The Church

"Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."

I've found myself going back and praying the Lord's prayer more in the last year or two than probably the rest of my life combined. In part, because when you aren't sure what you pray or how to find the words to pray, how better you pray than the words of Christ Himself? But also because I've been trying to learn how to pray. What prayer is, what it does, how it works, etc. That's still something I'm trying to largely figure out. That said, in the midst of that process, and in the midst of continually going back to the Lord's prayer, I keep focusing on that phrase I started with, and in doing so have started to increasingly ask the question "what will heaven look like?". Usually we ask that question in a visual sense, "what will heaven LOOK like?", but I've been asking it in a relational one. What do the relationships of heaven look like? Not even necessarily between us and the Lord. That's an entirely different conversation that books could be written about. No, I mean between us, the children of the Lord. And while I haven't necessarily been able to find a straightforward answer to this in Scripture, I think we can probably glean alot from the Garden of Eden, the example of Christ's love to people here on earth, and just the overall character of God as a whole. I could spend a decent amount of time making arguments for all of this, but I want to make this entry a bit shorter, and I don't think the thought that I'm about to offer necessarily needs much argument. I just believe it's one most of us don't much consider in the day to day.

Instead, I just want offer a line of reasoning that I think most believers can agree with, present a conclusion, and then pose a question based on that conclusion. The line of reasoning is as follows: in eternity with God He perfectly heals us in body, heart, mind, and soul. All pain, suffering, anger, unrighteous jealousy, and resentment are no more. The completed work of the cross comes to fill fruition and we are fully healed of our sin. As such, we are also overwhelmed with the love of the Lord in ways we likely never experience on earth. We understand His love for us and for every other one of His children to a level that would make us disgusted with our earthly selves if we still retained the ability to feel in such a way (I think grace with probably overwhelm us so completely that we won't be able to feel the shame of our earthly lives). In conclusion, we will likely more fully and more deeply love every other person in heaven beyond what we understand love to be here. Meaning that whatever Christian you dislike most in the world right now, whoever has wronged you in the church or maybe a prior friend or a family member, as long as they're also a believer, you will have a greater and deeper love for them in heaven than whoever it is that you love most in this world.

I think that's part of what Jesus means when He explains that marriages don't carry on into heaven. Not only is the earthly example of His covenant with us not needed anymore because we'll experience a fulfilment of that covenant far beyond what marriage means here, but also because we're likely going to have a greater, wider, and deeper love for every single person there than our greatest, deepest, and widest loves here. Honestly, I don't even think it will be close. Love, when we are perfected by the Lord and in the presence of the Son, when the good work He's began in us has been completed, will feel like we had been holding a candle and are now standing before the sun.

That's obviously difficult for us to wrap our minds around here, because we aren't there to experience that change yet, but that brings me back to that section of the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". We're still praying for the work of the Kingdom to exist here. We're still striving for the earth to be as it is in Heaven. That's what the body of Christ, His Church, is supposed to be here. We're the physical manifestation of the Kingdom on earth. So in the Lord's prayer we're praying that the Lord enables us to do His will through us, on earth as it is in Heaven.

And yet, dear friends, often times the people in the Church that we have the most animosity towards is other people in the Church? The fact that we have different denominations is proof of this. The fact that nearly every church leader you could ever talk to rolls their eyes, sighs frustration, or winces is pain when you bring up "church politics" is proof of this. The reality is that our enemy doesn't even have to have the world attack us if we're already attacking each other. Why distract a body with external threats when the hand is already choking its own throat? Why create a common enemy that the body may unify against when one foot is tripping up the other?

No, at that point our enemy doesn't have to attack from the front. All he has to do is make it seem like one part of the body attacked the other when we weren't looking. We've all seen it happen. When a third party tricks a person into thinking the one next to them was the one poking or prodding them. So the person retaliates against one who wasn't the offender. That's what our enemy does to us. But here's the real kicker... This only works when the body is so disjointed that it doesn't recognize itself. Think about it. It's easy for a third party to trick someone that someone else is hitting them, but who could trick someone into thinking they're hitting themselves? But that's exactly what is happening to us! We're so disjointed as a body that we're already attacking ourselves! We're even wary of it. We're already attacking each other, so how hard would it be to believe that our own body is attacking us. We're more expectant of an attack from our own body than an attack from the enemy!

Friends, this is the state of what should be the glorious body of Christ. This is the state of Jesus' Bride. How broken hearted our heavenly groom must be to see His Church, His body, His love, attacking and destroying itself! And I would argue it's because we have lost our love. We spend more time attacking and defending amongst ourselves, that we don't see the tears and frustration coming from that which is our Head.

Let us consider 1 Corinthians 13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:1‭-‬13 NASB1995

Brothers and sisters, parts of my own body... What are we doing? We're going to likely spend eternity loving our greatest enemy more fully and completely than those we cherish most deeply here. And yet, that is our call. If we don't have that love we have nothing. No, 1 Corinthians doesn't even say we have nothing. It says that without love we ARE nothing. That love is what separates us from the world. It's what sets us apart. It's what makes us holy. It's what unifies us to be and act as one body. And we can't do it? Why? Because we can't get over ourselves? Because we've fallen into the world's trap that WE are what's most important? Because we've given in to the distraction of tripping over our own feet and fight amongst ourselves? My co-heirs, here what the Word of the Lord says. Without that love we ARE nothing, because that love is Jesus. We put ourselves before our Lord to the point where He is no longer Lord, and yet He still calls us His children, His bride. We have lost our love for one another because we have lost keeping our eyes on Jesus when we see one another. We can't keep seeing ourselves as threats to ourselves, because we are of the same body! That person that hurts you hurts not just you, but hurts the body of Christ and hurts Christ Himself.

Now, I know there are those who will say "but you don't know the pain I've experienced. You don't know the abuse I've been through". You may very well be right, though I may have experienced a greater deal of pain and anguish before the Lord from within the body of Christ than most. To that I reply with this, because it is as much a reply to my own pain as it is to you. Is that person actually part of the body? Are they actually in Christ? Are they attacking you because you're part of the body? If they're not part of the body and are attacking you because you are, then praise be to the Lord our God that you can suffer on Christs behalf. Go read James chapter 1 and praise the Lord in the midst of your weeping and pain. If you're in that place, pray for the rest of the body to come support and comfort you. Pray that the Lord provides protection and salvation for you in it. But as experienced with a certain fiery furnace in the old testament, even if the Lord does not relieve you of it, keep praising and trusting Him in it. For this is not our Home.

If you're being attacked from within the body, Matthew 18 gives us a pretty clear path of how to handle that situation. If you can not resolve it with them, and if other brothers and sisters cannot help you resolve it with them, then treat them as if they are no longer part of the body. Again, we are called to love. If we do not have that love, if that person puts themselves over that love, then Christ is not the Lord of their lives and they are not within the body.

If they are part of the body and are causing pain to the body, then the love in them, that is the Helper, the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ, should convict them to that love. Meaning that they put Christ and His Church above themselves. Because they should love the body, their neighbor, as themselves. That doesn't necessarily mean that resolution happens over night. It often won't. We may not even continue to see eye to eye. The brokeness of this world is hard. Addiction is hard. Dealing with slander and abuse are hard. Extremely hard. Having someone stab you in the back is hard. And it may even be something that they have a hard time growing out of. Again, it often is. And even still, you may not end up at the same conclusion. But the point isn't necessarily to agree, it's to love and forgive in the midst of disagreement. And as we pursue the Lord in His Word and in prayer, we hope that the Lord will continue to align us according to His will, even if it takes our lifetimes.

That is indeed our call, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And yet, instead, we fight amongst ourselves. We break relationships, promises, and our churches. We attempt to create entirely new bodies that better suit ourselves and don't hurt us as much. But that is one of the greater lies of our modern day. There is only one body. One. There can no more be multiple bodies then there can be multiple Christ's.

I'm in no way saying this is easy, because love isn't easy. But it is worth it. Do you think Christ's walk to the cross was easy? Do we forget that His soul was so overwhelmed that He sweat blood simply from the thought of knowing what was ahead? And yet He made that walk anyway and saw it through. That is love. What is our hardship in comparison to being crucified, feeling the pain of every sin of every person in heaven at once, and being foresaken and crushed by the God? I'll answer for you as I answer for me. It is infinitely small. And yet our Lord's heart breaks for us in our pain anyways, even when it is nothing compared to His own. On earth Christ wept with us in our sorrow even as He knew the incredible torture of body and soul that every step was leading Him towards. That. That is love. That is the love we will spend eternity worshipping for. And at the same time, will reflect that love to every single other person there with us.

So where is that reflection now? If we know it's how we will spend eternity... Frankly, the world's accusations that we're hypocrites is right. We are. Because we preach love and yet don't even know how to love ourselves. So where is our love of Christ that unifies the body?