This post is written by Matt Rogers as a companion for Unit 30, Session 1 of The Gospel Project for Adults, Volume 10: From Many People to One People (Winter 2023-24).
The church of Jesus Christ is a glorious treasure. The Bible speaks of the church using diverse images such as a body (Ephesians 2:11-18), a temple (vv. 19-22), a family (4:1-5), or a bride (5:22-33). Paul declares that the manifold wisdom of God is made visible through the local church (3:10). Think about that claim for a minute—the same wisdom that spoke all of creation into existence and determined the plan of salvation through Christ is now on display through the local church. The best place to see God’s glory is to look at local churches, where that glory is on display.
We might compare this to creation in general. Take a walk in your neighborhood and you will likely see evidence of God’s handiwork. You might notice a beautiful bird or a colorful leaf and notice how majestic God is as a result. But there’s a different degree of beauty seen in certain places—watching the sunset over the ocean, staring over the edge of the Grand Canyon, or hiking to the base of Mount Rainier. These moments are awe-inspiring and capture the majesty of God in a whole new way.
The same is true for the church. We may notice the manifold wisdom of God in all sorts of aspects of life. We can see His wisdom in our private devotions, in a conversation with a spouse, or in the various details of His leadership through the circumstances of our lives. But if we want to scale the heights of the wisdom of God, if we want to come up close and personal to His glory on full display, the place to look is the local church. Like the Grand Canyon or a towering mountain range, it is by looking at the local church that we see God on full display.
This high view of the local church is a needed corrective in our day when so many seem to disparage the church. Of course, we would expect the local church to have difficulty since it is filled with people who still sin. We know that Satan works to destroy the church, so we should anticipate that there would be stories of pain, deception, sin, and the like within the ranks of the church. But we should not allow these faulty reflections to obscure the sheer wonder of the local church. Amid all of the church’s failures and frustrations, the church is still the God-ordained means of showing off His glory to the world.
There are at least two implications from a high view of the local church. First, all Christians should be intimately connected to the church. For many people it is common to attempt to live our faith in isolation from other Christians. Many have been wounded and hurt in the church. Still others would rather privatize their faith. Some feel shame and guilt for what they fear might be exposed were they to be honest with people. We have to push against these individualistic impulses and give ourselves to God’s people in the church. We shouldn’t bypass the God appointed means of showing off His glory to the world.
Next, when we commit to the church we must invest so that the church is healthy and whole. All people reflect God’s image (Genesis 1:26-28). Though sinned marred this image, Christians are being put back together to better and more faithfully reflect that image (Galatians 5:22-23). Therefore, those who are being remade in the image of God should give themselves to the church such that God’s image is reflected well in our churches. We can either lament the shortcomings of the church, or we can be a people who invest ourselves in making things better. And this is just what God’s people do—they see things that are broken or distorted and they give themselves to bring about good. The best place for Christians to do this very thing is in the context of the local church that God has chosen to be a means of showing the world His wisdom.
Matt Rogers is the pastor of Christ Fellowship Cherrydale in Greenville, South Carolina. He and his wife, Sarah, have five children: Corrie, Avery, Hudson, Willa, and Fuller. Matt is also an assistant professor of church planting at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the church development coordinator with the Pillar Network, and a freelance author.
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