What makes the church beautiful? The Bible tells the first love story of a damsel in distress trapped under the clutches of a cunning enemy. Encouraged by his sincere love for her, the righteous hero without hesitation sacrificed his life for his wife, fighting the ancient dragon in a duel to the death. while his beloved looked helplessly, looking and crying. Death, our fatal enemy, seemed to have won. But death didn’t win, she couldn’t win. Death was overcome by the resurrection of Jesus, the hero of our history and the original hero who has been copied by any good love story ever since.
But the gospel is more than just a story, it’s history. Only one who is worthy of eternal life could overcome death and save us from the insatiable flames of hell and God’s eternal wrath, and thus lead us safely to?from heaven and eternal communion with God, that is why our hero has entered our history and history, he came not to be served, but to serve and give his life in ransom for many (Mk 10:45), thus liberating us. love him and love everything he loves.
- Paul’s language in Galatians 5.
- 13-15 addresses the idea of using one another through this lens of gospel freedom.
- According to an ancient hymn.
- Jesus silenced the thunder of the law; Did you turn off the flame on Mount Sinai?1.
- Jesus satisfied all that God requires: perfect justice.
- But Jesus was also pleased in a loving sacrificial death on another mountain.
- Calvary.
- There.
- He was sentenced to death.
- There he fought for us and won our freedom and our hearts.
- And it was there that he taught us to serve with love.
- In simple terms: we must love and serve one another because we have been loved and served primarily by Christ.
- Himself.
Paul does not see our mutual service as an arduous duty motivated by feelings of guilt, fear, or manipulation, on the contrary, it is the beautiful freedom, heroically purchased by Christ for us in the Gospel, that animates our mutual service. we who are no longer slaves to sin, for the guilt and power of sin have been overcome by Christ. Now we’re free, but for what?
This is Paul’s point: we are free, but we must not use our freedom to serve our former carnal master who has treated us harshly; would be to return to captivity in the abominable dragon’s lair; Instead, we are free to love and serve the one who saved us, and we do so the way we love and serve one another freely. The freedom of the Christian is expressed in a living way when we use our freedom in Christ to serve others in Christ. we strongly embody what it means to take our cross and follow Jesus. We participate in the demonstration of Christ’s love for his Church. We also show that we do not belong to the world and are therefore not slaves to their selfish passions, thus testifying, even to those outside the Church, that true freedom is in Christ. The Church is therefore a theatre of redemption, service and love, living the Gospel before a world still enslaved by sin, selfishness and disbelief.
Serving the church is not always easy, because the church is not always beautiful in our eyes, sometimes this may seem unpleasant and hateful, the imperfection of the members of the church is real and can discourage our service, that is why I implore you to look at the Church as Christ sees it: with beauty and glory that reflect hers. The church is beautiful for what it is in Christ. To love Christ means to love what He loves, and there is great spiritual joy and refreshment in giving our lives for others.
Serving Christ means using our freedom from the gospel to serve what Christ loved enough to buy with his blood. That’s why the church is beautiful and that service is a glorious privilege.
1 “Love, sing and marvel?”, John Newton’s Traditional English Song (1725-1807) [N. T. ]
This article is part of the March 2016 edition of Tabletalk magazine
Translation: Joel Paulo Aragono da Guia Oliveira Review: Yago Martins © 2016 Faithful Ministério All rights reserved Website: MinisterioFiel. com. br Original: For Christ’s sake, serve each other
Authorizations: You are authorized and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format, provided that the author, his ministry and translator are no longer no longer modified and not used for commercial purposes.