I hear a lot of complaints about ‘the church’ these days. I’ve been guilty of them myself. Why don’t Christians give more money to the poor? Why is British Christianity so middle class? Why aren’t we preaching the gospel properly? Why all the abuse scandals?
Many of those questions, particularly that last one, have a point. God’s people have long wandered from him: if even there at Horeb, when the mountain shook with the presence of the Lord and the people trembled at his coming – if even there, so soon after, Israel strayed into the grossest idolatry, then we can hardly expect the church in these last days, even under the New Covenant, to be free from sin and distress. Waywardness must be brought to account, sin confessed, and repentance sought.
I myself have felt a deep dissatisfaction and disillusionment with much of contemporary Christianity. I have wondered where the zeal of old has gone, when there were men and women who died for the faith, and saints so set upon seeing the kingdom of our God that no sacrifice was too great in their pursuit of Christ. I have sat through worship services that seem far from the reverence and awe that befits the worship of the God who is a consuming fire, and wondered how God’s people have let consumerism, and the thin, shallow technologising impulse of the world around us draw us from tasting and seeing the transcendent beauty of our Lord. And I have mourned the division I see: amongst Protestants, amongst Roman Catholics, between all the major denominations that profess the name of Christ and his Catholic Church.
But do I mourn because I love the church, the bride of my Lord? Do I mourn because I see divided the one whose unity, whose holiness, was bought by the blood of Christ? Or am I bitter and ungrateful for the work that God is doing in this world? Perhaps it is my selfishness that leads the way. When I look to the cross, am I not tempted to see a Christ hung there for me, but not a Christ for you, and Christ who in himself bears the sins of all his people?
We would do well to see the beauty of God’s people. I am a Christian today in a large part because I saw something supernatural when first I saw God’s people dwelling together under his word and truth. There was a kindness, a compassion that could only come from lives genuinely touched by the grace and Spirit of our God. I saw that when I was a child; and, looking back, I know that I have known something of that love my whole life. In the lives of my parents, who have loved without expectation of repayment, who have forgiven time and again without remorse. In the lives of pastors and those who have taught me God’s word. I have seen our God in the humility of apologies, confessions, and forgiveness between brothers and sisters.
The shock of abuse scandals in the church does not fly in the face of that. We feel the pain of these wounds so acutely precisely because we know, deeply and instinctively, that it is out of kilter for the people of God to act in such a way. I have known abusers in secular environments whose actions, though deeply saddening, have not surprised me. But to see those who profess Christ commit such evils stings to the core, exactly because I have seen the hand of God at work in those who bear the name of Christ.
I love God’s church. I love Christ’s bride. In her midst I have known love and fellowship and friendship that goes deeper than anything else this world has to offer, that feeds the depths of my soul. When we as God’s blood-bought, ransomed and redeemed people gather each Lord’s day to worship our God, heaven and earth stand close astride one another. It is but for a moment, but it is a taste of eternity. In such times, all my confession is to lift my voice with the psalmist, in prayer and expectation that I will dwell in God’s house for evermore. And one day our Lord will answer that prayer, finally and irrevocably.
The Fourth Discourseman
The Four Discoursemen 