We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church
It often seems that we want to use “church” to refer to the imperfect, often messy reality of Christians in community today, and we want to use “kingdom” to refer to the perfection of what God’s rule ought to be. But the Bible does not speak this way.
As we’ve seen in earlier posts, the Bible speaks of the “kingdom” in terms of both the present, incomplete, imperfect reality and the perfection of the inheritance we’ve all been promised. Both are “kingdom” — because the kingdom is in process and not yet finished.
So, yes, it may sometimes be true that a parachurch or even secular organization can accomplish a piece of God’s mission more perfectly than the church with all its messiness, but that does not make the church something other than “kingdom” or make a secular organization the kingdom of heaven. It’s just not.
Indeed, I have to compliment Scot on reminding us of the wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer with regard to the brokenness and ugliness of the church —
To return to an earlier statement: to the same degree that the kingdom has been inaugurated in Jesus, the kingdom can be realized among us. Something follows here: to the degree that the kingdom has not yet been realized, it cannot be lived out in the present. We cannot expect perfection, though some Christian groups have sought that perfection, and they ended in dismal disappointment. …
This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was talking about when he exhorted his seminary students to slay their idealizations of the present church. Here’s how he put it: “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.”
We soon discover that our admired saints are less than we expected and our local church fails “to deliver” what we hoped for. This is where we are given the opportunity to embrace the inaugurated reality of the kingdom: we are to embrace ourselves and our fellow “saints” as those in need of grace and forgiveness and love. As Bonhoeffer completes the thought, “The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting.”
(pp. 39-40).
This is so counter-intuitive that I have to ask the readers to re-read the quoted text. Our dream of an ideal, perfect church is the enemy of the church as it exists now. When we so want the ideal, fully realized church that we dismiss today’s imperfect, messy church, we reject God’s own plan, the bride and body of Christ. We thereby attempt to be wiser than God.
We get frustrated and so, like Abraham fathering Ishmael, seek to out-God God by skipping essential steps and taking shortcuts.
We see this in ministers — usually young ministers — who’d prefer to wreck a local congregation in hopes of producing their ideal congregation on the wreckage of the congregation they were hired to serve. Their vision of the ideal church requires them to despise the actual church and justifies their rejecting of God’s children in favor of their better vision.
The tough, hard truth is that God needs his leaders and teachers and pastors and preachers to turn their attentions to his existing church, to deal with the problems as they are. He is just as frustrated and unhappy with the messiness and difficulties of today’s institutional church — but unlike so many ministers, he’s not willing to give up on his children
The church as the Kingdom of Israel
Think about it. What is the church today in terms of the Bible’s narrative? Well, it’s a continuation of the faithful of Israel (Rom 11). The Gentiles were grafted into Israel to create the church. The Greek word for church is ekklēsia — the Septuagint’s word for Israel in the desert, gathered to hear God’s word.
And yet Israel in the desert was far from the ideal. All but two adults died in the desert, too unfaithful to see the Promised Land! They were in constant rebellion and grumbling. And when the next generation entered Canaan to begin the conquest, they failed to conquer the Philistines and Amalekites for hundreds of years.
We, the church, are Israel, and so we too are broken and imperfect.
(Deu 9:6-8 ESV) 6 “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. 7 Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD. 8 Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you.”
(Deu 31:27-29 ESV) 27 “For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are. Behold, even today while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the LORD. How much more after my death! 28 Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears and call heaven and earth to witness against them. 29 For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you. And in the days to come evil will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.”
These passages describe the “sons of God,” a “nation of priests,” God’s elect. Us.
And as difficult as our stubborn hearts and rebellious natures make things, it gets even worse when we begin to declare the church unworthy of God — and unworthy of our labor and submission — because of its imperfections.
This is the bride of Christ! This is the body of Christ. This is the household of faith.
And yet this is also Corinth, caught up in division, incest, prostitution, and all sorts of other sin.
So when we think of the church as too flawed for our ministry, our volunteer hours, our service, well, we’re sneering at the people God called and elected — and God will be none too happy with our arrogance.
Because, just as we love our less-than-perfect children, God see us as only a doting parent could —
(Deu 14:1-2 ESV) “You are the sons of the LORD your God. … 2 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”
(Deu 7:6-8 ESV) 6 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
Indeed, God sees us as jewels —
(Isa 62:3 ESV) 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
(Zec 9:16 ESV) 16 On that day the LORD their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land.
(Phi 2:14-15 ESV) 14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing, 15 that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,
(1Th 2:19 ESV) 19 For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?
So God sees us both as jewels and stubborn, children and rebellious — just as any parent sees his own children.
And so, to be like God, we must learn to see the church as God sees it — in all its beauty and messiness. We don’t idealize the church as something it isn’t and can’t yet be, but neither do we despair and see only the worst in it.
Rather, like Jesus,
(Eph 5:25-27 ESV) 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
The goal is to help the church realize her inherent splendor, not to abandon her as too dirty to clean and find another suitor. There is only one church, and God has chosen the church to be his, and therefore we must do the same.
Therefore, any so-called kingdom work or ministry that leaves the church out is an insult to God because it’s an insult to his bride. A very imperfect, flawed, and at times even adulterous bride, but the bride that Jesus so loved that he gave himself for her.
Somehow or other, as messy and complicated as the church is, we need to learn to see her Jesus does — and to be as faithful and loyal to the church as Jesus is.
Man makes a grave mistake as he attempts to see in the physical human being perfection. The physical body of a man is not what has been dead in sins. The Spirit that is replaced into a man who has recommitted to Christ/God by God himself, can only be seen by faith, we cannot comprehend the spirit world while trapped in these bodies, But, God promised us that in the rebirth process he will be within us, we cannot see that except by a change of our lives to become more like Christ. In the spirit world which each Christian is a member along with many brothers and sisters the church is perfect because God has cleansed us and maintains that cleansing. Romans 8 discusses the spirit in much detail.
The problem that we have is allowing the visibility of the physical man to disguise the spirit within our bodies.
“All but two adults died in the desert, too unfaithful to see the Promised Land!”
Many more than two adults entered to see the Promised Land.
Numbers 4:3 From thirty years old and above, even to fifty years old, all who enter the service to do the work in the tabernacle of meeting.
Numbers 8:23-26 The LORD also told Moses, Levites who are between the ages of twenty-five and fifty can work at my sacred tent. But once they turn fifty, they must retire. They may help the other Levites in their duties, but they must no longer be responsible for any work themselves. Remember this when you assign their duties.
Aaron’s son, Eleazar serving in the tabernacle was of adult age, and like Joshua and Caleb did not die during the 40 years of wandering.
Joshua 14:1 What follows is an account of how the land of Canaan west of the Jordan was divided among the people of Israel. Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the leaders of the families of the Israelite tribes divided it among the population.
The one’s who died during the 40 years in the desert were men of war, they were not women.
There were many adult women Israelites who entered to see the Promise Land.
Joshua 5:4 And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: all the males of the people who came out of Egypt, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt.
Crossing to the land there were priests, a man from each tribe, and the rest of Israelites. To serve as a priest they were of adult age.
Joshua 3:6-7 In the morning Joshua said to the priests, Lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river.” And so they started out and went ahead of the people. The LORD told Joshua, Today I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites. They will know that I am with you, just as I was with Moses.
Jay,
Is this your comment?
“The Gentiles were grafted into Israel to create the church.” I have never understood from scripture that the body of Christ took on a different identity as the Gentiles were grafted in.