Gloria and Luke 15:10

"Gloria!" I shouted at a quickly receding figure on the sidewalk.
"Jeff" replied Gloria as she bounced to a stop and turned around. "Guess what?" she asked as she walked towards me.
"You made a decision." I asserted tentatively.
"Yep, I'm a Christian." Gloria smiled. We were talking outside near Currier Hall. It was May at the end of the spring semester of my fourth but not my final year at the University of Iowa. It was a perfect spring day in Iowa.
She was my neighbor on the dorm floor. Her roommate was the girlfriend of the guy across the hall from me. We all hung out together at the dining hall and in our hall. She had been talking to some Christian friends of mine. We had sporadic conversations throughout the semester about my beliefs. Her biggest sticking point was what would other people think.
"You know what I keep thinking about?" She queried. Her eyes sparkled as she teased me.
"I don't know." I replied.
"You told me once that thousands of angels would rejoice if I became a Christian. I keep thinking about all those angels cheering."
"Luke 15:10" I said, remembering the conversation. I looked at her. She seemed at peace. Her faced beamed with heavenly joy. I'd never seen anyone so happy. I said, "I'm sure they are. Rita and the gang must be really happy."
She said softly, "Thank you, Jeff."
"You're welcome." I replied. She walked away. She graduated that semester. I never saw Gloria again.

I understood the economy of heaven better that day. God rejoices before angels over repenting sinners. Angels rejoice before God at His rejoicing. Heaven will be an eternal rejoicing of saints and angels over a God who is joying over them.

Jonathan Edwards on the Beauty of the Church

This is a quote from The Theology of Jonathan Edwards. The authors are describing Edwards's aesthetics. This passage is poignant about how Edwards viewed the Church.

As the saints perceive and respond to God's beauty, they themselves acquire a beauty that is "The moral image of God in them." The beauty of the saints consists in a comprehensive and well-ordered moral and spiritual character, free from disproportion and deformity, so that they become "proportioned Christians." As Edwards noted in Religious Affections: "Another thing wherein those affections that are truly gracious and holy, differ from those that are false, is beautiful symmetry and proportion." Similarly, in Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards spoke of the concomitant development of various virtues or of "Christian graces concatenated together." Faith, love hope humility, repentance, thankfulness, reverence, submission, patience, contentment, meekness--these and all other graces of the Christian life grow together and not in isolation. The spiritual beauty of the saints consists in a complex of discrete though interrelated virtues.

As each saint responds to the beauty of God, so each responds to the beauty of other saints. For one person's consent to being is not isolated from that of another person, and "it is naturally agreeable to perceiving being that being should consent to being." As a result, there is a multiplying effect of consent and beauty within the community of the saints. Each saint not only consents to God but to the consent of other saints to God--a process that comes to consummation in heaven. The holy community, joined together in unity, is a community of consent that possesses its own special beauty. For "union is spoken of in Scripture as the peculiar beauty of the church of Christ," and "tis one of the most beautiful and happy things on earth, which indeed makes earth most like heaven." Krister Sairsingh writes: "The church is the community which re-presents the divine community of consent. And in this human community of co-consenters to being in general, the divine glory becomes visible." Conrad Cherry comments that, Edwards's "theory of virtue brought into symbiotic relation the beauty of the cosmos, the beauty of human morality, and the beauty of divine benevolence."

(McClymond and Mcdermott, pp. 100-101)

I don't fully understand these thoughts, but it interesting to ponder that Edwards had several conflicts with his contentious congregation. This congregation eventually kicked him out from his pastorate and yet Edwards sees the Church as beautiful.

Calvin on Deacons

Calvin saw 2 classes of deacons in the church. One type that administer the gifts to the poor and the other type that took care of the poor.

The care of the poor was committed to deacons, of whom two classes are mentioned by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, "He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity;" "he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness," (Rom. 12: 8.) As it is certain that he is here speaking of public offices of the Church, there must have been two distinct classes. If I mistake not, he in the former clause designates deacons, who administered alms; in the latter, those who had devoted themselves to the care of the poor and the sick. Such were the widows of whom he makes mention in the Epistle to Timothy, (1 Tim. 5: 10.) For there was no public office which women could discharge save that of devoting themselves to the service of the poor. If we admit this, (and it certainly ought to be admitted,) there will be two classes of deacons, the one serving the Church by administering the affairs of the poor; the other, by taking care of the poor themselves. For although the term "diakonia" has a more extensive meaning, Scripture specially gives the name of deacons to those whom the Church appoints to dispense alms, and take care of the poor; constituting them as it were stewards of the public treasury of the poor. Their origin, institution, and office, is described by Luke, (Acts 6: 3.) When a murmuring arose among the Greeks, because in the administration of the poor their widows were neglected, the apostles, excusing themselves that they were unable to discharge both offices, to preach the word and serve tables, requested the multitude to elect seven men of good reports to whom the office might be committed. Such deacons as the Apostolic Church had, it becomes us to have after her example. (Calvin’s Institutes. Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 9)

Calvin notes that deacons and elders(bishops) were selected by the suffrage of the people.

Luke relates that Barnabas and Paul ordained elders throughout the churches, but he at the same time marks the plan or mode when he says that it was done by suffrage. The words are, "Cheirotonesantes presbuterous kat' ekklesian", (Acts 14: 23.) They therefore selected (creabant) two; but the whole body as was the custom of the Greeks in elections, declared by a show of hands which of the two they wished to have. Thus it is not uncommon for Roman historians to say, that the consul who held the comitia elected the new magistrates for no other reason but because he received the suffrages, and presided over the people at the election. (Calvin’s Institutes Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 15).