Loving Jesus and Loving His Bride--the Church:

A while ago, I was recalling an event in which a person found that as much as they loved their best friend, they couldn't stand that friend's spouse. The negative feelings for the spouse tended to grow, multiply and eventually eroded and destroyed the friendship.

The principle is this: "Love for a friend extends to the spouse."

Maybe you have or know a situation like that. Your love for your friend is the love that overcomes any shortcomings of their spouse. Because I love my friend, I am willing to overlook and let go the rough edges of their spouse. My love for my friend moves to include his/her spouse. Or maybe it went the opposite direction, the love for the friend just couldn't overcome the negative feelings one had for the spouse. No doubt the friendship eroded.

Today, one hears pretty often, "I love Jesus, but I can't stand His church." Or, "I love Jesus, but I'm not going to have anything to do with church." Or even as crassly as this (from a recent obituary) "She loved the Lord, but she didn't need the church to prove it."

There is a problem here. The Church is the "bride" of Jesus. (cf. Revelation 21:9) The problem here is that it is impossible to love Jesus and not extend affection (if not love) to His bride, the church. If one tries to go along that road long enough, the relationship with Jesus will erode to nothing because one hasn't moved past their feelings about Jesus' bride.

The truth is, of course, that the church isn't perfect. No congregation, no individual, no denomination of the church is perfect. There are people involved. And where people are involved, there are plenty of rough edges, bad habits and grating personalities to give us reason to dislike the church.

On the other hand, by it's very nature loving Jesus almost demands that we love and find affection to include his Bride for who she is. It pushes us to look past the imperfections and the flaws to enjoy, value and find affection for what is good and right, for no other reason than that we have deep love for the church's mate, Jesus.

So, if you're in this boat of loving Jesus but not being enamored with His bride, I hope you'll take another look. I pray you'll find a way to forgive the imperfections of the bride, to look past the flaws and imperfections of people to enter into a new relationship with Christ's church.

I trust that you'll recognize that the church is the only Bride Jesus has and the only one He ever will have. In turn, in order to fully love and accept Jesus is to find a way to include his bride, the Church in your life.