I love my wife.

Crazy about her.

We have a five-year anniversary this month. Known each other eight years now. I can tell you her favorite color. Her favorite food to eat. What makes her smile so big. What makes her cry.

And our memories are better than any money in the bank.

Don’t even get me started on the story of how we met. On second thought, I dare you. It’s a good story.

So, if you and I are ever hanging out, getting to know each, and you tell me, “Hey Peter, you’re pretty cool and we should be friends, but your wife—I don’t like her,” well, then you and I will not be friends. Friendship with me brings with it friendship with her. Marriage is like that.

Why do I share this with you? I share this because there’s a sentiment I hear creeping in the background of various conversations I have. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

“I love Jesus, but I don’t like the Church.”

It’s not new. Just last week a colleague showed me a book he was reading, and the preface expressed just that idea.

It was written in the 1950s.

But when I read the New Testament, I see one of the guiding metaphors for the people of God being a bride. What if that’s true?

If it’s true, and I react on a gut level when you disrespect my wife, what does Jesus think when we want to buddy up with him but ditch his girl?

We need a redeemed and transformed ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is simply a big seminary word for the way we think and talk about and practice this thing called Church. It comes from the Greek word ekklesia, which means “a public gathering of people,” and is the word that gets translated “church” in the New Testament.

In Ephesians 5, Paul writes to the believers there about some practical ways that the Resurrection impacts how they live in marriage. Within that, he goes on a tangent, paralleling the relationship of a husband with a wife alongside the relationship of Jesus and the Church. He writes,

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27, ESV).

Jesus loves the Church. Not the idea of Church. Not the Church as it could be or will be. But the real thing, this ragamuffin, dysfunctional family of crazy, broken, fallible people as we are. If Jesus loves her so deeply, can I? Can I lead my students in loving the Church?

Believe me, I’m not naive when it comes to the Church. Some days it really hurts. I’ve got scars from this family. I’m sure I’ve been on the giving side of some hurt, too. Like in marriage, my wife and I have our bad days of miscommunication and conflict. And there are days as part of a local church, I just want to take my bat and ball and go home.

My students need the Church every bit as much as they need Jesus. As I read the New Testament, nowhere do I see friendship with Jesus apart from the Church. It is part of my job to point out all of those little ways that Jesus is madly, head-over-heels in love with His bride as often as I can.

Little by little, Jesus is changing me. And little by little, Jesus is changing the Church. In fact, I’m willing to bet it’s in my relationship with a local church that Jesus does most of his tinkering with my heart. What if walking away from the Church is walking away from making myself available to God?

Our students need a relationship with a local church. They need a pastor who knows them by name and prays for them. They need relationships with faithful Christian mentors who can show them how raise kids, fill out their taxes, apply for a job, treat a wife or husband, and cook a meal. They need to see the Christian life lived and modeled.

And the Church is the best place to find those people.

We need a redeemed imagination for the Church.

It’s a not building. It’s not a production. It’s not an institution.

The Church is not something we go to. It is something we are. Something we do. Something we practice.

The church is a family. Our grandmas and grandpas of the faith. Our moms and dads of the faith. Our sisters and brothers, our daughters and sons. The kinds of people we don’t choose but for whom God has chosen us. The kinds of people we don’t turn our back on, no matter how much they irritate us or we disagree with them.

The kinds of people whom Jesus calls “Bride.”

This is why I love the Church, my local church—because I love Jesus. And I cannot love one without the other.

“The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” (Revelation 22:17).