But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
1 John 1:7
If we were more about proclaiming Him, our ‘magnificent obsession’, than planting churches per se, or seeking Holy Spirit experiences or building homogenous Christian franchises where religious goods and services are exchanged between the leaders (producers) and laity (consumers), we will see the manifestation of mature sons. God help us!
I believe if we self-limit ourselves to preach Christ and Him crucified only we will see that the Christian’s developing under that covering-of-truth will seek fellowship with the Light. We will find one another there, in the Light, less drawn by one another but more drawn by Him and through Him and to Him.
Moths to the Light
Like moths dwelling in a world of darkness we will be intractably drawn to the Light and we will see one another as we truly are, in this Light. Here, agape is native. Loving one another deeply from the heart is normal. Real, gritty hard nosed trust inevitably develops. A stable culture of love develops and growths like ivy in fertile soil. Trust flourishes in His blinding and glorious Light. His Light overpowers us to every human, earthly, fallen, temporal and carnal understanding of who Jesus is, or who we are. Here, all is valued in light of eternal realities and promises and the saints are ‘other’. Such a moth-gathering is a biblical church of Christ.
He is like the Sun
There, He is the sun and we are the planets captured in an orderly, orbit of destiny, in His irresistible gravitational pull. Strong and gifted and willful men or women or demons can do nothing to stop the eternal pull of Jesus on such a gathering of holy ones. There we cannot make Jesus the Centre: there ‘centre’ is not defined as by the Dictionary but by this reality of moth church. Moths circling the Divine Beauty in single hearted devotion. Here, human-beings are transformed into light-beings. We are transformed as we behold Him, with unveiled faces. Seeing His uncreated beauty and one another’s created beauty, as it truly is, that is transformation. That is effortless transformation. No earthly shadows to darken His Supreme Desirableness … no sin-shadows to pollute the matchless image of God, in one another.
This is fellowship in the Light … this is the ekklesia … this is church-in-the-Light (not church-lite). I believe this should be normal for a Christian church. Dream with me … hope with me. Be unashamed idealists to the hope of this kind of mature Fellowship in the Light and hard nose realists to the magnificent cost of such a dream. Also, be thoroughly disillusioned with fallen man, with saints-that-still-sin, it is healthy, it is necessary but in your disillusionment, do not neglect the gathering of the moth church!
Jesus plus nothing, Jesus minus nothing. Jesus in all and in everything. Amen