In His prayer to the Father in John 17, Jesus said that both He and His people (the Ekklesia) are in the world, but not of the world. Throughout church history, it has been, and still is, very difficult for the Church to understand this paradox, and has been even more difficult for the Church to embody its spiritual realities.
The Church is to represent a heavenly King and a heavenly Kingdom. Herein lies the challenge: How do we effectively communicate through and to human culture that which is heavenly – that is, beyond human culture? What does the “called out” Ekklesia have to communicate to those who are still in the culture(s) of the World?
