“The Church is the imperfect, visible form of God’s heavenly Kingdom. In it the barriers we have erected in our sin are broken down, because Christ dwells in each member of His Church (cf. Colossians 3:11). The same Christ dwells in you who dwells in me!
How then can we erect barriers between each other? Further, in the Church Jesus Christ is all to all in the fellowship. We all trust Him, we all love Him, we all worship Him, and we all want to serve Him. One common goal dominates everything we do– to please Jesus Christ.
When that happens, everything else is of secondary importance– wealth, background, education, class, race, nationality, all are given a secondary place. Out of the chaos of the differences among men, God weaves a glorious tapestry for His glory, a multi-colored landscape of His wisdom.
This is one of the great joys of belonging to a living Christian church: to be able to look around during church gatherings, and marvel at the way in which God has brought us by different paths to the same Christ– some rich, some poor, some wise, some simple, some with the one accent, some with another, yet all members of the same family.
Not only so, but as we look around, we see some who have suffered, some who have shown great faith, some who have been restored from their backsliding, some who have great gifts, some who have shown us Christ’s love in a special way.
The church, as a living fellowship, is the multi-colored monument that God has erected of His wisdom (cf. Ephesians 3:13). There we can see– if only we will look– how marvellous His wisdom is. We can see in what He has done on the larger canvas of human history that all He does is perfectly wise.
We can see, too, on the smaller canvas of the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, that He does everything wisely, and works everything together for good for those who love Him and have been called into His purpose (Romans 8:28).”
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, A Heart For God (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 77-78.
