The following is Part V of our series, What Good is the Church? A complete audio file can be accessed here.
Love does not simply look past a thing, love sees us as we are, how we should be, and how we will be, and loves us where we are and transforms us to be what perfect love demands we be. Jesus has come to transform us, not simply to look past a trespass but to cover a trespass and conform us into a perfect image that pleases God.
So that who we once were is not who we are, and who we currently are is not what we will be.
What we will be is like him. He is perfect, sinless, flawless, and fully pleasing to God. Jesus is the only one who could say with truth, I always do what is pleasing to the Father. Now that we belong to Jesus what is said of him can be said of us – we, through Jesus please the Father. This is who we are, who we will be. Those areas in our life that do not align with this fact must be taken off, folded up, and put away like an old ragged garment stained with all this world has to offer. Jesus has taken our old garments and given us new garments fit to wear in the presence of a King. Where we once had garments fit for the gutter, Jesus gives us royal robes fit for the halls of the Great King.
We come to Part V of our series as we consider Transformation. What good is the church? The church is those who are being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). The church, as both the recipients and caretakers of God’s glorious message of salvation in Christ, lives our faith before the world as something different, as salt and light in a dark and tasteless world. When we say things like this, we are not saying there is nothing good in the world. The beautiful confession of Christ is much better than that. As C.S. Lewis reminds us in his Weight of Glory,
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.
The church is left here, for now, to offer society infinite joy, to open the imaginations of those who didn’t even know there was something better to be imagined, something greater to hope for, someone who loves with infinite passion.
The church is the community of redeemed and reconciled ones whose transformed lives reveal hope, coherence, purpose, and destiny.