God’s Church Is More Than “Giving Units”. She Is United to Jesus Christ.

God’s church is more than a collection of giving units. As the bride, she is united to Jesus Christ. Sometimes Christian leaders refer to their congregants as “giving units,” that is, as those who contribute financially to the church institution.

It is so easy in our free market society to measure God’s people primarily by what they contribute to the church collection plate. After all, our society often places supreme value on the effective exchanges of goods and services; such valuation easily creeps into the church in which it is viewed as a spiritual peddler. With this point in mind, note what George Hunsberger has to say, “Both members and those outside the church expect the church to be a vendor of religious services and goods.”[1] The church has to contend just like any other institution with the survival of the fittest in the free market: “Religious organizations must compete for members and … the “invisible hand” of the marketplace is as unforgiving of ineffective religious firms as it is of their commercial counterparts.”[2]

In this light, a measure of compassion is in order. Many pastors may be tempted to view their church congregants chiefly as giving units. They face a great deal of pressure, sometimes from their church elder boards, to bring people in who give more than a widow’s mite to keep the lights on. In this context, it is all the more important for pastors and other church leaders to keep in mind the real identity of Jesus’ church.

Paul has this to say about Christ’s marriage to the church in the context of husband and wife relationships:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband (Ephesians 5:25-33; ESV).

It is important to keep biblical imagery in mind when reflecting upon the church. The church’s union with Jesus Christ is a great mystery: the two have become one flesh for eternity. There is no place for a prenuptial agreement or temporary contract that divides up assets; how can there be when the basis for the arrangement is Jesus’ holy sacrificial love, cleansing Word, and shed blood poured out on her behalf. The church can never pay him back; there is no need—they belong to one another forever.

From a surface standpoint, it might be tempting at times to call the church a prostitute who sells her goods for pay. Luther refers to the church in this manner in The Freedom of a Christian;[3] apart from Christ, the church is a harlot; through the joyful exchange with Christ, she is a spotless bride:

Who then can fully appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace?  Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness.  Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him.  And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, “If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his,” as the bride in the Song of Solomon (2:16) says, “My beloved is mine and I am his.”[4]

The church is more than giving units. She is united to Jesus Christ who gave his life for her.

In this light, there is no place for religious quid pro quo: giving to God or the church to get certain religious goods and services. Unfortunately, there is way too much thinking along these lines, including among moralistic therapeutic deistic types: as long as we are good people, we can call on God to deliver for us in times of need and reward us with eternal rewards or payments, as the case may be.

Whether we are church leaders or congregants, it is easy to fall into this way of thinking with God. We place demands on him and reduce God to the ultimate giving unit rather than see God as the ultimate union of personal communion who invites us to participate in his holy love for all eternity. In this light, as those united to Christ, we need Jesus to enter the temples of our minds and overturn our faulty constructs filled with money tables; may we no longer turn his Father’s house into a den of robbers (See Matthew 21:12-17).

____________________

[1]George R. Hunsberger, “Missional Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God,” in Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), page 84.

[2]See Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), page 17.

[3]Among numerous other examples, remember Luther’s weighty concern over indulgences.

[4]Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (ed. Timothy F. Lull; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), page 604.