As we consider our calling as the Church of the living God, may we begin by recognizing how God sees us in Christ. May we start by realizing what God has declared about the purpose and nature of the Church, not settling for something that falls far short of the divine reality, but instead, setting our gaze upon the glorious certainty of what God is actually accomplishing through His Son.

What is the Church? If someone were to ask you that question, how would you respond? Would you reference the difference between the local and universal Church? Would you explain where your particular church is located? Maybe you would talk about the people who make up your church. Or, perhaps you would describe the programs and activities that your church is engaged in. Whatever your answer to that question may be, Scripture provides us with a number of descriptions which help us understand the nature and identity of the Church.
The Church is the Body of Christ
In Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers, he writes to them, saying:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body (1 Cor 12:12-20).
Certainly, the most familiar of all the metaphors and descriptions for the Church found in Scripture, is the body. God, in his infinite wisdom and grace, has provided us with reference points, if you will, in order to better help us understand who and what the Church is. In doing so, he takes something far beyond our mind’s comprehension and brings it down to a level that we can begin to consider. Like a loving and patient father, our God stoops down, as it were, and provides us with descriptions we can understand.
Here, in 1 Corinthians 12, he does so through the Apostle Paul by referencing our own human bodies. The point of comparison is simply to say that just as the human body is one entity, yet has many members, such as ears, eyes, feet, and hands, so it is with the Church. The universal Church is one entity, yet it is comprised of believers from every nation, language, and people group of the world, with Christ as the Head (Col 1:18, Rev 7:9).
Now, there is certainly a profound mystery found within this metaphor, as we also find it utilized in the book of Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians, and recognize that in some unfathomable way we are spiritually united to Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father (Eph 2:6). Yet, at least one thing is obvious. This glorious description of the Church stands in blatant contradiction to the division and individualism found to be so prevalent in our culture, today. The Church of Christ is a living, active body of believers who are dependent upon their Head and upon one another.
The Church is the Temple of God
Turning our attention to the next description of the Church we find in God’s Word, the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesian believers, saying:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph 2:19-22).
The magnificence of this metaphor should not be overlooked. Since every genuine believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Paul uses the picture of a temple to explain that the Church is being built as a place where God, himself, lives both now and for eternity. Testifying to the Spirit’s divine authorship, the Apostle Peter echoes this same idea, saying:
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:4-5).
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Schaeffer understood that the modern spiritual crisis is an intellectual crisis, and that the intellectual crisis is a spiritual crisis. At the center of this crisis is a denial of God, and that denial of God produces an intellectual crisis that quickly translates into a cultural and moral catastrophe. The one central point that Schaeffer drove home was that the existence of the God of the Bible changes everything.

One of my personal eccentricities has to do with the way I remember books that have changed my life. I remember them chronologically and spatially. I remember where I was when I first read the book, and when I read it. I also write that information on the inside back cover of the book, just in case I need a prompt to memory.
When it comes to Francis Schaeffer’s book He Is There and He Is Not Silent, I need no reminder. It was 1976, I was 16 years old, and this was the first of Schaeffer’s books that I read. More accurately, tried to read. Even with my limited understanding of his argument, Schaeffer’s book changed my life.
I was too young to visit L’Abri, the hostel for young people that Francis and Edith Schaeffer founded in 1955, at its prime, but I read Schaeffer’s books at just the right time. I needed help, and in a hurry. I was a teenage Christian thrown into spiritual trouble by a succession of the awful educational, moral, and cultural experiments of the 1970s. I was in an intellectual crisis. I needed to know that God is real and that the Bible is trustworthy. I had a couple of atheist teachers who were undermining every theistic argument and I was surrounded by a moral revolution that directly contradicted the Bible. I needed help. My pastor and youth pastor offered help, but I needed a lot more.
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Joseph Hart spares no one’s feelings when he surveys the mass of humanity, men and women and boys and girls, and analyzes people in their natural condition apart from Christ. And it is not just that men are merely defective or slightly ill-adapted, or that they just need a little bit of tweaking. No, Hart paints a picture of our condition that aligns with the Holy Scripture: we are poor, wretched sinners. But right away, consider the good news in that opening stanza: “Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, joined with power.” And that’s a marvelous, balanced, biblical portrayal of the Savior.

This is an absolutely lovely hymn. The tune to which it is paired in the Trinity Hymnal (Selection No. 472) is called BRYN CALFARIA, which is one of those stirring, minor-key Welsh hymn tunes (of which there are so many). The tune is so full of pathos and is well-suited to the hymn text here. That Welsh tune name, by the way, in English means “Calvary’s Hill”[1]—a very apt name for the tune, especially when it is wedded to this text.
The Tune
Now, this tune is not the easiest to sing. It’s a little tricky, but I think that a determined congregation could learn and master it after singing through it just a few times. I have a Welsh pastor friend who has said that it is not uncommon for the Welsh to sing tunes like this when they come together at rugby matches. And, as he says, if 50,000 inebriated Welsh sports fans can learn a complex tune and sing it with some cogency, so can an average congregation!
The fundamental underpinning theme of this hymn is that it does not congratulate the sinner on his ability; it recognizes that all the ability belongs to Jesus Christ alone. Notice that the first refrain is, “He is able, He is able, He is willing, doubt no more.” No emphasis falls on the sinner’s power and ability; it’s all on the Savior’s power and ability.
The BRYN CALFARIA tune was originally composed by a Welshman named William Owen. Owen, born in 1813 and lived through 1893, was a publisher of several hymnals using Welsh tunes. He was born in Bethesda in Northern Wales, and he worked in a slave quarry as a young man at the age of ten. That gives us something of the historical context: both awful child labor and slave labor were alive and well at this time in early 1800s Wales.[2]
Owen lived near a church called St. Ann, and he loved to hear the organist playing there. He became a good musician himself and started composing. Some of his tunes at the time were very popular, but the style of these tunes fell out of favor years later. However, this tune has survived partly due to the efforts and interest of Ralph Vaughan Williams — the great English hymn collector, hymn publisher, and composer of symphonies. Vaughan Williams gave us that majestic tune to which we sing “For All the Saints,” for example (SINE NOMINE).[3]
Well, Vaughan Williams took Owen’s BRYN CALFARIA tune and tamed it so as to make it easier for congregations to sing it. He then published his arrangement of the tune in the English Hymnal. He also did an organ prelude on this tune.[4] If you are a classical music lover, you might have heard that organ prelude, and it is a lovely arrangement of this tune. So, it’s thanks to Vaughan Williams (at least in part) that this tune has been preserved in English hymnody.
The Text
Well, that’s a little about the tune and its composer (and popular arranger). How about a little bit about the man who wrote the stirring lyrics? Joseph Hart was born about a dozen years before John Newton. John Newton (the former slave-trader-turned-abolitionist who gave us hymns such as “Amazing Grace”) was born in 1725, and Joseph Hart was born in 1712. Hart was converted to Christ under George Whitefield’s ministry in the late 1750s, some ten years after the close of the “Great Awakening” (denominated the “Evangelical Revival” in Britain).
After his conversion, Hart went on to become a pastor and preacher for an independent chapel. He wrote a number of hymns and was later buried in Bunhill Fields in London, which is famous for being the final resting place of the likes of John Owen, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Susannah Wesley (mother of John and Charles), and other notables.[5]
The hymn “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched” was first published in 1759 in a collection of English hymns, and the original title given to this hymn was “Come, and welcome to Jesus Christ.” As an aside, that is one of my absolute favorite phrases in the English language. It’s also the title of one of John Bunyan’s little works. Read that book if you can. It expresses his delight and joy in the free and gracious welcome given to sinners by Jesus Christ. Some have suggested that that little book even helped pave the way for the modern missions movement.
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