We cannot escape the scandal of particularity. God has chosen to enter time from eternity through the incarnation. The Word of God was expressed not just in Jesus words but in his relationships and interactions with the physical world. We learn that there is no place that we can meet God apart from the lives of people who at the same time will demonstrate their capacity for sin just as the disciples did.
We have no basis in the church for arrogance. The church should heed the advice of Philippians, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves…Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:3, 5-7) There are people outside the church who are of higher moral quality than some of us inside the church.
The gift of Christ in the church is not something to be exploited for our personal benefit. Rather it calls upon us to empty ourselves of the pretensions that we are better than others and recognize our full humanity. In the Body of Christ we are addressed without denying the full extent of our guilt. Christ addresses us not for the purpose of exposing us as bad but for the purpose of offering forgiveness for our guilt. “And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-14) If we are to meet Christ in the church, we do so with honest confession and in continuing need of forgiveness.
