Thoughts on the Church and Community
2009 April 28
What is meant by the church?
- the Church eternal and triumphant
- a transcendent institution perfected by Christ’s work on the cross
- composed of God’s covenant people, both in the Old Covenant(s) and the new Covenant in Christ
- those who have placed their trust in God’s work and submitted to his lordship
- crosses all boundaries: language, ethnicity, culture, even time
- the bride of Christ and attendees of the wedding feast of the Lamb
- glorious to behold, but not of much immediate practical significance
- the Church as the collection of God’s people now
- a temporal institution of the last 2000 years
- worldwide institution of practitioners of what DA Carson calls “cruciform Christianity,” that is, those who cleave to a set of basic beliefs such as the authority of Scripture, the necessity of Christ’s work on the Cross and a heaven to be gained and a hell to be feared
- Almost a cultural distinction, the thoughts and attitudes of its members, thinkers and leaders
- the local church
- temporal institution of here and now
- our local gathering of Christians, in which we meet for collective worship, for fellowship, for prayer and for preaching and teaching
- our most proximate institution – one through which we serve our brothers and sisters most
The importance of both truth and community in the local church
- truth is what holds us together – our common bond in the resurrection of Jesus – C.S. Lewis notes this poignantly in the Screwtape Letters
- truth is exclusive, two contradictory statements can both be false, but they cannot both be true, truth does not tolerate falsehood, but it behooves us to remember that the Truth was humble, patient, confident and courageous.
- Community must also be exclusive in some fashion, or it isn’t really community at all. Even the broadest definitions of community, all humankind for example, excludes animals and plants.
- The means of grace(prayer, reading of the Word, preaching, fellowship, worship, baptism, communion, etc) are where truth meets community, where the realities of God most definitely intrude on our physical existence, where his glory is shown most readily
- Community is the truth lived out – when we take to heart what God shows us about himself and the nature of the reality he has created community is the inevitable result – Christians love to be around other Christians and support and nurture
- Community without truth becomes like the support groups from “Fight Club” – nothing but an emotional drug, it will not last because it has no glue
- Truth without community is impotent and eventually leads to a false life
- Community over and against our radical individualism
- 1 John 3:16 – that we might give our lives for our brothers as Christ gave his life for the church
- Hardest for me to live out – it is relatively easy for me to talk a big game when it comes to community but making decisions that privilege the needs of the community over my personal dreams, goals and desires is extraordinarily difficult – yet the community will not prosper at all if no one subjugates their personal wants to its general good(think of the concept of positive externalities from economics or the grey town in “The Great Divorce”)
I think what you have put down here is really good. I might add that the purpose of the church is to image Christ. We are called to both proclaim and live as Christ to the world by the power of the Spirit. This has to be done in the community of the church. The purpose of the church not only for support, but also for the purpose of maturation(Eph 4:13). Interestingly Eph 4:11-16, when talking about maturity in Christ, says that God has not just given us gifts for service and maturity, but rather people: apostle, prophets, shepherds, and teachers.
Thanks for putting your thoughts together and sharing them.
On the church…
I love the breakdown of church on multiple levels. My initial question though would be with the idea that the church eternal has no immediate practical significance. The story that is revealed in the scriptures gives us an idea of what it means to be a part of the church eternal. We see a story and a tale unfold of God’s redemptive work and how she goes about building and rebuilding her church.
This is one of the hardest things to grasp but I believe knowing you are a part of “that” of all “that”, has huge practical implications. The bridging of the covenants or pre versus post Jesus is something many in the temporal church have a hard time doing. I know I do. When I start thinking about the God of the New Testament versus the God of the Old, I believe I have lost something. To conclude, the church eternal provides a scope and a texture to all aspects of spiritual life. Moreover, it lights a path for us to “do” church today, hopefully preventing us from being a church of the moment.
As a disclaimer - I think Aaron may agree with me and I don’t think this is contradictory to anything he said. Just a point of clarification…maybe. Tell me I’m wrong.
A thoughtful and insightful post! One thought: I definitely agree that Truth ties the community of the Church together, but I feel that Truth can’t bond people together without love. (This may be implicit in your post, but it’s worth foregrounding!) I wonder if love is a deeper bond than Truth, but I’m not sure. That’s probably a false distinction. God is love; Jesus is the Truth; Jesus is the Son of God.
Continuing from the passage you quoted, 1 John 3:19: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” And then earlier, 1 John 3:11: “This is the message we heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”