We’ll relate better to Church if we grasp who She is!
If we speed-read on through Ephesians, we’ll see how central Church is Paul’s vision. We’ll see that his vision of overflowing cosmic unity that we explored last week is utterly personal, not dully bureaucratic. (Nor indeed is it compulsory (4:18); there are those who `reject God’s purpose for themselves’ (cf Luke 7:30), remaining finally `shut out from the presence of the Lord’ (2 Thess 1:9), outside in the dark.) Rather, it’s personalized to the highest degree; and personalized because of what this word `Church` actually means, not a human social organization, but a living, eternal, wonderful, supernatural organism……
This is not a minor thing; it’s one of the central, most glorious visions by which we can live! As we’ll see, we’re talking about why God brought the planet into existence! So Church: what is it? what’s it all for? where are we going together?
BUT!! – as we read this our heart may sink! Because for quite a lot of us the whole idea of church has been twisted, ruined. Couldn’t we do following Jesus better without church? The gospel could be so simple: Jesus died for me individually; my sins are forgiven; so I can go to heaven. All true! But it is only the start!
Being forgiven is a gateway through which a whole new order of things floods in. Once we’re forgiven, God pours in His plan and goodness and healing and power, into and through our life, as we saw last week; repairing the inadequacies, the scars, the broken relationships, the broken world. Yet even this, massive though it is, is in one sense only repair. We need God to help us catch a bigger vision still, & He wants to do that through Ephesians. The point of history, the point of creation, is – the `Bride`; the Church….
It’s tragic if we don’t grasp this. But often the word is twisted so that it seems just to mean a building; or, a national institution, or social structure – the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church. But human organizations can be corrupted; and things we call churches often have been. The Inquisition was as bad as people like Dawkins say, and there have been the Crusades, frequent abuse of power, even such things as paedophilia. Church as it really is matters so much to God that Satan has carried out a huge exercise to attack, corrupt, infiltrate, & besmirch it. And it’s worked all too well. Including, that the whole meaning of `Church` has been lost…..
What is `Church`? It isn’t a building (even if that’s a convenient use of the word). It isn’t a human organization (that’s a more dangerous one). In Ephesians God shows us several pictures of something different, bigger, far more glorious. `Church` means the living, supernatural organism made up of every believer through history who loves God, who’s been forgiven and follows Jesus, from every century, nation, mentality, age-group and culture. Multifaceted, multicoloured, glorious! When we were `born again` we received God’s Spirit and He joined us supernaturally and permanently to this Church. We can actually never `go to church`, because every minute now we’re `part of Church`, and we will be forever!
And She, this Church, is God’s delight, because He has created Her to be His companion and to share all His existence and glory forever. And as we catch this vision for what She is – the Church – we grasp why She matters so enormously to Jesus, and for us; and we understand the point of history, the point of the cross, the point of our own lives. So, then, the Bride…
THE VISION OF THE BRIDE
Paul’s `vision of the ultimate’ in Ephesians picks up here on one of the great themes of the Bible. Near the close of Revelation, John presents history’s consummation in the Bible’s final chapters; it’s a panorama of the `wedding supper’ (19:5ff) of the Church, the `Bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ We see Her `beautifully dressed for her Husband’; She `shone with the glory of God’, and She will be Christ’s companion forever (Rev 21:2-3,9-11). `The Bride’; human love, marriage and sex are a foreshadowing of this ultimate, rapturous union between the Lord and His people; it’s the climax of history, and the theme of eternity! Then look at Eph 5:25-28a, where we find the Bride again, and Paul’s explicit: the whole experience of love, marriage and sex so central to us is actually a parallel, a picture of something even richer and more vibrant, God’s love for His church.
Paul’s vision is of a cosmos irradiated (5:27) by the beauty of this glorious Bride of Christ. What the word `Church` means primarily is this Bride that Christ will finally perfect; she is what Calvary (even our entire planet’s existence?) was for (5:25-27, 31-32). That’s the point of it all; this is what God wants, and gains, from history, a Bride! Astonishingly, our loving God wants a collective Companion made up of everyone who loves Him with whom He can share everything He has and is, forever. God is colossal love, from all eternity a Trinity, continually active in mutual, enormous love; but because He/They are colossal love, He wants more and more people to love unreservedly, and so He created a world out of which is emerging His Bride, a living organism growing by the life of God within her. This is what Jesus died for, and this supernatural, eternal organism is what Church means: each of us who believes is part of her; and each of us will share in that triumphant consummation. (Lord, I truly thank you that I can belong in all this…!)]
And She will totally reflect (Rev 21:11), or rather be filled with (Eph 1:23), all of Christ’s own nature. The Father is `over all and through all and in all’ (Eph 4:6); and, utterly one with Him, Christ too is the one who `ascended higher than the heavens in order to fill the whole universe’ (4:10). So a `reflective glory’ of holy, loving oneness is also His purpose for His Bride (4:3-6). This was Christ’s passionate longing as He prayed to His Father just before the cross: `I pray for those who will believe, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You’ (John 17:20-21). The Spirit’s ministries are at work now for precisely this purpose, says Paul (just after his words about Christ `filling the universe’), so that we may be built up `until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son’ (Eph 4:12-13). Throughout history God has been building His Bride together; most of Her is in heaven already, and living in God’s infinite love. But She’s not yet complete: we look ahead to Rev 7: `There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.` That’s the goal, and that’s why world mission; Jesus says that when every culture and flavour is finally and wonderfully represented in the Bride, history will have achieved its purpose and (Matt 24:14) will end…
And then this radiant unity of the Church will be at the heart of the heavenly universe. It’s glorious, and it’s already headed that way. Christ spoke no less than the truth when He prayed to his Father, `I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one; I in them, and you in me’ (John 17:22). Church as we see her on earth is growing, maturing, in all its components (you and I) — like a chrysalis from which, one day, a beautiful butterfly will emerge. And sometimes that chrysalis isn’t beautiful at all; but God knows exactly what He’s doing by His sanctifying Spirit to make us exactly like Jesus (cf Rom 8:29), and out of Her something unimaginably glorious is coming. This is what God wants; this is what He loved passionately enough to die in agony for; this is what will share His throne forever, this is what He calls us to live joyously as part of…
Yes: this is what `Bride` means, this is what `Church` means! Grasp this vision and it will shape your life! But there’s plenty more of this vision to come!; next week……..
PS `Why wasn’t Jesus’ prayer answered when He prayed that we might be one?’, a Welsh student asked me. Surely it was: what’s in view there is not the unification of anything so temporary as denominational structures, but an infinitely profounder unity of all who are in Christ, something that is a tangible reality across cultural and denominational divides. The usual snag with the bureaucratic processes we think of when we talk of church unity is how far (or how little) they represent `unity in the faith’. One wonders anyway how much they were a mid-twentieth-century issue; perhaps, in our era, denominational divisions are not so much being dismantled by complex negotiations as simply becoming irrelevant. And many believers who spend time in a distant culture will confirm the powerful sense of far deeper unity with fellow-believers there than exists with not-yet-believing fellow-citizens back home. Where (though only where) there is real `unity in the faith'(4:13) at a foundational level, we get to experience also that profound `unity in the Spirit'(4:3) that Jesus prayed for, and that His Father gave!
(For the rest of this series please click on https://petelowmanresources.com/category/bible-introductions-3/romans-to-philippians/ .)
