Skip to main content

Can You Love Jesus and Hate the Church?



Aaron Denlinger shows the absurdity of saying that we love Jesus, but hate His Church:



Forgive my bluntness, but claiming to love Jesus while wanting nothing to do with the church is just stupid. If the “Jesus” we’re talking about is the God-man whose life, death, resurrection, and ascension is described and defined for us by the inspired writings of those he commissioned to disciple the nations, then the “church” we’re talking about must be the entity described and defined for us by those same writings. The “church,” according to those writings, is Christ’s bride, whom he loves, whom he nourishes, whom he died for (see Eph. 5:25-32). As the hymnist puts it: “From Heaven he came and sought her, to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.” Professing love for Christ but little for the church makes about as much sense as saying you like me and want to spend time with me, but really can’t stand my wife and would prefer not to have her around. You can imagine the response you’d get if you invited me around for dinner, and then added, “but please leave Louise at home. We really want nothing to do with her. It’s only you we want to get to know. It’s only you we want to spend time with.”

Read his whole article HERE.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Ready for Friday

Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, "Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not." --Martin Luther
Post a Comment
Read more

Oops!

I can be a real klutz.  I have very few manual skills and I never grew out of the "tripping over my own feet" stage of life.  I have fumbled and dropped more than my fair share of balls. In other words, "oops" has been a regular part of my vocabulary. It is not only in the physical world that I have fumbled things.  I have messed up relationships.  I have prejudged people before ever getting to know them.  I have used and abused those who love me most in this world.  I have failed and sinned my way into more than one tight corner and created untold disasters.  Oops is not even sufficient for the ways that I have blown it. Perhaps that is why something Paul, our worship leader last Sunday, said resonated so deeply with me this week.  He said "Oops is never said in heaven."  Our God never is clumsy.  He never makes mistakes. His plans never go belly-up.  He never fails.  He never ever has to say oops - and that comforts me.
Post a Comment
Read more

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...
Post a Comment
Read more