The church is not God...
...but the church is the bride of Christ. The reason I wanted to talk about this is that sometimes church can seem unnecessarily complicated. Usually, this is just us making it complicated for ourselves. Firstly, it's important to remember that the church is not God. Far from it. The church is a family of people, none of whom are perfect. That's to be expected, since we are all human and all sinners. So, we shouldn't be trying to worship the church itself, or get the church confused with God. The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints. Our worship should be directed only to God and Jesus. At the same time, the church is very dear to God. Of course it is: Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He surely wouldn't have died on the cross for our sins if he didn't care for us and was just ho-hum about the human race in general. Make no mistake: he didn't choose to die for us because of anything inherently good in ourselves, or because we in any w...