Jesus Sees His People Get It Wrong

I recently published a post responding to the question of whether ‘the Church’ is a necessary part of being a christian. One of the reasons many christians find themselves asking this question is that they view the Church as falling short of what Jesus requires of it; It is full of hypocrites and messed up people and perhaps in the past it has hurt them or somebody they know. Perhaps in searching for authenticity they have simply grown disillusioned with the Church.

The other day, I came across this great live performance from Lisa Gungor. In it, she sings of one such individual named John (the lyrics are posted below the video).

Johnny was raised with a steeple over his head
Lived in the suburbs and memorized scripture at night before bed
And he won a prize

Preachers and teachers would tell him where all sinners go
Prayed for revival but showed him a fancy lit carnival show
Was it a lie?

John saw the lies
And he saw the steeples
And saw all the people get it wrong

Went off to college
And came home with knowledge to spare
Of crusades and slave trades and all of the blood that was spilled in God’s name
And all of the lies

But John couldn’t fight it and he just couldn’t buy it again
Church was too small so he just threw it all out to chaos and chance
And all of the lies

John saw the lies
He saw the steeples
And saw all the people get it wrong

Jesus sees John
Jesus sees steeples
He sees all His people get it wrong

Trust Jesus, John
Trust Jesus, people
For Jesus will come and save us all

Jesus said that he came for the sick and the broken (Mark 2:17). We should expect to find broken hypocrites in the Church. We are all being made holy (Hebrews 10:14), but none of us are there yet, as Paul was keen to point out (Philippians 3:12). All in the Church are moving toward the same point, but we are all at different points in that jouney. This is not to excuse wrong behaviour, but to encourage grace in how we deal with each other. How terrible a situation we would find ourselves in if Jesus, seeing our sin, had decided to leave us be, to look for nicer people to be with.

We cannot turn our back on the Church. Jesus sees all she does wrong. He loves her. He is coming for her. Trust him.