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Greg Stier: Don't Slap Christ's Wife!

We may have problems with the church. We may have a list of things we would like to see improved with the way church is done in the 21st Century.

But we should never let our healthy evaluation of the church and her effectiveness descend into bashing the bride of Christ.

There are those today who analyze, criticize, and discount the church as if she is a useless relic of the past.

I have read “experts” who have said we should forsake the organized church and just have Bible studies in our homes. But a church without a team of godly shepherds leading it is not a church at all; it’s a group of rebels who have decided that they know better than God’s plan for church organizational structure (which, by the way, is clearly laid out in Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3.)

Again, this doesn’t mean that we refuse to see real faults in the church. It means that we recognize them and then jump in to try to fix them with a heart of service and love for the people of God.

We need to honor the church.

She is the fire in which all of our embers stay burning white-hot for Christ. She is the community in which we all live and minister to each other. She is a collection of saints from male to female, black to white, and rich to poor who have one thing in common, our eternal soul mate, Jesus Christ.

Slap my wife and I’ll punch you in the throat (and ask for forgiveness later). I cringe to think what Christ would do.

Let’s not test him.