THE CHURCH

What will the Body of Christ look like in the future? Are the determining factors for faithfulness to the gospel large attendance numbers, denominational purity, or a particular belief system? Or will followers of Jesus be known as those who have embraced his call to die to their wants, deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him?

Love binds everyone together in perfect harmony. When the church, the Body of Christ, loves one another, it become sight in the darkness.  It becomes the answer for all the sin (misdirected love), and this love is found exclusively in the local church when God is having his way with the Body.

The plan was to reflect God’s glory through self-giving other-directed love.  God’s kids were not faithful. Instead of self-giving, they became self-grasping: “the woman saw the tree and took of its fruit.” There was initialized pursuit of their own glory to be like God.  Every earthly ill can be traced to this single Adamic defect. Today, all the problems of our world from interpersonal dis-ease, to racial strife, to international discords and strife, ALL find their root in self-grasping, the failure to embody the glory of God’s other-directed love.  The new, rescued, restored family of God, the body of Christ, the church—personal and corporate, local and universal—is God’s plan to restore his glory of other-directed love.

God expanded his universe by his choice, reveling in his self-giving love.  Humanity was created to bear the image of God, to make visible the very likeness of the Creator, and that could not be done in isolation.  God created mankind, “male and female,” a family where the divine image could be practiced and reflected in self-giving love as is the eternal practice of the Trinity: the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit glorifies the Father and Son in the “spirit” of love.  The church, the family of God, was and will ever be marked by other-directed self-sacrificing love.