...But Christ Is Still Our Lover

The church is a mess. Aside from possibly being the understatement of the year, its true. It is very easy to look at the all rampant sin and wonder how on earth the church is being made into the image of God. It is not surprising to see people who, capitalizing on individualism, want nothing to do with the church; they have Jesus, why do they need the church? It is also very easy to look at all the ways that the church has wronged people, the corruption and scandals, the love of money and greed, and to conclude (often rightly) that they are no different from the world. Pulpits are more filled with self-help, empty platitudes, social and political grandstanding, and almost everything under the sun except for what they should be filled with: law and gospel, sin and grace, repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It is very easy to rage against the church and to condemn her. This is nothing new, however. It has been the story of the church since her inception because of one simple fact: the church is made up of sinners, like you and me.


We saw a grossly dysfunctional church at the giving of the law too. Exodus 32 gives us a glimpse of a church that had become as much of a whore as it is today. When Moses ascended up onto Sinai and received the law from God, the congregation of Israel started a worship celebration at the foot of the mountain. They were not, however, worshiping the God who had delivered them out of bondage, the God of their Fathers. They had made a golden calf and were in celebration and worship of the false god. Here is the picture:

"And the LORD said to Moses, 'Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’' And the LORD said to Moses, 'I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.' But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, 'O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’' And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people."- Exodus 32.7-14

This is remarkable to me. God offers to give Moses another people, to make a new nation from him, and Moses refuses. Moses could have said nothing and been given a new people, but he loved them. He loved them and interceded on their behalf. He reminded God of his promise to their fathers and of the work he had undergone in delivering them. To be sure, he was angry with the congregation. After God promised to relent from his anger, Moses went down and threw the tablets of law into the midst of the people. Then called out for anyone who was on the side of the Lord to pick up arms against those who were not for the Lord.

What we see here in Moses is both righteous anger and love. What we see in Moses is, at its root, a deep love for the people of God to the point where he will not go on into the promised land without them, but also a very high view of righteousness to the point where he would purge the sin from their midst at the tip of the sword. We do not execute idolaters today, but we do have church discipline. At it's most extreme form, excommunication is a form of church discipline where we cut the wicked off from our midst and count them as lost, at least until a time of repentance. But at it's root that is what we see here. Cutting off the wickedness from the congregation. Why did Moses cry out to God for mercy for the people? Because they were the people of God. Why did Moses go down the mountain in anger and clean house? Because they were so desperately wicked.

We see another completely dysfunctional church in the New Testament as well: the church in Corinth. Among the host of sins, they were guilty of apathy regarding sin, sin so grotesque that even the pagans around them abhorred it. Paul could have very easily condemned them, written them off, and moved on. But he gives thanks to God for the church in Corinth. He admonishes them as brothers to turn to Christ, but he also instructs them to purge the evil from their midst. Why did Paul call them brothers and thank God for them? Because they were the people of God. Why did Paul chastise them and tell them to put their house in order, to excommunicate the abominable sinners in their midst? Because they were so desperately wicked.

It is very easy today to decry the wickedness in the church, and thanks to the information age, we are privy to sins in churches across the world that we would have never otherwise known about. The church has always been simultaneously both the beloved possession of God and a congregation of wicked people who are often worse than the world around them. We should learn from the life of Moses and Paul: be angry at the wickedness that we find in our churches and cut it out of our midst when we find it, but never forget who the church is; the church is the bride of Jesus Christ.

How we apply this in day to day life should be a matter of prayer and wisdom. We should be deeply angered by the sin we find in our churches (and our own lives). We should cut it out of our midst. But we should always go before the throne of our Father in heaven and plead for mercy for the church. We should have a deep love for the church because her Lord and husband has so deep a love for her that he lay down his life in her place, he took the punishment of her sins upon himself. We cannot have Christ without his beautiful whore of a bride. She will not always be a whore, and we should love her because Christ loves her so dearly. Be angry at her sin but do not sin by hating her. The church may be a whore, but she is still our mother. We are a whore, but Christ is still our lover.