Benge The Loveliest Place

The Beauty and Glory of the Church
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4335-7497-9
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Reihe: Union

How Christians Can Rediscover the Beauty and Glory of the Church Dear. Precious. Lovely. The Bible describes the church in extraordinary ways, even using beautiful poetry and metaphors. How does this compare to how Christians today describe the church? Unfortunately, many believers focus more on its mission, structure, or specific programs than on its inherent beauty. It's time to spark a renewed affection for the church. In The Loveliest Place, Dustin Benge urges Christians to see the holy assembly of God's redeemed people in all its eternal beauty. He explains what makes the church lovely, including the Trinitarian relationship, worship, service, and gospel proclamation. For those who have never learned to view the church as God sees it, or have become disillusioned by its flaws, this book is a reminder that the corporate gathering of believers is a reflection of God's indescribable beauty. This is the third book in the Union series, which invites readers to experience deeper enjoyment of God through four interconnected values: delighting in God, growing in Christ, serving the church, and blessing the world. - Part of the Union Series: Inviting readers to experience deeper enjoyment of God; other volumes include Rejoice and Tremble and Deeper  - Concise Version Also Available: The Loveliest Place is the full version of Why Should We Love the Local Church?  - Looks Beyond Methodology: Focuses on the beauty, not just the biblical function, of the church

Dustin Benge (MDiv, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the managing director of Unashamed Truth. He and his wife, Molli, live in Louisville, Kentucky.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Benge, Dustin

Leseproben

1

You Are Beautiful

Behold, you are beautiful, my love;

behold, you are beautiful.

Song of Solomon 1:15

The church is beautiful.

Beautiful is not a phrase we often associate with the church. Words like organization, mission, vision, and even body come to mind, but not beautiful.

We like helpful organizational charts that describe the purpose and function of the church. We want to place her members in properly assigned roles and duties. We underscore the qualifications and responsibilities of church leaders. We emphasize the church’s theology and mission among the nations. We even pinpoint and seem to critique her problems and failures endlessly. While all of these diminutive details may be necessary for fulfilling her divine task on earth, there’s a cumulative danger of consigning the church to mere administrative categories that are indistinguishable from our neighborhood civic club.

We consider what the church can give us and do for us, how she can serve us, and even what’s in it for us, but rarely do we enjoy the eye-opening and soul-stirring truth that she is beautiful and lovely in just being who she is.

The church has played a central role in many of our lives. She has nurtured in times of grief, shepherded in valleys of despair, and instructed in seasons of growth. We love her people. We love her ministries. We love her worship. We love her teaching. We love her comfort.

Do we love her?

Does your heart swell with deep and abiding affection at the mention of her name and the prospect of dwelling in the company of her people? Can we say of her, as her bridegroom does,

You are beautiful, my love;

behold, you are beautiful (Song 1:15)?

Admired by Christ

Reflecting on Song of Solomon 1:15, John Gill, an eighteenth-century English Baptist pastor, wrote, “These are the words of Christ, commending the beauty of the church, expressing his great affection for her, and his high esteem of her; of her fairness and beauty.”1 Gill interprets Song of Solomon as an intense allegorical portrayal of the love, union, and communion that exists between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church. In chapter 1, the bridegroom fixes his eternal attention upon the bride and identifies her as “beautiful.”

What must it be like to be admired by the sinless Son of God? Rather than admire her, we imagine he would identify her failures, her shortcomings, and the loathsome sin that so often spoils her garments. Instead, through the eyes of a bridegroom transfixed upon his bride, Christ invites our gaze with the attention-grabbing, “Behold!” Her beauty commands awe, wonder, and astonishment.

More profound amazement is ours when we consider that the church is composed of sinners. Albeit forgiven, still sinners. In her own eyes, the church is full of spots and blemishes and is, in fact, sometimes disgusting to behold. Paul says that only at the end of the age will the church be presented to Christ “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph. 5:27). Yet Christ draws our attention to his bride here and now, not for veneration, but that we may be astonished and lost in the wonder of his love and sacrifice on her behalf.

The church is beautiful because the lens through which Christ regards her is his cross—the focal point of blood, righteousness, forgiveness, union, justification, regeneration, and grace. His cross makes her beautiful. His perfection makes her beautiful. It is his sacrificial, substitutionary, sinless blood that washes her garments as white as snow. The cross of Christ makes her beautiful not only inwardly by justification but also outwardly through sanctification. From giving second birth to final glory, the righteousness of Christ creates a beautiful church.

His perfect righteousness fashions a loveliness so shocking and captivating that in the same sentence he repeats his admiration twice:

Behold you are beautiful . . . ;

behold, you are beautiful. (Song 1:15)

Then with pictorial detail, the bridegroom begins to characterize the beauty of his bride. Ask any adoring husband to attempt such an explanation of his bride, and he will fail at words. “Your eyes are doves” (Song 1:15). Doves mate for life and are often represented in weddings because they symbolize a lifetime of love. The bond is so strong that it can extend, for a time, beyond death as they watch over their mates, trying to care for them, and returning again and again to the place of their death. The ever-watchful dove looks only to its mate and has no eyes for another.

Christ has eyes only for his church. Believers, saved by grace through faith, are espoused exclusively to him. His righteousness, pardon, forgiveness, love, care, provision, eternal life—these are only for her. His singular eye is upon her at all times. He exclaims, “You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes” (Song 4:9). There’s never a time when Christ doesn’t love her. There’s never a time when he doesn’t extend his whole heart to her. There’s never a time his heart isn’t captivated by her.

If, with Gill, we were to interpret Solomon’s words as emblematic of Christ and his church, in that context, listen to what he would be saying to her:

Behold, you are beautiful, my love,

behold, you are beautiful!

Your eyes are doves

behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats

leaping down the slopes of Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes

that have come up from the washing,

all of which bear twins,

and not one among them has lost its young.

Your lips are like a scarlet thread,

and your mouth is lovely.

Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate

behind your veil.

Your neck is like the tower of David,

built in rows of stone;

on it hang a thousand shields,

all of them shields of warriors.

Your two breasts are like two fawns,

twins of a gazelle,

that graze among the lilies.

Until the day breathes

and the shadows flee,

I will go away to the mountain of myrrh

and the hill of frankincense.

You are altogether beautiful, my love;

there is no flaw in you. (Song 4:1–7)

The bridegroom employs rich creation language here to distinguish the beauty and loveliness of his bride. Though it is not quite how we might describe the attention of our love, the ancient world would immediately recognize wonder in such imaginative beauty. Leaping goats, freshly washed ewes, ruby red pomegranates, shielded stone towers, lilies of the field, leaping gazelles, and rare spices dripping from the mountains—this lovely bride is arrayed in the cloak of God’s creation. She is more beautiful than any composition of man—the Mona Lisa, the Riviera at sunset, or the New York skyline glittering at night. She resembles all that God said was good in his perfect creation. She is Christ’s delight, having been redeemed, washed in his blood, and sanctified by his Spirit, and he calls her (us) “my love.”

Reflected Beauty

At this point, it’s necessary to clarify that the beauty of the church is not a type of romantic or inherently attractive beauty that causes one to blush. The church would never adorn the cover of a magazine because she is beautiful.

The beauty of the church is the reflection of another—God. David says,

One thing have I asked of the Lord,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)

As if scrutinizing every facet of a brilliantly cut diamond, David confesses that he could spend all the days of his life gazing upon the beauty of the Lord. Asaph joins David in his admiration of God’s perfect beauty:

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,

God shines forth. (Ps. 50:2)

There are no satisfactory words to define or portray the beauty of God. The prophet Isaiah foretells a day when the Lord of hosts “will be a crown of glory” and “a diadem of beauty” to his people (Isa. 28:5). To come face-to-face with God’s transcendent beauty is to ascend to the peak of our deepest longing and the fulfillment of our greatest desires.

God’s beauty and loveliness shine forth most radiantly through the biblical concept of glory. Moses experienced this glory when God passed by him, revealing only the afterglow of his grandeur (Ex. 33:12–23). When God’s glory engulfed the temple, the priests were unable to perform their service of worship (2 Chron. 5:14). Isaiah found himself facedown in the dirt when he witnessed God’s glory emanating from his eternal throne (Isa. 6:1–5). Peter, James, and John became like dead men as God’s glory sparkled in their eyes when Christ transfigured before them (Matt. 17:1–8). In our...