Neither Hospital, Nor Museum, Nor Saintly Mannequins . . .

Many modern Christians like to use a cliche when talking about church purpose to unbelievers or worldly church goers. The cliche is most often expressed as, “The church is a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints.” Some truth lives in this cliche, but the cliche itself is mostly a false proverb designed to be a salve for sin-hurt people looking to be healed from the afflictions that run unabated through much of human life as it struggles through a fallen sin-soaked world. It is true that sinners can find a kind of healing and care once they become part of the body of believers.  But that’s not the purpose for which the church exists. This is because sin isn’t something from which we are healed. Sin is something that is killed and destroyed. Sin is the smoking rubble from which we arise as new and transformed beings once it is razed along with our old fallen character through the sacrificial work of Christ. It is also true that the  church isn’t a cold and static museum for the display of saints. All of us who have been transformed by Christ are saints, and when we are a functional part of a body of believers, the life of Christ is dynamically expressed in the world through our contributions to that body. We are not mannequins with halos in a museum to be gawked at. We are gardeners cultivating fruits, athletes running a race, warriors storming the gates of hell, and living epistles telling of the truest love of The Most High God. We are alive and in motion!

So the church really isn’t a hospital at all.  Instead, it is either metaphorically or actually a community, and a body, and a family. Unlike that metaphorical hospital, all of these other metaphors are used by the bible, and all are marked by life, animation, love, and unity. Beautifully, that unity isn’t monolithic. Instead, it is a unity in the midst of a dizzying array of diversity. True Christian unity is marked by a diversity of people who genuinely love God and glorify him as the highest possible good when they live in accordance with that love. Jesus directly likened his followers to siblings when he elevated the definition of family (Matthew 12:49-50). Paul likened Christians to both citizens in a community, as well as to members in a family when he wrote to the church at Ephesus (Ephesians 2:19). He also told Timothy that the church is a “household” that serves as a buttress of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15). Famously, Paul also likened us to a human body in multiple places – his most famous being in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, and Romans 12:4-8 where he expressly teaches that each of us is different, just like literal parts of a body are different, and that out of those differences a unified power of God emerges.  

It is because we are a diverse community, a diverse body, and a diverse family with differences that Paul teaches us in Romans 15:1-7, that those members of stronger faith are obligated to take care of those members of weaker faith. This is so that we remain unified in our love for God and are being built up in our trust in Christ. It is also because of our innate differences that we are instructed by the same scripture to live in harmony with one another. If everyone were exactly the same, then true harmony would not be possible, because true harmony is created from several distinct notes. Many unified distinct notes make for a very pleasing sound. At any rate, Paul tells us that the reason for all of this is so that in our harmony, and in our love, we glorify God (Romans 15:6-7). This is what a church is – saints, whose sins have been destroyed by the work of Christ, and who are now set apart for the glory of God, glorifying him in their unity with one another as they worship him with their lives. The church is not a hospital for the broken, but a shining city on a hill made up of transformed people burning brightly in the dark of night with the Spirit and love of Christ so that others will glorify God because of the goodness they see in them (Matthew 5:14-16). What part are you in this body, this family, or this city?