CN | Jesus Wants the Gospel Seen as Beautiful thru His Church

Why We Love Jesus' Church Part 5: Can Gospel Doctrine and Gospel Culture Come Together in the Church? Jesus Answers, "I Come Full of Grace and Truth. When You Love Me and My Commands, You Will Love Each Other."

Here are the first four posts in the series Why We Love Jesus' Church:

God Wants Us to Be Transformed in His Community

Jesus Offers More Than Open Basements, Bad Marriages

Jesus Calls Us to Embody His Justice & Righteousness Together 

Being Jesus' Contrast Community in a Consumer Culture Matters  

This series of posts is based on my own discovery of learning that in God's faithfulness to help me grow to become more like Jesus, He has somehow graciously ignited in me and fanned into flame a love for His Church. I can honestly say that His transformative work, slow as I can too often make it, has been interconnected with how much He has taught me to love, serve, and be faithful to His bride. The post below features excerpts and ideas from Ray Ortlund's The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ. 

       

Gospel Doctrine + Gospel Culture = Gospel Power

Francis Schaeffer wrote: "One cannot explain the explosive dynamite, the dunamis, of the early church set apart from the fact that they practiced two things simultaneously: orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community in the midst of the visible church, a community which the world could see. 

Every one of us is wired to lean one way or the other – toward emphasizing doctrine or culture. Some of us naturally resonate with truth and standards and definitions. Others of us resonate with feel and vibe and relationships. Whole churches, too, can emphasize one or the other. Left to ourselves, we will get it partly wrong, but we won't feel wrong, because we'll be partly right. But only partly. Truth without grace is harsh and ugly. Grace without truth is sentimental and cowardly. The living Christ is full of grace and truth (John 1:14). 

Gospel doctrine – Gospel culture = hypocrisy
Gospel culture – Gospel doctrine = fragility 
Gospel doctrine + Gospel culture = Gospel power

Every one of us and our churches still need to say: "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!" (Ps. 139:23). God does not gain by our clarity about Him. We gain by receiving His clarity from Him. John's words about loving the darkness help us to see ourselves (John 3:18-19). Too often, we tell ourselves we're better than we really are. This is "(loving) the darkness rather than the light." Recently I did a search at Amazon.com for "self-esteem," and I got 93,059 results. Time after time, we have been told that self-regard is how we become well-adjusted and successful people. But in her New York Times article "The Trouble with Self-Esteem," Lauren Slater quotes a researcher who studied criminals and concluded: "The fact is, we've put antisocial men through every self-esteem test we have, and there's no evidence for the old psychodynamic concept that they secretly feel bad about themselves. These men are racist or violent because they don't feel bad enough about themselves." But God's final category for us in not our goodness versus our badness; it is our union with Christ versus our distance from Christ. Hell is for people who could have enjoyed the love, grace, and truth of God in Christ but held back for something far less. 

Jesus Loved His Church So Much That He Might Present Her Beautifully Holy and Hopeful

Jesus died for His church and washes her with the Word of God, Paul says, "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" (Ephesians 5:27). It should not be surprising, therefore, to see what Paul expects of a church: "a sincere and pure devotion to Christ" (vs. 3). 

Nothing in all this world, however tempting, compares with Christ. Look at the glorious destiny He has for His people. He will present us to Himself in splendor. On that eternal wedding day above, He will look into our eyes and say to us, "My love, you are perfect," and He will not be exaggerating. Real holiness is not dull, drab, and negative. The real holiness Christ creates is beautiful. And the holiness He gives will redeem. The love of Christ is the greatest power in the universe – far greater than all our sins. John Owen compares our weak love with His powerful love: "A man may love another as his own soul, yet his love may not be able to help him. He may pity him in prison, but not relieve him, bemoan him in misery, but not help him, suffer with him in trouble, but not ease him. We cannot love grace into a child, nor mercy into a friend; we cannot love them into heaven, though it may be the greatest desire of our soul. But the love of Christ, being the love of God, is effective and fruitful in producing all the good things which He wills for His beloved. He loves life, grace and holiness into us; He loves us into covenant, loves us into heaven." That is the church's gospel doctrine. It cleanses us and renews us.

A church's gospel culture is marked by a beautiful holiness. It remains imperfect in this life, but it's visible and lovely. Our Lord says to us, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16). A new culture of holiness to the Lord flows from deep within – from hearts that are refreshed in the love of Christ and given over to Him alone. We might look at our unholiness and think: "I'm no good at this. I will only fail and fail and fail. Therefore, holiness doesn't matter." But the gospel teaches us to think: "I'm no good at this. I do fail and fail and fail. Therefore, the promise of Christ is what matters. He will make me holy as He is holy for His own glory. I will believe the gospel. I will put my trust in the mighty love of Christ." His holiness then begins to show only by His miraculous power in our weakness and corruption. Then people can see His beauty in the world today – in churches graced with holiness.

Dorothy Sayers describes the popular cynicism and ethos of our day in response to doubting this holy hope and choosing apathy instead: "In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair: the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die." Despair is an intellectual and social sin. It denies gospel doctrine and destroys gospel culture. But God is creating cultures of hope, expectancy, and good cheer in our churches, so that people can see a glimpse of the future and join in.

Jesus' Gospel Transforms His Church to Be More Fully Human as the Household of the Living God and His Pillar of Grace and Truth 

A local church makes visible the restored humanity only Christ can give. Jesus said, "I came to cast fire on the earth" (Luke 12:49). Elton Trueblood, in his book wonderfully entitled, The Incendiary Fellowship, explains how that worked out in the early church: "It was the incendiary character of the early Christian fellowship which was amazing to the contemporary Romans, and it was amazing precisely because there was nothing in their experience that was remotely similar to it. Religion they had in vast quantities, but it was nothing like this. Much of the uniqueness of Christianity, in its original emergence, consisted of the fact that simple people could be amazingly powerful when they were members one of another. As everyone knows, it is almost impossible to create a fire with one log, even if it is a sound one, while several poor logs may make an excellent fire if they stay together as they burn. The miracle of the early church was that of poor sticks making a grand conflagration." This is what can become of God's human family, His household (1 Tim. 3:15) as He is our Father and has adopted us as His family (Eph. 2:18-19; Rom. 8:15). Jesus reveals how the church can reveal the inexpressible beauty of God-loved and -empowered humanity through the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-10); the whole point of the Beatitudes is to reveal how the household of God behaves in the world. It is striking that Jesus began His first extended sermon by emphasizing gospel culture.

The family of God is where people behave in a new way; I think of it with a simple equation: gospel + safety + time. The family of God is where people should find lots of gospel, lots of safety, and lots of time. In other words, people need: multiple exposures to the happy news of the gospel from one end of the Bible to the other; the safety of non-accusing sympathy so that they can admit their problems honestly; and enough time to rethink their lives at a deep level, because people are complex and changing is not easy. In a gentle church like this, no one is put under pressure or singled out for embarrassment. Everyone is free to open up, and we all grow together as we look to Jesus. Behaving well in the household of God sets a tone defined by gospel + safety + time for everyone. This is what sets a church apart as a new kind of community. When the gospel of Christ's grace defines both the doctrine and the culture of a church, its members can safely confess and forsake sin. The goal of Jesus' church is to make it safe for confession and repentance; but not to make the church safe for active sin.  Church discipline is biblical for God's household when sin becomes dangerous to the community (1 Pet. 4:17; Matt. 18:15-17). It should occur when someone's misbehavior in the household of God desecrates the name of the Father and jeopardizes the safety of the other family members. The "deal-breaker" sin, which requires formal church discipline, is one that subverts the gospel culture itself. As a pastor friend of mine recently said: "When a sinner is repentant, the elders should protect that sinner from the church. When a sinner is defiant, the elders should protect the church from that sinner." 

The assembled saints not only comprise the household of God, says Paul, they are "the church of the living God" (1 Tim. 3:15). The word church means an assembly of people. They are an actual gathering of people. We who believe in Jesus have been called out from what we were before. Now we thrive whenever we gather together in His name. The Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost when "they were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1). His mighty power increased the church both in number and in depth of community (Acts 2:41-47). The church of Jerusalem in Acts loved getting together. The gathered people of God are a powerful force for gospel-driven change. As some said in the radical days of the 1960s, "Revolution is seeing each other a lot." 

Paul also observes that the church is "a pillar and buttress of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). What does a pillar do? It holds something up. And what does a buttress do? It firms something up. A faithful church, in other words, holds the gospel up for everyone to see and firms the gospel up as credible and solid. A church exists to be a pillar that holds up the truth of Jesus so obviously that everyone can see it. A church can offer a living and palpable proof that the gospel makes a real difference for real people living in the real world. That is also why we gather – to embody the truth of the gospel together so that people are intrigued by it. 

As a pillar and buttress of the truth, our churches are God's Plan A for world redemption, and He has no Plan B. No church should exist to exalt itself, any more than a pillar or buttress should draw attention to itself. Every church exists for the glorious truth about Jesus Christ, who "was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory" (1 Tim. 3:16). The power of the gospel creates churches that are "God-exalting, Christ-admiring, Spirit-filled, Bible-enjoying, grace-preaching, convenience-defying, cross-embracing, risk-taking, selfishness-crucifying, gossip-silencing, prayer-saturated, future-thinking, outward-reaching, and beautifully human congregations where the undeserving can thrive." 

Jesus' Gospel Empowers His Church to be able to Submit to Him and to Each Other

The doctrine of grace creates a culture of grace where good things happen to bad people. A gracious church culture proves that Jesus is the Holy One who forgives sinners, the King who befriends His enemies, the Genius who counsels failures. The gospel must land on each of us personally. But the gospel also creates a new kind of community – a gospel culture called a church. A church is a local body of believers in Jesus, together drawing their life from Him in regular, practical, organized ways that accelerate their progress for Him. Being part of a church frees us from a vague idealism and gives us traction for real gospel advance that will matter forever. It is only in a church that we are members of Christ and of one another, moving forward together like a well-coordinated body (1 Cor. 12:12-27). It is together that we suffer and thrive. It is together that we worship and grow and serve, according to the Word of God. 

The Bible tells us to submit to one another (Eph. 5:21). So let me ask you a simple question: To whom do you submit? Every one of us should have a good answer to that. The Bible goes so far as to say, "Respect those who are over you in the Lord" (1 Thess. 5:12). Christians have to choose between isolation, which is easy, and belonging, which is costly – and much more satisfying. Here is why our belonging to a church matters so much to God. We are living stones in the spiritual temple that He is building in the world today (1 Pet. 2:4-5). He wants to dwell among His people, and we as living stones find ourselves when we are built into the spiritual temple. There is no churchless Christianity in the Bible. God is building a new community, and it's worth belonging to. 

Jesus Invites His Church to Join Him in Building a Healthy Church 

It's the responsibility of each and every Christian to help build a healthy church. Jesus commands us to make disciples (Matt. 28:18-20). Jude says to build others up in the faith (Jude 20-21). Peter calls each of us to use our gifts to serve others (1 Pet. 4:10). Paul tells you to speak the truth in love so that your church will become mature (Eph. 4:13, 15). All of these help you grow in loving your church like Jesus loves your church. 

The risen Lord said to one of His churches, "You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked" (Rev. 3:17). They thought they were OK, but the Lord said, "I know your works" (Rev. 3:15). We need to go to Christ with a humility, openness, and honesty, asking Him about what we believe doctrinally, what we practice regularly, and who we are becoming personally and corporately. And if or when we discover unfaithfulness, we can approach Jesus and each other in a similar fashion as France Schaeffer wrote in an article entitled "How Heresy Should Be Met": "The final problem is not to prove men and women wrong but to win them back to Christ. Therefore, the only ultimately successful apologetic is, first, a clear, intellectual statement of what is wrong with the false doctrine, plus a clear, intellectual return to the proper scriptural emphasis, in all its vitality and in its relation to the total Christian Faith, plus a demonstration in the life that this correct and vital scriptural emphasis meets the genuine need. " 

Jesus Helps Us Embody a Gospel Culture Together, Faithfully Dependent on Him Whether in Times of Welcome or Rejection

It's no disaster for a church to suddenly find itself having to depend radically on Jesus. Dependence on Him is a sign of health. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wisely says: "It seems to me that the most Scriptural system of church government is that which requires the most prayer, the most faith, and the most piety to keep it going. The church was meant to be a living thing, a living person, and as the person cannot be supported if life is absent, or if food is kept back, or if breath is suspended, so should it be with the church." There will be times in a church's life when we feel that everything is falling apart. But such times can crack open a church's heart to depend on the living Christ as never before. They teach us that the best way to "do church" is always to place our endless need before His endless supply, as Spurgeon said. A.W. Tozer states the alternatives starkly: "Psuedo-faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails it. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutions. For true faith, it is either God or total collapse."

The Bible encourages us to look for more conversions (Acts 6:7), more joy (Acts 8:8), more impact (Acts 19:2), more glorious outcomes. We can also expect more trouble. The Bible tells us to expect two opposite reactions simultaneously (2 Cor. 2:14-17). Some people will experience our churches as "a fragrance from life to life." Others will experience them as "a fragrance from death to death." The more compelling our churches become through the gospel, the more intense these two reactions will be. We can expect both more openness and more controversy. Going forward with the Lord means that the future will be both more thrilling and more stressful than the present. Our Lord was destined to trigger strong responses – for and against (Luke 2:34). He always did and He always will, until He returns. When we find that we both please and provoke, we should not be surprised. Nothing is going wrong. Rather, something is going right. God is spreading the fragrance of Christ through us. It pleases God when we offer ourselves and our churches as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1) for the display of the gospel of Christ. 

The one thing the gospel never does is nothing. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ refuses to be held at arm's length with critical detachment. No one judges the gospel. It judges all, and it saves those who are willing to be judged, and repent and believe. We must take this to heart ourselves. Every time we hear the gospel preached, it hardens us a little more, or it softens us a little more, depending on our heart's condition before God. We cannot stay safely the same, as if we were in control. Martyn Lloyd-Jones counsels us wisely: "Be careful how you treat God, my friends. You may say to yourself, 'I can sin against God and then, of course, I can repent and go back and find God whenever I want Him.' You try it. And you will sometimes find that not only can you not find God but that you do not even want to. You will be aware of a terrible hardness in your heart. And you can do nothing about it. And then you suddenly realize that it is God punishing you in order to reveal your sinfulness and your vileness to you. And there is only one thing to do. You turn back to Him and you say, 'O God, do not go on dealing with me judicially, though I deserve it. Soften my heart. Melt me. I cannot do it myself.' You cast yourself utterly upon His mercy and upon His compassion." Exposure to the gospel makes the true condition of people's hearts more and more obvious. No one is static. No one is not responding to the gospel. Everyone is moving further along one path or the other. 

Naturally, we want to remove from our churches every obstacle to accepting Christ and growing in Him (Isa. 57:14-15; 2 Cor. 6:3). We want to adapt our communication wisely and humbly (1 Cor. 9:19-23; 10:32-11:1). We want to satisfy people's doubts and difficulties as much as we can (Col. 4:5-6; 1 Pet. 3:15). But we can never make a negative response impossible as we effectively communicate the gospel. Rejection is built into gospel ministry because of the nature of the fallen human heart. We must weep over people for whom no gospel presentation is ever good enough, people who are not satisfied because they are not satisfiable. They are moving away from Jesus and toward death. But we must never be deflected from faithfulness to Christ because of human rejection. It is striking how confident the apostles were after the Spirit came. Faithfulness makes enemies on earth. But faithfulness also has a Friend and Advocate on high: "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt. 5:11-12).

+ Sully

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