During the last year I’ve been pondering what exactly makes the Church, capital “C”, distinctive from the world. Or said differently what sanctifies us, that is, what sets us apart - makes us holy if you will. This is actually something that I think about regularly, you may have even had a conversation about this with me in the past. But it has been more raw in the last year.

In parallel to that, during our fast, I have found an opening into the gospel according to John. The gospel of John has always been fairly opaque to me. I don’t know why really. I expect it is because I think like an engineer and not a poet.

Anyway, I had some openings into John.

So back to distinctiveness. What makes us distinct?

  • Is it that we are good people in a bad world? We aren’t perfect.
  • Is it that we show up on Sundays instead of fill in the blank? That’s pretty small.
  • More generally, is it because we live by different rules than the world? I hope not. We have proven that road to be lifeless.
  • Is it that we all are socially conservative, um, I mean progressive? Can’t be distinct and follow the world’s drum.
  • Is it so that we can point to all the places the world messes up? We don’t do that as well as late night talk show hosts.

  • Is it so that we can go out there and make the world a better place? No we are not the only ones trying to do that.

  • Maybe it’s because Jesus loves us? Let’s see.

“For God so loved the world (Ooh! guess not.) that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Enter John 3:16. Let me just read through the rest of Jesus’s paragraph.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

There is so much in that paragraph. It is so full of depth and richness, and is frankly beyond me even with an infinite amount of time.

  • What does he mean by “believes in him”?
  • Or the bits about condemnation, what is that about?
  • That bit about what the judgement is. It may just be me, but I see a description of grace there.

If you go home and spend some time in those verses my time here will have been successful.

But I’m talking about distinctivement, here is my current take on what Jesus is saying about that.

The church is distinct from the world, because we are people “who do what is true.”

“True” not “good,” “right,” “sinless.”

Oh those would be nice, but Jesus is actually a realist. We will mess up.

But we are called to be honest (true) about what we do. We are the church when we want to be in the light, that is Jesus whether or not that light shows our flaws.

Why? “So that it may be clearly seen.” It comes down to witness. We the church want, above anything else, we want Jesus to be seen as The only Savior. Because he is!

And it doesn’t matter if our dirt comes to light - if the light is Jesus.