Look again and you’ll see around the globe, so many brothers and sisters drawn into Christ’s family who love their saviour and are hungry for his word.  You’ll see people passionate about sharing the good news and you’ll meet people who truly love one another, often sacrificially. It’s a church that includes people who have persevered through suffering, opposition and persecution. It’s a church where grace, mercy and compassion are offered each day.

Imagine turning up at a wedding, heading towards the groom and telling him he was a great mate, a general all round good guy and your favourite friend. Then after a short pause you tell him “but your bride is a hideous troll isn’t she. Can’t stand her mate.”  A few minutes later you find yourself ejected out of the wedding, not sure what has gone wrong. You don’t understand why your mate responded the way he did. After all, you had told him how much you liked him.

When it comes to Christ and his bride, you cannot claim to love Christ whilst hating his bride.  This is so important to say in the context of the recent horrific stories about abuse in the church. It’s important for two reasons. First of all, this needs to be said to those who claim to be believers in Jesus Christ and to speak for him but who have participated in abuse.  You cannot claim to love Christ then seek to harm his bride.

You seek to harm his bride when:

• You feed her poison or junk food in the form of unhealthy or even heretical teaching
• You cause physical or emotional harm by singling people out for bullying, sexual abuse or emotional torment.
• You join with Satan as an accuser of the Brethren by bringing, entertaining or gossiping false accusations against other believers.

This is how Paul refers to Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5:

“… Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her ²⁶ to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.^[b] 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.”

It is also important for us to hear those words again as we respond to the horrendous abuse stories that we’ve heard about over the past few weeks. Whether you are simply hearing the stories or you’ve been a victim, it would be very tempting to give up on the Church right now. I want to encourage you, plead with you even not to.

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