Do you love the Church like Christ loves the church? Do you have the mind of Christ for His Church? Do you feel as He does? Do you treat the church as Christ is treating her?

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here today to talk about love for the church and how Scripture would teach us how we ought to love the Church of Jesus Christ. Some of the most tender and compelling words in the Bible, it's where Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary laden and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Learn from me. So we want to dedicate our time to learning from Jesus Christ about how He loves His church, that we would learn how to love the church the same way that he does.

So here we go, Jason, love for the church. I know. There's a well-known business phrase, I'm sure it's beyond the business world, but the phrase is this, begin with the end in mind. And it's about the value of understanding the ideal end state before you undertake something. So I think that's helpful here in knowing how we should relate to the church.

So I wanna begin with the end in mind and go to Revelation chapter 19 and read Revelation 19, 6 through 9, where it says, and I heard, this is the apostle John, and I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory For the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen clean and bright for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, Right, blessed are those who were called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true sayings of God." So to begin with the end in mind, here it is, you know, the marriage supper of the Lamb, that His bride has made herself ready, and His bride is beloved of Him, and we come together for the consummation of eternity, really. That's so beautiful.

And that whole end of Revelation, it is so clear how exalted the church is in the mind of Christ. We're told to put on the mind of Christ, and we should do that about the church. We wanna put on the mind of Christ about everything, but we all ought to think about what that looks like in Christ's love for the church so that we can learn from Him, to behave the way that Christ behaves, to feel the way that Christ feels toward His church, to do the things that Christ prescribes for the church. And the Apostle Paul, when he was talking to the Philippian church, he said, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus in Philippians 2, 5 through 7. So we must put on the mind of Christ if we're gonna relate properly to the Church of Christ.

So, here's a jaw-dropper in terms of the mind of Christ when we read Acts chapter 9 verses 1 through 4. It's the beginning of this chapter on Saul of Tarsus' conversion to Christ and becoming Paul, the great apostle. The chapter begins this way, then, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" What do you mean, persecuting me?

Jesus is nowhere to be found. He's going to Damascus to bind Christians. Oh, Jesus identifies so closely with His people that to go to Damascus to bind Christians is to persecute Jesus Christ. So this gives us insight into how Christ views all these things, and His love, His unbreakable association with his people. You know, one of the great marks of his love is that he rescues people.

He identifies so closely to his church because he loves them and he wants to rescue them. And so he is the rescuer of his people, and so he identifies with them so closely. In 1 John 2-6, we're told, He who abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. And I think what you just read leads us in that direction. To walk in the way that Christ walks is to identify with the church, the imperfect church with all of our troubles.

Yeah. It is, it's easy to have an exalted view of a generic people of God who you don't actually know and relate to, and then have a very diminished view of the actual members of the body of Christ that you know. So is it possible to love the universal church, just sort of bask in the truths of the universal truth and have such warm sentiment towards that. But really, when it comes to a local expression of that, not have the time of day for it, I think here's what God would say about that in 1 John 4, 20 and 21. Someone says, I love God and hates his brother.

He is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, How can he love God whom he has not seen? And this is the commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must love his brother also." So it's not exactly the same thing. John is talking about loving God whom you haven't seen, and loving your brother who you actually have to live with and interrelate with. But I would say a secondary application of that is you can do that with the church.

The universal church you haven't seen, oh, I love the universal church, It's just such a beautiful truth, but none of them actually crosses swords with me in any way, or I never come into conflict with any of them. The actual brothers I know I don't like very much. God has a dim view of that. We're supposed to love each other. We're supposed to be known by our love.

Amen. You know, there's so many ways that Christ loves the church, and I just like to have us spin out some of those ways. One of the ways that Christ loves his church is by the things that he draws the church to do together. He loves his church, so he teaches his church. He sets his church under teaching.

He loves his church, and so he draws his church together to worship. And he loves his church, so he brings people into relationship with one another. And he loves his church through discipline. He loves his church through calling his church to come and sing together, to unify their hearts together, to say the same thing. He loves His church by causing them to observe the Lord's Supper, to celebrate the freedom that they have, that they're forgiven.

You know, we celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday. Every Sunday we're saying, you're forgiven. You are free. Praise the Lord. Scott, we know some wives who have cantankerous husbands.

Here's a husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has a cantankerous wife. If anyone ever had a cantankerous wife, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what does he do about that? He abandons her. No, not for a single second.

He washes her with the water of the Word, and he is smoothing out the wrinkles, removing the blemishes, and in time, he'll have just the bride that he wants. So he's very patient with us. The expression of his love towards this church is very tender, patient, just like Ephesians 5, nourishing, cherishing, as if he were one with her because he's one with her. And those are ongoing things. The cherishing is something that keeps going on through the bumps and the ups and downs.

That's what he does. Well, he promises never to leave or forsake his church, and he has a long, long view. That's how he loves us through his patience with us. Yeah. I think it's John 13, this is how you'll know you're my disciples, your love for one another.

This is how people know you belong to Jesus, is you love His people. And you're part of His people, loving the bride of Christ. I mean, you're not loving from the outside, you're part of the bride of Christ. Church leaders, everyone's part of the bride of Christ. We're really loving the bride from the inside.

You know, I made a list one time of dozens and dozens of ways that Christ loved the church. And I'll just share some of them. He's present with her. He says, I'll never leave you or forsake you. He sends another helper like himself.

He says, I will not leave you as orphans. John 14 verse 18. He comforts her. He says, let not your heart be troubled. When we gather with the church, there's always somebody who's troubled.

We wanna relieve the troubled, if we can. But it's because Christ loves them, he wants to comfort them. He was poor, making her rich. He prays for her. He carries her like a father, carries the son.

Moses said that in Deuteronomy. He said that, I carried you through the wilderness. So there's so many ways that Christ loves His church. Let's talk about the church militant and the church triumphant. Okay.

Okay, so these are just seminary terms. The church militant is, until Jesus returns, we're in a war. We're actually supposed to be taking ground for our king. Let me say what everybody knows. The church has lots of problems.

It's like there's a war on, and we have a real enemy that never sleeps, and his malice is endless, and he knows 6,000 years' worth of tricks, and, and, and. So the church can be a mess. The wrong conclusion to draw from that is, I'm out of here. The church triumphant is coming when Jesus comes to claim his bride, and then all of the problems are going to disappear because Jesus is going to settle all of them. So we just have to keep our eye on the ball.

We are in the church militant, the church can be a mess. The wrong conclusion to draw from that is, I'm out of here. I've been hurt. I can't be hurt again. That's not how Jesus thinks about it.

Jesus stays engaged. Amen. So when you go to your local church, the next time, put on the mind of Christ. I have the tenderness of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the activities of Christ. Devote yourself to the nourishing and the cherishing.

Desire to be with her. Don't leave her, forsake her. Teach her. There's so many ways that Christ loves his church that we can learn from. We want to learn from him about how we relate to the church.

Now, most of us have learned wrong ways to relate to the church, but we're always needing to become like Christ and to have the mind of Christ for the church. So we pray that that happens even more in us, that we would learn, that I would learn even more how to love the Bride of Christ. But let's all do that together. Thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We hope to See you next time.

See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.