on April 29, 2025
Dear all at IPC,
Last week, I was with a friend who is not a Christian and we were discussing the prices of properties in Ealing. He asked me, “What is your church worth?” I was slightly shocked by the question and didn’t know how to answer. I knew he was asking about the value of the building, but it is a wonderful question: “how much is your church worth?”
It turns out that last Sunday I was preaching on Acts 20 where Paul instructs the Ephesian elders to, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” The word obtained there means literally to gain for oneself, to purchase, to buy, to acquire.
In asking the question of how much something is worth, the obvious answer is ‘how much did you pay for it’?
How much is the church worth? It was bought by the blood of God. This is the only time in scripture where the phrase blood of God is used. God is a Spirit and does not have blood and so Paul is obviously referring to the blood of Jesus Christ. His death on Calvary. We can say as individuals, “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20) but we also must say corporately “he gave himself for us, that he might redeem us” (Titus 2:14).
Paul expresses the same truth to the believers in Corinth, “You are not your own you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19). It speaks of us in trading terms, of redemption. Twice in the New Testament we are told that the church is, “his own treasured posession” (Titus 2:4 and 1 Peter 2:9).
A price has been paid, a cost has been met, and payment has been delivered. The Church has been obtained and now belongs to God.
We are living in economically uncertain times, each month we have figures that come out regarding inflation. Does our money buy as much as it used to? Are interest rates going to go up or come down effecting what we can purchase? The blood of Jesus Christ which bought the church does not go up or down in value. It never depreciates; inflation has no impact upon it; it is not effected by government economic policy or even International tariffs; its purchasing power does not change.
He breaks the power of cancelled sin
He sets the prisoner free
His blood can make the foulest clean
His blood availed for me.
I remember when we were doing the building project, our architect trying to explain to me that beauty costs. We see that in the world of art, even in the clothes we wear. People are willing to pay more for quality. You get what you pay for and there is an intrinsic value to items that are beautiful. It is hard for you and I to comprehend the beauty of the church. We can so easily see it’s faults and failures and frustrations. We know our sin, the schism, the chronic tendency to see the problems. It is difficult for us to believe how much we are valued by God, how much we are loved and desired.
Our church has been loved by God so much that we’ve been bought by Jesus Christ. God sent his son to shed his blood for this church: that is how precious we are to him.
Scripture tells us that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1). He owns everything in this universe and yet we’re told that he paid the most precious thing that could ever be paid, it was the life and death of his only son to buy us. He could not have given more.
The answer to my friend on what is your church worth is: the church cannot be bought, it is too expensive for you, it is priceless, it is not for sale.
When we realise how much God loves the church, we are stopped in our tracks and convicted because of how we have spoken of the church for which Jesus shed his blood.
Those silly, petty things that I have said about people for whom God has sent his son to die, should break my heart.
It puts value into what we are doing. Church life, this church, matters to God. When you find yourself moaning and complaining, just think about how important this church is to God. It matters to him and so however you serve on a Sunday – welcoming, on the AV, in Sunday school, in the creche, doing refreshments, giving hospitality, playing music, in the finance, setting up and putting away chairs – with all the frustrations and joys of those things, remind yourself these people whom you are serving have been bought by God with the blood of his son.
The church is precious
“The church is owned by God the Father, bought with the blood of God the Son and personally superintended by God the Holy Spirit. Nothing on earth can compare to the Church” (Joel Beeke).
Your Minister and Friend,
Paul