Stott on the Church

Two quotes from John Stott’s book The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor that I found at Thabiti Anyabwile’s Pure Church blog:

First, I am assuming that we are all committed to the church. We are not only Christian people; we are also church people. We are not only committed to Christ, we are also committed to the body of Christ. At least I hope so. I trust that none of my readers is that grotesque anomaly, an unchurched Christian. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very centre of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community. For his purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory. … So then, the reason we are committed to the church is that God is so committed.

The Lord did two things together. He ‘added to their number… those who were being saved.’ He didn’t add them to the church without saving them, and he didn’t save them without adding them to the church. Salvation and church membership went together; they still do.

Read Thabiti’s commentary here.

James 3 – A Practical Application

Getting ready for church.

So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God (James 3:5-9, ESV).

(via)

Love

By George Herbert

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,  
      Guilty of dust and sin.  
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack  
      From my first entrance in,  
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
      If I lacked anything.  
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:  
     Love said, You shall be he.  
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,  
      I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,  
      Who made the eyes but I?
Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame  
      Go where it doth deserve.  
And know you not, says Love, Who bore the blame?
      My dear, then I will serve. 
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
      So I did sit and eat.

 

Simone Weil wrote this of the poem:

In 1938 . . . I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow. . . . I discovered the poem . . . called “Love” [by George Herbert] which I learnt by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I made myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that Christ himself came down and took possession of me. In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God.

From The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, by Tim Keller