, and with an everlasting commitment.
The Lord is the very embodiment of loyalty and commitment. With Him it is more than a couple nouns. Because He IS the two nouns, His person gives living substance to them as they are a someone, more than a something. Because He is the personification of loyalty and commitment, He represents his love for the church through the example of marriage. The Church isn’t just a brick and mortar facility…it’s not an empire, or a club, an organization, institution, or a religion. If it was an empire or a club we would only have to agree we are right and everyone else is wrong. Indeed, there are some who act like it’s a club instead of being part of the body of Christ. But in the true Body of Christ we all agree there is only one who is right, and it ain’t us. The focus is the Kingdom of God, not the empire of men. In God’s love, like marriage, there is covenant, promise, and responsibility. A friend recently said something like, “It’s no wonder many people are church surfers with little commitment. If they treat the body of Christ and church like they treat their marriages, with an average divorce rate of 52% or more, we shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of commitment to any church body.”
We are God’s family! Christianity means, not only relating to God, it means relating to other believers. When you become a Christian, you are a part of a family. That means our relationships are more than just passing in the night, but more the continual action of loyalty and commitment, if possible, to stick it out. Romans 12:18, “ If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” If possible is accented here, and i too am stressing the phrase because there truly are situations where it is not possible with people, and that requires an entire set of different choices and decisions, complete with renewed boundaries, and distinct plans of action.
Being part of the church, as in the body of Christ, is not merely being part of a group which meets at a brick and mortar facility, it is not in terms of a boy friend/girl friend relationship, yet, i believe many are subtly doing nothing more than dating God and the church whom He loves, seemingly only hanging around for what they can get from Him. In their hearts they treat the Lord like He’s on a short leash. They are critical of Him, judging what they have imagined Him to do or not do, and ready to terminate their relationship with God at any moment if He doesn’t do what they think He should. Oh, how little those people know God. i’m going to be a little aggressive here according to some, but i think many of us don’t know God nearly as well as we think we do.
Ephesians 2:19 “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God”.
This verse says the church is God’s family, and every believer needs a home, connected to the legisla body as well as a family of believers. i didn’t say a brick and mortar facility, but a church home as in.. others with whom we are in fellowship with. The question isn’t, “did you go to church” as in a building somewhere at a certain time, but did you connect with God? And if we think 10mins before and after a meeting is sufficient to call it connecting, we are wrong.
The church is God’s beloved, and it’s about His house, from the start. The very first letter of the Bible is the Hebrew letter, beit, and it’s oversized, emphasizing that from cover to cover it’s about the house of God and His family whom He loves. It’s there in 1 Thess 1:4 where it says, “brothers loved by God.” God loves the church, so let’s not get caught up in letters and miss the point … The male-ness of the terminology here is not meant to exclude women or children. The church is a family of brothers and sisters, the language simply refers to siblings. In 1Peter4 it is mentioned again concerning the church as the ‘household of God.’ The reference is very clear to me. A household is a unit, one comprised of children, mother, and father. God loves the church, and we should be reminded it isn’t right to call the bride of Christ names and we ought not forget this. Neither should we ignore it, doubt it, downplay it, belittle it, or de-emphasize it. Just because the church has problems, doesn’t mean God doesn’t love the church, and just because we may have personal ought with the church, doesn’t mean God doesn’t love the church. That God loves the church, that He set His affections on her, that He set His affections on us, is a truth we must… prize. i’m not saying the church doesn’t have some serious problems to resolve, and by only speaking sweet things made of moon beams, candy canes, and merry-go-rounds is not honest nor does it resolve anything. But… even in light of our difficulties, we are still the church whom He loves.
So then, what does it mean for God to love us, from His perspective? i was amazed when i looked up the word “beloved”. Simply put, it means to cherish, or take pleasure in. God cherishes, He t akes pleasure in the church family as more than a companion! Ahh, truly it is more…. The Hebrew word for beloved in 2Sam, used 208 times in scripture, literally paints a picture which says God leans in His heart towards us, to exercise grace for the return of His people whom He loves. That is what He means when He calls us His beloved. He loves us so passionately, it is said, “He breaths after us and calls us His darling.” Psalm108:6, “That your beloved ones may be delivered”. “Beloved” is used of the desire of ones heart 30 times alone in the Song of Solomon. This is significant and we should take note of God’s attitude toward the church, putting away our snurling lip and aiming finger of judgment.
To be God’s beloved, metaphorically, is like He takes his wallet out, or turns on His smart phone, and says, “Check it out! These are My kids! These are my sons and daughters!”, acting like a proud parent. Like a man prizes his super car, or his son or daughter, just like a woman treasures her diamond engagement ring and wants to show it off to the other girls, God holds the church near and dear.
‘How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make me, a wretch His treasure’
i believe that the Love of God is broader than being just about you and i though. It has a broader scope than just loving the church. God the Father loves God the Son. John 3:35 straight out says, “The Father loves the Son…” And John 14:31 says that the Son loves the Father as a perfect love, unblemished by any questionable motive, and untarnished by even the slightest infraction.
That God so loved the world that He gave His Son does not mean He so loved only those who loved Him back. There’s that retributive theology again. There may be those who try to make it say that…but that’s not what it says. That “God SO loved the world” means He loved the object of His affection who was full of wrongness. The world (kosmos) in John refers to a wicked, rebellious, self-centered, God excluding system with a God-hating order of things, which is full of moral darkness. And regardless of all that, God still loved.
In the book, “The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God” by Don Carson he states, “In John 3:16 God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing as the world; not just to “so many” people, but more as to such wicked people”. Brennan Manning said the Lord told Him one time, “God expects you to fail far more than you expect yourself to fail.” In other words, the Lord Almighty knows the world is worse than it understands, yet His love and grace do not stagger or waiver.
So, if God’s love is bigger and more complex than his love for the church, what makes his love for the church a big deal? God loves. God is love. In the O.T. God didn’t love all equally and the same. He didn’t love Egypt the way he did Israel; He didn’t love Esau the way he did Jacob. Ahhh, but once we leave the O.T. and cross into the new, Jesus died once, for all, and grace extends His love to small wickedness as well as large. It isn’t in terms of worthiness. A changed heart thoroughly saturated with the tenderness of God passes that tenderness around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and unworthy. Grace levels the mountains and fills in the valleys, and makes a level playing field for all to receive His love with reckless abandon.
John 3:16 says God loves the world…. that is the world in all it’s moral darkness and wickedness… But the love he has for His people, for the family who are the church, moves the Lord to mark them out, to set them apart from before that chaos which existed in the beginning. He calls that being sanctified.
God loves His people beyond our wildest and most stretched out imagination. Regardless of circumstances, even when our ship is overwhelmed in the storm and the deep is coming over the sides, God’s love for us stands firm. The Lord our God loves us, His church, His bride! Never lose sight of that! Think about it.
Never forget God loves us, the church. Whether we like it or not we are part of the family of God, we who believe on Christ Jesus and exalt the Lord as the One and only God, by whom we relate to each other, and are looking and hoping for unity through Christ who is our means of harmony.
Thank you for joining me here at Outposts for acoustic jazz night accompanied by some contemplative conversation, broadcast semi-live from the late evening, cascading banks of the Ockluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers edge, and every evening is pleasant.
i’m Social Porter and this program has been brought to you by the Kingdom of God, Living In His Name Ministries, Area 22 Guitars, Werner Graphics where the landscape of Heaven comes to life through the art of God’s imagination here on earth, the Mebane Freedom League with Kevin, Tommy, and Perry, and of course, Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.
Music was by Al DiMeola, Billy McLaughlin, Mark O’Conner, Phil Keaggy, Preston Reed, and Andy McKee. All music use is licensed by BMI.
Be strong and courageous, dance before the Lord when no one can see you, speak to the Lord and those around you in holy songs and melodies. Visit someone this week who you wouldn’t normally see, and look to the sky, the return of Christ is near. Amen.