Pilgrim Soldier

This seems to be a question that many people are struggling with at the moment. I’m not even sure that it is a question that can really be answered as I have a feeling that it means different things depending who we are talking to at a given moment.

It’s certainly a question I’ve been asking myself as well and out of that has come a few thoughts! As there are a number I’m going to post them as I unpack my own thinking a little bit.

If we believe that the Church as a whole is the Christian faith, then we must turn our mind first of all to the fact that we, the Church, are the Bride of Christ (John 3:29).

Ephesians 5:25-27 are verses that often tend to provoke a lot of debate because of the word “submit”, but lets put the husband/wife debate right now! These verses explain why the Church should submit itself to Christ. He loved us so much that He gave Himself up for us so that we may be sanctified and be presented to Him in splendour! What a wonderful picture that is (and incidently how many marriages would improve if the husband acted like that towards his wife).

The problem is though that all too often the Church is far more like a nagging wife, constantly complaining that Jesus isn’t doing what He said He would do. Instead of trying to please Him, we spend all our time concentrating on the things that we want to do, rather than those He wants us to do. Instead of submitting to His authority we do whatever we like and ignore the things that Jesus did!

At the same time we need to seek deeper intimacy with Christ. Too much of the time the Church spends its time avoiding intimacy with Christ. We spend so much time in doing Church stuff, that we relegate intimacy to one or two services on a Sunday, and even then we limit that intimacy to an hour or so. Few, if any, marriages survive when the partners stop being intimate. Some translations describe the sexual act between a husband and wife as “He knew his wife…” We don’t know Jesus enough! Without becoming more and more intimate with Jesus the Church is never going to be able to fulfil its task on earth.

So what is Church? Church is the Bride of Christ and we need to be proud of our husband. Let’s show how much we love Him to the world and constantly sing His praises because He has done so much for us!