CN | God Wants Us to Be Transformed in His Community

Why We Love Jesus' Church Part 1: Can You Know the Church and Really Love Her? Jesus Answers, "Absolutely."

I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts on a subject that has proven uncomfortable to a good amount of people (including myself): Why We Love Jesus' Church. 

Eerie, right? Sadly, for many reasons, there's not a lot of love for Jesus' Church being expressed in Massachusetts, from outside of the Church, or even from within. Some of it can be related to a foundational New England skepticism and/or cynicism for institutions. Some of it can be rooted in painful personal experiences that have not been allowed to be uprooted, forgiven, or healed by Jesus. And some of it can be rightfully connected to how Jesus' Church has failed to be like Him in embodying His mission for the life of the world.

But despite all of the brokenness, Jesus relentlessly and powerfully loves His Church. In fact it's through His Church that God has chosen to reveal His manifold wisdom to the world (see Ephesians 3:8-10). This series of posts is based on my own discovery of learning that in God's faithfulness to help me grow to become more like Jesus, He has somehow graciously ignited in me and fanned into flame a love for His Church. I can honestly say that His transformative work, stubbornly slow as I can too often make it, has been interconnected with how much He has taught me to love, serve, and be faithful to the bride He loves eternally.

The following posts will feature a few book excerpts and quotes to help us (re)consider together from the Scriptures and history who the Church is, and if we follow Jesus, why our becoming more like Him is intrinsically connected to how we abide in Him with His Church. The first post below features excerpts from Pastor Tod E. Bolsinger's book, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives. The title of this book in itself is provocative enough for many. But I found Bolsinger's challenge – that as followers of Jesus rediscover the essential nature of God as a Triune community, they will understand their identity as His Church and recover its vitality as a truly life-transforming communion for the world – to be a profound one.

It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian

The proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child." In a similar way that the proverb reveals the necessity of a community to raise healthy children in an often hostile world, the process of spiritual growth and transformation is an even more intensely communal activity. The intention of the church is to be a "community for the community": a multi-generational, life-transforming, unwaveringly Christ-centered community of people who, together, worship the Triune God, proclaim and demonstrate the Good News of God, and provide every person a place to belong in the family of God, a place to grow in Jesus Christ, and a place to serve by the leading and power of the Holy Spirit.

As theologian G.C. Berkouwer declared, one of the "aims of the church" is the sanctification of the individual, so that the children of God will be "seen as lights in the world" (cf. Phil 2:15; Zech. 8:23; Matt. 5:14-16). To seekers as well as to its own flock, the church must now announce, "If you would find your life, you must lose it within a redeemed and redemptive community that together lives the manner of abundant and exceptional life that God intended for us." The church is Jesus' body on earth. The church is the temple of the Spirit. The church is not a helpful thing for my individual spiritual journey. The church is the journey. To be part of the church is to be part of God's communion and to be part of God's ministry.

Have Faith in Christ and Join with the People of Christ

Real godly change – real sanctification – requires a people to live together in covenantal relationships, but we're less inclined to that than any generation in human history. More than any before us, an American today believes "I must write the script of my own life." The thought that such a script must be subordinated to the grand narrative of the Bible is a foreign one. Still more alarming is the idea that this surrender of our personal story to God's story must be mediated by a community of fallen people we frankly don't want getting in our way and meddling with our own hopes and dreams.

And in a culture that tells us to march on with ever greater self-reliance and self-expression, the Bible tells us that the story of our life is not our own, and our journey is not our own. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and His people come along with us (or, to put it a little more accurately, we go along with them). And along that journey, a God who is inherently community as Father, Son, and Spirit changes our human community into His image. 

The church is not just a means of grace; and the church is not just here to help you in your individual journey of faith. I remember hearing several well-meaning preachers (later, I myself was one such, I must admit) saying, "All you have to do to be saved is to accept Jesus into your heart. There is no church to join. There's nothing to do. You can have a relationship with Jesus right here all by yourself." Usually the preacher would suggest that a good Bible teaching church would be helpful to the new believer (as vitamins help a diet), but what was most important was a "personal relationship by asking Jesus into your heart." Over time I have come to realize that Paul would never have preached that message. Instead, all of the early church preached, "Believe and be baptized (ex. Acts 2:38-39, 16:30-33; Gal. 3:25-29)." Have faith in Christ and join with the people of Christ. Know the God who is community and become part of it yourself.

God's Intention for Each of Us is to Become More like Christ Together

For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn within a large family (Rom. 8:29). God's purpose in election is that we'll become like Christ. And not just you or me, but all of us, so that Christ might be the firstborn within a large family. The purpose of election is to have a whole family of the human family look like our big brother (who looks like our heavenly Father). God's intention from the beginning of time was that every human would look, in character, like Jesus. This being the case, the purpose of the church is to ensure that all people who come in alienated from God find a relationship with God, take on the very character of God, and eventually look like God.

"Union in the Spirit involved union with one another for the Spirit was primarily a shared, not an individual experience" (Robert J. Banks). In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul asks, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" While this verse is often interpreted to mean that God dwells in each individual Christian, it is clearly speaking to the corporate body, the church (see in context alongside 1 Corinthians 3:9 just a few verses before that says, "For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building"). The church replaces the temple as the dwelling place of God on earth. Further, in 1 Corinthians 12 and also in Ephesians 3-4, Paul refers to the community as Christ's body that together reveals or glorifies God. God reveals himself through the church. This led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to call the church "Christ existing as community." If Christ is present today as the church, and the church is God's means of self-revelation to the world, then the church is called to live and act together in such a way as to demonstrate God's character.

The First Spiritual Disciplines of Jesus' Church Were All Communal

What is the earliest result of the very first Christian sermon? Peter preached the gospel, and Acts 2:41-42 says, "So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." Not much "just Jesus and me" there. The earliest believers trust the Good News about Jesus and join – through baptism – the fellowship of people who also trust this message.

Notice that the first "spiritual disciplines" were all communal ones. They "devoted themselves" to "the apostles' teaching" (shared beliefs), "fellowship" (shared relationships), "breaking of bread" (shared meals), and "the prayers" (shared spiritual life), all expressed in a communal life together. Indeed the passage goes on (vv. 43-47) to demonstrate just how quickly and how completely the personal conversion experience reoriented a new convert's whole communal life: "Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

We are Members One of Another 

"For Paul, the Gospel bound men and women to one another as well as to God. Acceptance by Christ necessitated acceptance of those whom he had already welcomed (Rom. 15:7)" (Robert J. Banks). Since the very essence of the Trinity is the shared, interrelated communion of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then the "essence" of the church reflecting the Trinity is not some "other" substance but the unity its members' love for one another (John 13:34-35). For if "God is what God is in interrelatedness," then human transformation is both dependent upon and realized in a similar interrelatedness. Humans are created physically through physical union, we grow in families through loving attachment, and we become spiritually mature through interdependent living.

Romans 12:5 teaches us that we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another" (emphasis mine). Our membership as Christian is to "one another," a phrase that shows up in Paul's writings more than three dozen times. Because of who we are in Christ, our life is one of deep "one another living": welcoming one another, greeting one another, loving one another, living in harmony with one another, waiting for one another before eating, and, most dramatically, "through love becom(ing) slaves to one another" (Gal. 5:13). To be related to one another through Christ is not merely to interact but to live in interdependence, to "rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:15). Again, the "togetherness of Christians is ... not secondary or contingent: it is integral to their life just as is their abiding in Christ.

While God is by nature a communion of Father, Son, and Spirit, human persons require covenantal commitment in order to effect the kind of interdependence necessary for transformation. Therefore, Christian communities are formed intentionally through expressed Christian faith and commitment to the community. We take very seriously both our baptismal vows offered as a community and the responsibility to lead people to a personal faith in Christ. We ensure that all church members be confessing Christians, committed to being formed by the Holy Spirit as part of the body of Christ. Faith in Christ and a commitment to relationships within the body of Christ are inextricable. Further, Christian baptism, whether of infants or adults, requires a commitment not only to Christ but to "participate responsibly in the worship and mission of the church." This baptismal confession of faith is always met with the response of the congregation to pray for and support the baptized in the Christian identity. It is hard to overstate the importance of the communal exchange taking place in this sacramental moment. Through this relational restructuring of the Spirit, the believer progresses in depth of faith (relationship to God) and in transformation into the likeness of God (understood in relational terms and expressed in relationships with other believers – see 2 Cor. 3:17-18; John 13:14-15). Indeed, as the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22-26) attests, relational maturity is virtually indistinguishable from spiritual maturity, and the spirituality of a community is defined by the quality of the relationships formed. As we do so, we demonstrate a quality of living that the world is yearning for and through which humans have been created to thrive.

Worship is a Response to God's Invitation to "Come" Together

When someone asked me why he needed to be with the church to worship, my response was that he had confused inspiration with worship. We can be inspired by ocean waves and a child's gaze individually, but we respond to that inspiration by following God and worshiping Him as He has told us to: as part of the community of His people (see Lev. 8:3-5, 19:1-4; 2 Chron. 29:28; Ezra 10:1; Nehemiah 8:18; Ps. 22:22-25, 26:8, 12, 35:18, 40:9-10, 68:26, 74:2, 89:5, 107:32, 111:1, 149:1; Joel 2:16; Acts 15:30-31; Heb. 2:11-13). It is worth remembering that over and over again, the primary instruction of worship is to "come" (ex. 1 Chron. 16:29; Ps. 86:9, 95:6; Is. 66:23; Jer. 26:2-3; Matt. 2:2; 1 Cor. 14:26; Rev. 15:4). Come and see what God has done. Come and worship. Come and enter His temple. Come together as God's people. 

Remember that all of the calls to worship in the Psalms were public and corporate calls. They were personal calls, yes, but not individual calls. Which leads to this very important and often overlooked point: To worship God as He instructed in His Word, you must come with the church. Worship is a command performance where God invites you into His spiritual household and asks you to join in worship with all of His people, giving voice for and witnessing to all of creation. 

Worship as participation is just another aspect of discipleship. It must always mean following Jesus, the Worship Leader, who "did not regard equality with God" as something to hang on to, but "emptied Himself" in suffering love, the first "living sacrifice" (Phil. 2:6-7; Rom. 12:1). As Thomas F. Torrance reminds us, participating in communion is never the end, even for the Trinity, so worship is an expression of communion with the Triune God in a "bond of mutual love and self-giving" as well as the call "to participate by the Spirit in the Son's communion with the Father and the Son's mission from the Father to the world."

Next post: CN | Jesus Offers More Than Open Basements, Bad Marriages

+ Sully

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Facebook | Visit Us | Give