When Jesus said in Matt 16 that he would build his church, what do you think he had in mind? Where was his blueprint coming from? He is seeking to make his church look like something; Heaven; the Godhead. He even prays for that in John 17, the same togetherness for us as he has with the Father. We should get this; the church he is building is heaven come to earth and his intention is that that increases until he has a bride fit to walk up the heavenly aisle, a bride prepared on earth but suitable for his domain, not soiled by ours.

 

When Jesus said he would build his church, his audience would have been hearing ‘I will build my own congregation’. Moses had a congregation that the audience had continuity with. There shock would be that Jesus would be proclaiming the construction of a new one – his. Moses’ congregation was governed from heaven via Moses, what he saw and heard up the mountain he implemented on the earth. He was a shadow and type of what was to come. Moses was a man of earth implementing Heaven’s government as he saw it and as it was revealed to him. Jesus is a man from heaven implementing heaven’s style of congregation from personal experience of the heavenly realms and the sweet family trinity.

 

What’s the trinity? ‘God is in himself a sweet society’ the puritans would say. It’s Father led and it has a son – it’s a family. Jesus was thinking ‘father’s and sons’ not corporate America or military order. That was not the background he was bringing to building his church.

 

His background was a relational unity that was infused with a river of delights, with a dad who laughed at every problem, a dad who delighted in what he had made, and was secure in the certain outcome of His plans.

 

He came to us slightly depressed lot, with a message and a life that represented the ‘world’ he came from. He came to unhook us from the things that make us worry and the things that make us sad and the things that bind and the things that hold us down and connect us to infinite Father.

 

This must affect what church looks, tastes and feels like. It’s a congregation of Mothers and Fathers, sons and daughters. Its primary unity is because of love relationship not vision or doctrinal agreement. Where does the Bible teach unity by the means of vision? We are one because we have the same Lord and the same Spirit, and we have one Father (all relational) (Eph 4;3-6). Yes it speaks of ‘one faith’ but surely that is speaking of the faith which connects us relationally to family trinity. And baptism is initiation into the whole thing we are in together.