I love the church … God’s people gathered around His Word in corporate worship. That’s something
you’d expect me to say – I’m the pastor! But, frankly, it’s easy for me to say because it’s
true – I do love the church … probably why I am a pastor! So it saddens me that in our relative,
subjective and individualistic world, the church seems to have been side-lined … no longer the
centre of life, of community, or of society … even though God says it’s at the centre of the cosmos.
Through the church, God reveals His wisdom. That is, the multi-faceted splendour of His wisdom. God’s intent is that the wonder of His wisdom will be made known through the church! We assume that he should have said ‘through the cross’ … but that’s not what it says! It’s through the church that God’s
wisdom is made known. And made known to the heavenly realms. God is using the church on
earth to reveal His wisdom in the heavens … the stage is on earth; the audience is in the heavens.
Something is unfolding in the church that heavenly beings are watching to understand
God’s wisdom.
Because, through the church, God reveals His gospel. Through us, the heavens see what God
achieved in Jesus … which, of course, puts Jesus and the cross at the centre of the church. Jesus
takes broken, fallen sinners, separated from God and makes them whole, forgiven and reconciled
… He takes people who were once excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners
to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world and makes
them heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the
promise in Christ Jesus … He takes people who are diverse and different but unites
them into the one, beautiful people of God! And we see all this through the church – WOW!
If the church is the focal point of the heavenly realm – revealing God’s manifold wisdom and
magnificent gospel – surely it must take centre stage for us too? Surely, we must be a testimony
to God’s praise … ensuring His workmanship is written all over us, revealing that only a good
and gracious God could produce this! Surely, we must reflect the unity of God’s people … being
a place where everyone is welcome and included regardless of ethnicity, education or economics.
And, surely, we must be servants of gospel proclamation … proclaiming both God’s manifold
wisdom and the glorious mystery of the gospel to a world in desperate need of both!