At Grace Hill Church, we are in the midst of a series on our DNA that we might understand who Christ has called us to be as a church and what he has called us to do. In thinking about our church as a gospel-centered community for this week, I came across this provocative quote from John Stott as quoted from his book, The Bible: Book for Today:
What do you think of the church? Your answer will probably depend on whether you are thinking about the ideal or the reality. In the ideal, the church is the most marvellous new creation of God. It is the new community of Jesus, enjoying a multi-racial, multi-national and multi-cultural harmony which is unique in history and in contemporary society. The church is even the ‘new humanity’, the vanguard of a redeemed and renewed human race. It is a people who spend their earthly lives (as they will also
spend eternity) in the loving service of God and of others. What a noble and beautiful ideal! In reality, however, the church is us (if you will pardon the bad grammar) — a dishevelled rabble of sinful, fallible, bickering, squabbling, stupid, shallow Christians, who constantly fall short of God’s ideal, and often fail even to approximate to it.
The hope of the gospel is that God is in fact transforming this sin-stricken church (as Stott rightly describes) into a radiant and glorious bride (Rev. 21:2), and he is doing this by ravishing us by his great love for us. What a wedding present!
brett eubank | unfinished 