Church 101

Do you belong to a church? You should. Associating with a particular church and involving yourself in the life of that community is the biblical norm. The thought that a Christian would consider him or herself a member of the body of Christ without joining a particular expression of Christ’s life, would have met with apostolic incredulity. Despite the widespread individualism found in the American church, membership in a particular congregation is basic. In truth, it’s beginner stuff -- Church 101.

Every scriptural figure or metaphor for the church depicts a relationship among believers that is inescapable and indivisible. Perhaps the most vivid in terms of the indivisibility and necessity of church belonging is when Paul likens the various members of the church to parts of a body: “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 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 . . . The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you’ . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12). The force of Paul’s argument challenges all expressions of go-it-alone individualism among the church of Jesus Christ.

Joining a church indicates a seriousness of pursuing Christ that is balanced and biblical. When you take on the challenge of being a Christian in community, you move from being a consumer to a contributor. Private expressions of faith and personal devotions are tools that the Lord will use to deepen one’s knowledge of him, but it is the hard work of living together as God’s people that will prove the most stretching. You bring your strengths and your weaknesses to the relationship and all those with whom you are in covenant will benefit. If you are not already in covenant with a group of biblically minded Christians, then prayerfully seek one out and join it. It’s what Jesus wants you to do.

Becoming Persuaded

It’s not unusual to receive a report from Open Doors or Voice of the Martyrs (organizations that monitor the persecution of Christians) about a woman or man who formerly would have identified as Muslim but has now converted to Christianity, being threatened with death unless he or she converts back to Islam. It's humbling to hear of the threatened brother or sister holding “fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23). Why would they rather die than yield up their belief in Christ? It can only be that they have become persuaded that faith in Christ is more valuable than even life itself.

Persuading people is at the heart of the gospel enterprise, while “point-of-the-sword” conversions, like the kind alluded to above, are anathema. Though the church has been guilty of promoting such spurious “conversions,” it was not the practice of the apostles and cannot be the practice of any gospel believing and preaching church.

The gospel is a message to be proclaimed and believed. Both activities engage the heart and mind. Coercive practices subjugate them.  A person might submit out of fear, but fear is not faith – and faith is what is called for by the good news.

In this vain, it’s important to acknowledge that Paul says that he could have “commanded” Philemon to receive Onesimus back but preferred to appeal to him (Philemon 8-9). This is because, I would suggest, Paul trusted the gospel way of getting things done. He wanted his friend to be personally persuaded that forgiveness, love, and reconciliation was the right course of action for a Christian. And being persuaded, he could meet the personal and societal challenges of such a turn of events with persevering faith.

So, whether it’s first coming to faith in Christ or pressing on in the new life set before us, being persuaded as to the goodness of the person, purposes, and power of God is key. Without being convinced of these things we will not joyously follow Christ out of love and faith. Our hearts will lack ardor and our faith will prove tentative and, as we will be prone to doubts and fears, the ability to confess, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) will not be ours.  The best we will be able to offer him is grudging, reluctant, and timid obedience.

Invitation to Grow

Koinonia, a Greek word that has rich meaning for the Christian. It stands for the reality that in Christ believers, bound together by our faith in Jesus, are called to mutual participation and identification with other believers. As N. T. Wright instructs: “The idea that we need to grasp . . . is that, in Christ, Christians not only belong to one another but actually become mutually identified, truly rejoicing with the happy and genuinely weeping with the sad . . . Koinonia is part of the truth about the body of Christ. All are bound together in a mutual bond that makes our much-prized individualism look shallow and petty.”

In theory, koinonia is noble. In practice, it is difficult. Followers of Jesus are brought into the body of Christ by the electing grace of God. As a result, we find ourselves in fellowship with people that we might not normally gravitate towards, and once in relationship we are called to maintain that relationship, sometimes at great cost. But if we are willing to pay the price, there is great reward.

This is what Paul was assuring Philemon when he asked him to receive back into his household Onesimus, his runaway slave, newly converted. Paul knew that this would be challenging for Philemon. But if his friend would fully embrace the implications of koinonia he would grow to understand in a deeper way what it means to be in fellowship with Christ and Christ’s people. Wright’s paraphrase of Philemon 6 is to the point, “I am praying that the mutual participation, which is proper to the Christian faith you hold, may have its full effect in your realization of every good thing that God wants to accomplish in us to lead us into the fullness of Christian fellowship, that is, of Christ.”

So, those folks with whom you worship each Sunday, you are bound to them in Christ. You are called, therefore, to koinonia, mutually identifying and participating in life with them for they, too, have been reconciled to God through the blood of the cross. In humility, work out your differences; in generosity, rejoice when they rejoice; with empathy, join them in their sorrow; in love for Christ, serve beside them in his kingdom. In this way we will all mature, until we “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

God Willing, God Willed

As Christians, we often qualify our future plans with a breezy, "God willing." But it's much harder, when our plans don't work out, to say, "God willed." 

I recall theologian R.C. Sproul, while teaching on the sovereignty of God admitting that if knew there was one molecule that was outside of God’s control, he would be terrified. It would mean that God was not God because there was something operating outside of his influence and power. Now, if God were a despot, then the realization that something was outside of his control would be good news. It would mean that there was hope for revolution, a change of regimes! But as God is a loving, wise, just, and merciful father, the knowledge that he is in absolute and total control brings peace. And it should allow us to say, "God willed," as easily as we say, "God willing."

What would it have sounded like to Philemon when Paul suggested that the thievery and flight of his slave, Onesimus, happened as part of some divine plan so that he might be received back by Philemon not as a slave but as a beloved brother? (Cf. Philemon 15-16) His initial evaluation might have been, “NONSENSE!!” But this dance of human will and divine will that Paul alluded to is, in part, what we considered in our church this past Sunday under the term "providence."

Though hard to mentally grasp, we are to know that all of God’s creation is enveloped in his will. All that comes to pass, therefore, is never due to chance, fate, or some other impersonal force. Rather, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, God’s ever-present power “rules in such a way that leaves and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and unfruitful years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, and everything else, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand” (Question 27). If this is true, then even the sin of Onesimus is encompassed within the over-arching will of God. This does not alleviate the sinner of his responsibility, but it does mean that no matter what transpires, God’s will, which is always good, will be done.

Paul’s soaring language in Romans 8 resonates with confidence in divine providence. I urge you to read it, mediate upon it, pray over it, so that you might affirm with him that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”