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

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

The walking, talking providence of God

Today I met a man in Israel I will never forget.  Fifteen years ago he was voting in a primary for candidates of the Likud party.  At the polling station, two Palestinian terrorists burst in upon the crowd who were choosing their candidate for the next election.  They sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire.  Seven people fell to the floor, wounded by the barrage.  The terrorists moved among the fallen, stopping to shoot each one between the eyes to make sure that they were dead.  Six people died that day.  Today I met the seventh. He was wounded four times in the initial burst of gunfire - once in each leg, once in the arm and once in the side.  The terrorists then put a gun two feet from his face and put a bullet between his eyebrows.  I saw the deep scar with my own eyes.  The next year he spent in a coma. Today I met him at the little restaurant he owns outside the gates of the ancient ruins of Beth She'an.  He stood in f...
Post a Comment
Read more