How the Church Can Be the Church

Today's Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:1-2 — "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

Romans 15:7 — "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God."

John 13:34-35 — "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The Big Idea

After nine days of hard texts and harder questions, the final question is the most practical one: what kind of community could actually hold all this together? The answer is a church where truth is spoken with tears, struggles can be confessed without shame, and the welcome is as wide as the welcome of Christ. That church is not a fantasy. It is what Jesus died to create.

Reflection

The sound a loveless church makes

Paul once described what a church sounds like when it has everything except love. 1 Corinthians 13:1 — "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." A gong is all volume and no music. You can be loud, confident, biblical, and right — and be nothing but noise to the person listening.

Then Paul raises the stakes past comfort. 1 Corinthians 13:2 — "if I... understand all mysteries and all knowledge... but have not love, I am nothing." Not "less effective." Nothing. A church could hold a flawless doctrine of marriage, win every debate about Greek words, and still register as zero on heaven's scale. After ten days of careful study, that verse should stop us cold: theology that does not become love was never finished.

Augustine preached through John's letters and boiled the whole Christian ethic down to a sentence that sounds reckless until you understand it:

"Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt." — Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John

He did not mean "do whatever you feel like." He meant that a heart genuinely rooted in God's love can be trusted, because real love will never shrug at truth and never wield truth as a club. Love is not the opposite of holiness; it is what holiness looks like with skin on. And the people we are called to love are not abstractions. C.S. Lewis reminds us what is actually standing in the church lobby:

"Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses." — C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The gay teenager in the youth group, the divorced man in the back row, the progressive cousin, the traditionalist grandmother — each one an immortal, made in God's image. There are no issues sitting in our pews. Only neighbors.

A community of welcome, not a club of the sorted

So how do imperfect people with real disagreements live together? Paul faced that question in Rome, where Christians were dividing over food laws and holy days. His instruction begins with a posture, not a position: Romans 14:1 — "As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions." And then a warning about the seat we keep trying to occupy: Romans 14:4 — "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls."

Now, an honest caution. Paul is discussing disputable matters — issues where Scripture leaves freedom — and Christians disagree about whether sexual ethics belongs in that category; the historic church has said it does not. But even where the teaching is not negotiable, the posture still is. Romans 14 teaches us how to hold convictions: with humility, without contempt, remembering that every person we talk about will stand before God, not before us. The command that frames it all is Romans 15:7 — "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." The measure of our welcome is his welcome. That is a terrifyingly high bar.

It also means giving up the fantasy church — the one where everyone already agrees with us and no one's struggles are messy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer watched idealists wreck real congregations and named the danger:

"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Progressives can love a dream church that has finally shed its convictions. Traditionalists can love a dream church that has no strugglers in it. Both dreams destroy the actual church God has given us — the awkward, wounded, half-sanctified people in the room. Charles Spurgeon made the same point with a smile:

"If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all." — Charles Spurgeon, Sermon, 'The Best Donation'

What does real community look like instead? Galatians 6:1-2 sketches it: "if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Restoration, gentleness, self-suspicion, shared weight. And Bonhoeffer adds the discipline almost no one in this debate has practiced:

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Before the church speaks about same-sex attraction, it must listen — long enough to learn what the road has actually cost the people walking it. Colossians 4:6 governs whatever we say next: "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person." Each person. Grace is not a script; it is fitted to a face.

Love is the final argument

Why does all this matter so much? Because Jesus tied the credibility of the gospel to it. John 13:34-35 — "just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." And in his last prayer before the cross, he asked "that they may all be one... so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17:20-21). Read those verses again slowly. Jesus gave the watching world permission to judge our message by our love.

Francis Schaeffer called this "the final apologetic" — the last, unanswerable argument for Christianity:

"Love — and the unity it attests to — is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father." — Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian

Our culture will not be argued into the Christian vision of sexuality. It might yet be loved into reconsidering it — by churches where singles are family, strugglers are honored, opponents are treated with dignity, and confession is met with grace. N.T. Wright points out that such love is not merely tactics for now; it is a preview of the end of the story:

"Love is not our duty; it is our destiny." — N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

When a church loves like 1 Corinthians 13 — "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast... it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) — it is not performing for the culture. It is rehearsing for the new creation.

Welcomed first

One last time, the gospel turn — because none of this works as an assignment. Told to be more welcoming, churches produce greeters and coffee stations. Hearts change only when we remember that we were the ones welcomed.

Romans 15:7 says to welcome one another "as Christ has welcomed you." How did he welcome you? While you were still his enemy. Knowing every disordered desire and every cold judgment in your heart. At the cost of his life. 1 Peter 2:9-10 tells the church its own story: "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." The church is not a gathering of people who got sexuality right. It is a gathering of people who received mercy.

Tim Keller spent his ministry compressing that into one sentence:

"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

A church that believes the first half cannot be arrogant; it knows its own record. A church that believes the second half cannot be fearful; it has nothing left to lose. That church can hold the historic ethic without cruelty and extend a wide welcome without surrendering the truth — because it is no longer defending itself. It is simply passing on the welcome it received.

This is why Paul never says "be kind because kindness works." He says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32). The engine of a gracious community is not strategy or niceness. It is memory — the daily, deliberate remembering of how we ourselves were treated at the cross.

Ten days ago we began with bodies made in the image of God. We end with the body of Christ. The world is watching it, wounded people are weighing it, and Jesus has staked his reputation on it. By grace, the church can be the church.

Going Deeper

Do one welcoming thing this week that costs you something — modeled on how Christ welcomed you. Invite to your table someone the sorting machine of church culture tends to skip: a single person, someone who disagrees with you about all of this, someone who has been burned by Christians. No agenda, no talking points; practice Bonhoeffer's "first service" and just listen. Before they arrive, read Romans 15:7 once more. You are not hosting a debate. You are passing on a mercy.