The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints

It's a real long time, friends. For that I (Dan Shih) apologize. I dropped the ball shortly after finals began for me. But it is good to be back, and I hope that people will continue to read and contribute to this blog and the dialogue may be carried along to our face-to-face meetings as well!

Here's something to ponder about. This is a quote found by Jon Lee, concerning the church:

"Christian theology also speaks of the seriously flawed character of real Christians. A central message of the Bible is that we can only have a relationship with God by sheer grace. Our mortal efforts are too feeble and falsely motivated to ever merit salvation. Jesus, through his death and resurrection, has provided salvation for us, which we receive as a gift. All churches believe this in one form or another. Growth in character and changes in behavior occur in a gradual process after a person becomes a Christian. The mistaken belief that a person must “clean up” his or her own life in order to merit God’s presence is not Christianity. This means, though, that the church will be filled with immature and broken people who still have a long way to go emotionally, morally, spiritually. As the saying has it: “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”
- Tim Keller, Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, copyright 2008, page 54

"The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints."

Sometimes it is so easy to forget that. I know it's been really difficult for me to bear that in mind in the last few days. Sometimes I take the failures of other Christians so personally even though it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the honor of the God that I serve. For that, I apologize. But perhaps we can all think about this and ask ourselves this question, "Do I treat my fellow church members as sinners who stand before God by grace, or do I expect them to be the Christ?" And for that matter, "What of my own failures; am I all that godly myself, or have I just forgotten to look at the plank within my eye?"

To be honest, I think for a lot of us, our view of the church can be at once too self-centered and not self-centered enough. We are self-centered when it comes to how the church ought to be serving us. We give criticism so generously. "This group of people never takes their faith seriously." "The pastor's sermon is not relevant to my life." "How come this group of people wasn't invited to that event held by church people". Yet we are not self-centered enough when the question comes up of how to change and improve the church of Christ. Do we ask this often enough of ourselves, "How can I be more servant-minded?" "Who can I reach out to; who do I know really need to be shown the love of Christ?" "I wonder if that guys needs help with all those dishes or if maybe there's something else in the kitchen that needs to be done."

Let me close with this quote before I turn it over to your comments:

"The Church is a society of sinners - the only society in the
world in which membership is based upon the single qualification
that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership."
- Charles C. Morrison

Sola Deo Gloria,
Dan Shih