A Loving Community of Believers - Where Things Went Wrong

32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Prayer

We are in the midst of exploring the 7th characteristic of a true church of Jesus Christ. Let me restate it and then we’ll get right into it.

A true church of Jesus Christ is a loving community of believers, committed to FELLOWSHIP with God and one another inside and outside the formal gathering of the church.

Can you see that from our Scripture passage this morning?

Acts 4:32-35

Acts 4:32–35 ESV

So, last week we defined fellowship as...

God’s people living together in intentional, relational community seeking the well-being of one another in every way, including physical, spiritual, material, and emotional.

I mentioned last week that today we would be exploring where we got off track from God’s intended plan of unity and fellowship in the church today.

Where things went wrong

Have any of you ever heard the quote from Rene Decartes, “I think, therefore I am”?

With this phrase a rationale for existence has been developed that has at it’s very core the individual above the community.

Regardless of whether this commitment to the importance of the individual could be established from the Scriptures, the idea that people stand alone as isolated individuals wove its way into the modern era, especially here in the United States of America… where the rugged individual is the hero in virtually all of our great cultural narratives.

The problem is… isolation, aloneness, the essence of the “rugged individual american” is contrary to the way God made us. We are not true individualists… no, not really. We’re not good at it.

Theologian D.A. Carson puts it this way, in his article “Contrarian Reflections on Individualism”

Themelios: Volume 35, No. 3, November 2010 (Editorial: Contrarian Reflections on Individualism (D. A. Carson))

One could make a case that many people want to belong to something—to the first group that manages to purchase an iPhone, to the “emerging” crowd or to those who want little to do with them, to the great company that can discuss baseball or cricket or ice hockey, to those who are up-to-date in fashion sense, to those who are suitably green or those who are suspicious of the green movement, to various groups of “friends” on Facebook, to those who tweet, and so on. If you say that most of these groups do not foster deep relationships, I shall agree with you—but then the problem lies in the domain of shallow relationships of many kinds, rather than in individualism per se.

So… we’re not so good at “rugged individualism” - what we really have what is called a goal of “self-fulfillment” not individualism.

Carson goes on,

Themelios: Volume 35, No. 3, November 2010 Editorial: Contrarian Reflections on Individualism (D. A. Carson)

Before cigarette advertising was all but banned, the image of the Marlboro Man—tough, lone, tanned, fit, hunkish cowboy—appealed to all the stereotypes of the American ideal of rugged individualism, and Marlboro sold millions of cigarettes to all those would-be hunks hankering to conform to the ideal. Car manufacturers parade their products by trying to convince you that their vehicle will bring out the real you—and of course the cars in question are mass produced. In other words, the emphasis on self-fulfillment in advertising often plays to rugged individualism that has a sort of iconic appeal, even while the brute fact is that this is an appeal to the masses to conform to a mythical, community-shared construct.

So, we begin to get a picture that it is not necessarily “individualism” that is the problem, but instead it is a preoccupation with “self” that is the problem. What we are really good at is being absorbed with “self.” And that “self” absorption plays out in different ways depending on one’s personality.

For the extrovert “individualism” plays out in making sure that we get what we want… and that is “people” doing with us “what we want” for our benefit, which is often a party or some sort of activity involving “people” being with us.

For the introvert “individualism” it is similar, but different. For the introvert our “self” absorption plays out by making sure that we get what we want… and that is “people” leaving us alone, “which is what we want” so that we can focus on our own benefit without the drain of having “people” around.

As a result of this focus on the individual, in Christianity in particular, the focus shifted from the church to the individual. On this point historian Mark Noll says, in his book “Father of Modern Evangelicals?”…

“Up to the early 1700s, British Protestants preached on God’s plan for the church. From the mid–1700s, however, evangelicals emphasized God’s plans for the individual.”[1]

A common occurrence if you spend any amount of time talking to people who claim to be Christians is you will hear them refer to their “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

I think this is important enough to spend a little time talking about this… because it has affected the church in no small way! It is the same focus as D.A. Carson has pointed out, but with the focus being on Christians in particular.

Did you know that the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” never occurs in the Bible? Never.

So then, let me ask a provocative question:

How is it that the thing we find most important about our faith was never mentioned in the Bible?

And if you were to follow the Apostles around in the New Testament, you will find that they never ask people to invite Jesus into their heart or to have a personal relationship with Jesus. No! Instead, they proclaim Jesus as the risen Lord and Savior and call people to repent, lay down their lives, and follow him. So then… is the idea of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” unbiblical?

Yes and no. It all depends on what you mean by the word personal.

If by “personal” you mean private, then no, having a “private relationship with Jesus” isn’t in the Bible. (Neither is inviting Jesus into your heart, by the way.) Our faith in Jesus is public, not private; it’s communal, not self-centered.

And if by “personal” you mean individualistic, then no, having an “individualistic relationship with Jesus” isn’t in the Bible either. When we “get saved,” we are saved into a community of faith not just saved from our personal and private sins.

But if by “personal” you mean that a significant aspect of our salvation is us coming into communion with our Creator through Jesus—then yes, I think that is biblical.

In other words, while the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” isn’t in the Bible, the concept is. In fact, it’s everywhere. From Genesis to Revelation, or from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, the idea that our Creator desires to dwell with, commune with, and relate with humanity in spite of our sin, in spite of our mess—well, that’s pretty much the main theme of Scripture.

In fact… it is those very ideas that fuel our celebration of Advent! Immanuel… God with Us! God coming down to save… to restore relationship with His sinful and broken creation made in His image.

I want to make sure you understand the point here…

When I am talking about individualism I am talking about the “self-centered” individual, not that being an individual is wrong.

The bible is full of reminders that there were and always have been individuals that stood against the evil collective for the sake of God, for the sake of the Gospel. Individuals have stood strong, even at times when there was so one else standing with them… stood in faithfulness to God in the face of everyone else turning away from God.

For as much as “self-centered” individuals have wreaked havoc on society, it can be said with equal authority that just as much, if not more damage has been done by communitarianism/collectivism (under the guise of Marxism, Communism, and Socialism). The problem is not necessarily the ideal of individualism or communitarianism (community living) but the fact that both sides involve humans.

Again, Carson makes this very point,

Themelios: Volume 35, No. 3, November 2010 (Editorial: Contrarian Reflections on Individualism (D. A. Carson))

The sad fact is that we human beings will corrupt anything and everything we touch, including both individualism and communitarianism/collectivism. To fasten all the negative associations on one pole or the other is frankly naive, biblically and historically short-sighted. Clearly an emphasis on individualism can be of the very essence of sin: to insist on doing things my way is to de-throne God, to shape myself into a twisted idol; equally clearly, an emphasis on communitarianism can also be of the very essence of sin, as we build a Babel and call it progress.

So, the idea is not that “community” is better than “individualism” but that either one, without the presiding authority of God and His Word being the essence and controlling factor, always goes off the rails, so to speak.

So, I want to make sure that we grasp the importance of understanding that our relationship with Jesus is not a private thing. It’s communal.

That the Bible is filled with individuals obeying and serving God does not do away with the Bible’s teaching that the CHURCH is the manifestation of Christ on earth. We, as the church, are the body of Christ. You, as an individual are not the body of Christ.

The center of gravity in our relationship with Jesus is in the church. The center is not found in your heart, not on some mountaintop. But in the local gathering and global unity of Christ’s blood-bought bride. Consider Paul’s words in Ephesians 1:22-23

Ephesians 1:22–23 ESV

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Did you get that? The fullness of God is not in your individual heart and it’s not on some mountain top away from civilization. It’s in the church—that messy gathering of broken, high-maintenance people that we “have” to go be with every Sunday.

Paul has a lot to say about this in his letter to the Ephesians. He goes on to call this church the temple of the Lord where “you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21). Again, Paul prays that “you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19), which he already said resides in the local body (1:23). Paul says that this is why God gave us spiritual gifts (Eph. 4:11-12), so that the body of Christ would be built up, made mature, and become unified where the “fullness of Christ” would radiate (Eph. 4:12-13).

Fullness of Christ! It’s not in you. It’s not in me. It’s in us.

The New Testament bleeds community. Our faith—our personal relationship with Jesus—is inconceivable apart from the local community of believers. This is why Paul often refers to the church body (not our individual bodies) as the temple of the living God (1 Cor 3; 2 Cor 6). The church is where God’s presence dwells on earth. Yes, it is true that God’s Spirit dwells in individual Christians, but individual Christians are lifeless apart from the church.

We Were Made for One Another

From the declaration by God in the garden to our first parents, where God stated that it is not good to be alone, to the example of the one true God who himself exists in Trinitarian community as Father, Son, and Spirit, the emphasis of Scripture is that while we are individuals,and what is meant by that is… we understand there is distinction between us… however, through the reconciling work of Jesus there should not be division and isolation but instead loving relational community as the church. In other words, we were made for one another!

The Bible is very clear that every Christian is a part of the larger church body and is expected to participate in the life of a local church with the gift(s) God has given him or her. This is so God may be glorified and so his people may be built up through their service to one another. It is therefore a sin for someone who claims to be a Christian not to be actively loving his or her Christian brothers and sisters and seeking to build up the church as faithful members of a church.

Yet, here we see one of the tragic effects of modernism on church life. Many people who claim to be Christians, adopted by God the Father, have nothing to do with their brothers and sisters in God’s family, the church. Such people will excuse themselves by claiming that all they need is Jesus. In refutation of this modern false teaching, 1 John 1:1–3 says

1 John 1:1–3 ESV

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

John’s point is that believers stay in relation with other Christians. He goes on to speak of false believers in 1 John 2:19

1 John 2:19 ESV

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

The writer to the Hebrews identifies why we are to live in community together being together on a regular basis… (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Hebrews 10:24–25 ESV

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

And as the end draws nearer the Holy Spirit challenges us to do this more and more…

It’s beginning to look like maybe this is today… now! We see the Day drawing near so we should be living in loving community more and more… stirring one another up to love and good works… not neglecting being together in community… but instead encouraging one another to keep on going, keep on serving God and one another, keep on being faithful, keep on trusting God. We cannot do that if we are not in community.

Why is it important that believers stay together in the church? Because that is where we love other believers, the mark of the Christian according to Jesus. Remember Jesus’ words in John 13:34-35

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How do we make it right?

We learned last week that our fellowship with the godhead and with one another is the avenue that God will use to bring non-Christians to the point of believing that Jesus is who He is.

So…

We’ve gotten off track with this “personal (read “self-centered”) relationship with Jesus” thing and forgotten how precious the church is to Jesus and how critically important it is to the world believing who Jesus says He is. The natural question is, “How do we get it back?”

This is what we will explore next week. Just how do we get it back? We will outline more practical things that we need to do to fulfill this seventh characteristic of a true church of Jesus Christ.

I want to close with these thoughts...

Questions for Reflection

We have come to understand, through the words if Christ Himself, that it is us living in community with each other, loving each other as He has commanded us to, that allows the world to see that Jesus really is who the Bible says that he is.

But, unfortunately, that picture of who Jesus, who God is has been marred as a result of us not living how Christ has commanded; because we don’t live with each other the way He tells us to.

As a result the world has tainted views of God. They either view God as...

Themelios: Volume 35, No. 3, November 2010 (Editorial: Contrarian Reflections on Individualism (D. A. Carson))

(1) the authoritative God, who both judges and is closely engaged with the world;

(2) the benevolent God, who is engaged but non-judgmental;

(3) the critical God, who is judgmental but disengaged;

(4) the distant God, who is neither engaged nor judgmental.

I would like to propose that we return to the God of the Bible, the God who is fully authoritative and engaged, but also compassionate and benevolent.

The God who judges with perfect justice but who sends his Son to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. I propose that we take our understanding of God from revealed truth that disrupts our “self-absorbed” preferences.

And in so doing, will we not find that the truth of who this God is enables the you and I to sift the culture and form a Christian counter-culture, a community of God’s people in which it is possible to be strong in the grace of God because we are weak?

Church, let us then rejoice in the paradoxes that lie close to the heart of being a Christ follower:

We take up our cross so as to be free;

in dying, we live;

in giving, we receive;

when we are weak, we are strong.

None of the “pretended gods” of our culture prepare us for this biblical disclosure of God.

But here is the all consuming, all encompassing truth…

When he captures us, he strengthens us both individually and in the context of our church to stand up with courage, humility, and contrition and point away from the oppressive gods of our age to the ONE TRUE GOD who saves!