Most recent Sermons on Sermon Cloud All Time
Sermons about Source
Order By:
Recent | Downloads | Amens
The Unity and Work of the Church
Since the church is rooted in Jesus she must speak the truth in love, that is, she is not only obligated to do this but also will do it. In order for the church collectively and the Christian individually to understand this duty and accomplish it the apostle Paul alerts us to its source and goal. Its source is the exalted and empowering Christ and its goal is the maturation of the church so that it attains to the fullness of Christ. This means, among other things, that the church's unity is doctrinal. Contrary to the Protestant Liberal theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries who were unified around their dogmatic confession of "doctrine divides and mission unites," the Bible teaches us that the unity that does mark the church and that the church is to grow in understanding is a doctrinal unity that can be summarized as speaking the truth in love. Such doctrinal unity means that the church experiences two kinds of growth--quantitative numerical growth and qualitative internal growth. God's word calls the church and the individual Christian to be preoccupied with qualitative internal growth, or maturation, and through this the quantitative numerical growth results. Both kinds of growth are under the sovereign control of God, because he is the source and goal of both.
