Diversity in Unity that leads to Maturity – God’s plan for His People (Pt 1)
By: Shane Haffey
What is the importance of “seeing” an invisible God in our community of faith?
Or, just how is it that we “see” God at work in the life of His people? Perhaps our response would be something like Philip’s.. “Show us the Father and that will be enough for us”. Philip wanted a grandiose vision of God, a spiritual “experience”, a display of glory, or an act of divine power. Jesus’ response is interesting, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:8).” His answer tells us that God is revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature (Heb. 1:3).”
Today the creature instinct to be gravitated toward the supernatural is still very present. The assumption is if we don’t see a sign, wonder or supernatural coincidence then we have trouble believing God is at work. We want a manifestation of the divine. Jesus continued, “The words I say to you are not my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work (V10).
Through our eternal union with Christ the works of Jesus can and will be done by each and every Christian past present and future. “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do.. (v12). The greater works described are not flashier miracles but instead are the proclamations of God’s Word that will bring eternal life and prove to sanctify His people. Jesus is pointing out that the giving of salvation through His Word is a greater demonstration of power than turning water into wine. Later Jesus would tell seeing is believing Thomas, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed (20:29)". What Jesus was revealing is that He would be made manifest to a lost world, after His ascension, not by His physical presence but by the life altering power of His Word. It’s all about His Word.
God’s Word being proclaimed in community causes growth by the power of the Spirit. Christianity therefore has always been and will always be word-centered because God rules through his Word. John’s gospel demonstrates this common principle. Through His Word God brought order out of chaos and light out of darkness (John 1:1-3). Where God’s word is not heard, chaos and darkness close in again. Jeremiah is given a vision of God’s coming judgment declaring, “I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone (Jer. 4:23). God rules through His Word and His Word reigns supreme.
True disciples of Jesus are those that “abide in His Word”. It is God’s Word that makes Christians wise for salvation; and is sufficient for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” and make us “thoroughly equipped for every good work”. (2 Tim. 3:15-17). Signs and wonders don’t reveal sin but God’s word does. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12).” There is a species of faith that comes from miraculous signs and wonders, coincidences and emotional experiences but that kind of faith can never be trusted because it is a fair-weather sort of faith. It will believe when signs are performed, prayers are answered, and felt needs are met but it is not the sort of faith that will survive the loss of a child or sustained persecution or major trauma. Authentic faith comes through the word of God by the power of the Spirit and there is no substitute.
We must come to the realization that we “see” God when His Word is declared and obeyed and the evidence of this is realized in and through the church. Spiritual experience should never be belittled by our intellect yet we need to be mindful that our experiencing Christ comes largely through communing with His body. We find that not only does God sustain creation through His word but Christ also sustains His church through His Word. The church becomes the vehicle by which Christ administers His care, discipline, love and direction.
The Church defined..
The church itself is the community of the Holy Spirit. It is a living organism of community where things happen because God is always working. When our hearts are moved in worship, when people are changed by God’s Word, when we turn to God in prayer, when we care for one another, when we act selflessly, regeneration occurs, growth comes, good works are conducted and holiness results. This is not some theoretical society this is an actual
community of believers that God dwells in by way of His Spirit.
This community not only involves the proclamation of God’s Word but also the experience that truth causes. We are made to behold truth. When God’s Spirit comes to reside in us it changes our whole perception and attitude to the truth. We become “in love” with the truth. That is, it grips us, sustains us and rules our thoughts and intentions. We become one with the truth. God’s truth cannot be seen by unbelievers. Pilate asks Jesus the question, “What is truth?” All the while the truth was right before his eyes. The beholding of truth makes the church most peculiar to the world but it is the love of truth that drives our fervor for Christ and binds the church together.
Some don’t like to speak of Jesus in emotion filled language. Yet the Psalms offer a rebuke to cold orthodoxy showing us God’s revelation of how we should respond to God’s revelation. The Psalms express the full range of human emotions; frustration, anger, passionate praise, deep sorrow, serenity. We are to love God with our hearts as well as our heads that includes the full range of will, desires, and emotions. This boxy concept of “love is only action” doesn’t seem to be in step with Paul’s idea of relationship, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us (1 Th. 2:8). Churches therefore should be emotional communities – communities in which our faith is “felt” as well as understood.
Community is both Word and Spirit. Both Word and Spirit were involved in creation. The world was created by God’s Word, but the Spirit was also present. It is by His Spirit that God breathes his creative word, and it is by his Spirit that God breathes life into humanity. This breath of life is the same breath that fills and energizes the Christian experience.
When Jesus sends the Spirit He says, “he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you… when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come (John 14:26; 16:13).” It is the Spirit who reveals Christs words, making Him come alive within us. The Word of God comes on the breath of God. This means that “spiritual” experience that is not birthed from God’s word is not Christian experience. Through the Spirit the truth touches our hearts, moves our emotions and affects our will. Any study of God that does not move us to love for God and a desire to do his will is a study that has gone sideways. True theology leads to love, community and willful obedience.
If we want to “see” the Spirit of God at work we must proclaim the Words of God and apply that Word to our hearts. What we need are Spiritual eyeballs. We need the Spirit of God to illuminate Christ’s Words in the very deep recesses of our being.
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis put it this way in their book “Total Church” – supply page numbers for these quotes below:
“True community where God’s Word is proclaimed and our love for God grows forces us to open our eyes to the big picture, rather than shelter in the cozy narcissism of our own little worlds.
- We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life? When the real question is “Where does my little life fit into this great story of God’s community?”
- We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives, when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.
- We talk about ‘applying the Bible to our lives.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead.
- We wrestle with “making the gospel relevant” But in God’s story he is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of His story.
- I may wonder what kind of community God has for me, when I should be asking what kind of me God wants for his community.”
This has a whole-istic paradigm. We live in God’s world and His community is about shaping our lives to His story not our own. This reality transforms all the barriers we create around us to hide our lives in our own little insulated cocoons. This is called the secular-sacred divide. The idea that some things are important to God – going to “church”, bible studies, prayer meetings, social events but other activities are neutral to God such as work, school, recreation, art, leisure and so on. Consequently, Christians are led to identity issues that will always tend to fragment towards self-identification. I am an athlete. I am a car salesman. I am a homemaker. I am an African American. I am a ______________. When our true identity Is found in the positional reality that we are a child of the living God, a walking temple filled with His Holy Spirit and am to live out that reality in a community of likewise Spirit empowered believers to the disposal and glory of my risen and exalted King. This is a radically different view than is often portrayed.
The puritans would often make statements such as; “grind me to powder Lord if it would bring one more speck of glory to my King.” Where is this kind of heart attitude today? Book title, author, page number
We are so good at creating alternate realities of which we “play out our lives” as if we were a fictional character in some novel. We need to live in the positional truths that God has defined and called us into. The old apostle John says, “I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth.” No doubt John viewed this as holistic. We need to be a people that walk in the truth. This means ending the distinctions between ministry full timers and part timers and people with secular employment and people hired by church organizations. We are a people bent on building walls of separation in everything we do. “White evangelicalism”, ethnic and social designations are not helpful discussions to our community of faith. The community of the Holy Spirit breaks all those distinctions down. The church is a new creation, “one new man”. Earthly distinctions are irrelevant to God’s new creation model thus they are irrelevant to our community of faith.
We are unified by the truth in the power of the Spirit for the common good. Good of what? The common good of the community. The Spirit of God changes our orientation from inward to outward. This means the whole trajectory of our life is to bless others.
We might pause here and ask... Why Community? The short answer; redeeming His image in and through community is how God brings glory to Himself.
This means the New Creation model has in mind “a people” not merely isolated individuals. Community isn’t just a good idea, it has deep theological significance. The story of the scripture is about God fulfilling the promise, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God (Ex. 6:7; Rev. 21:3).”
As one pastor succinctly describes; author, title, page number
“The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community. For his purpose, conceived in eternity past, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, God’s plan is to glorify Himself through sanctifying a particular people. It is not only to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory.”
Why is it so important that we accept this? The central reason is so we don’t find ourselves thwarting the purposes of God. We need to see the big picture of what God has promised, has done and is continuing to do so we can ask ourselves how I fit into the whole economy of God’s plan of salvation. In addition, walking in God’s will always produces blessing and joy.
God glorifies Himself through the sanctification of His people and He has already determined how in fact He is going to do that. It is through community. We are a people for His own possession. We are a kingdom of priests to God. He is making Himself a renewed people with a renewed heavens and earth through the second Adam. This is a peculiar people to the world but a righteous people to God. We are God’s people, His own handiwork, His own likeness redeemed in a redeemed people. This is an amazing reality!
We need a well-rounded world view that comes by understanding God’s overarching plan and how He has chosen to carry out this plan. This Longing for community is all around us and we see it everywhere; the ball game, at the office, at the local bar. People want to be around other people. All the while they’re searching for something. They’re searching for identity, meaning and purpose. They’ve lost the answer to these questions at the fall and unless the grace of God intercedes they will spend the rest of their days trying to fill this empty vacuum of unanswered existence with the making of their own identity.
BUT.. An identity that I construct for myself is far removed from an identity I have received by grace. Churches are full of individuals trying to earn their identity or prove their worth to the community. As a result we lack assurance, lack contentment with how God has equipped us, we are overly critical of others in order to bolster our own self-perception or become dependent on the approval of others – swimming in a sea of “likes”. We gather “likes” like Israel gathered manna. If we could store them forever we would yet the blind side of Self-validation is that it always leads to self-righteousness. Today’s churches are brimming of this kind of attitude yet man-pleasing and human validation intercepts God’s glory and only dissention and stunted growth can result.
Yet the key defining relationship for Christians is not our relationship with others it is our relationship with God. WHO AM I? I am a child of the living God, the bride of His Son, and the dwelling place of His Spirit. This identity is given to me by grace alone.
So we find we are communal creatures, made to be lovers of God and consequently lovers of others in community. Divine personhood is defined in scripture in relational language. We are made in the image of a Triune-God. God Himself is persons in community. The Trinitarian understanding of humanity suggests we should define ourselves by the umbrella of relationships in which we live: I am a husband, father, member of God’s people, a child of God, a slave to my King. I am not a lone ranger Christian, I am a person brought near through God’s new community. This means I cannot be who I am without regard to other people.
At regeneration I was baptized into a community of believers, I now belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters in Christ. I am not my own but have been redeemed into a family. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to belong to a church. My being in Christ with others IS my identity. To fail to live our identity out corporately is rebellion against God. “If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians (Timmis).” We will forfeit the blessing and joy that God has designed for us. Book title, page number
Peter says Christians are “strangers in the world” – aliens. The word literally means “without family” or “without home”. Christians are being “built up” into an alternative house. A house for the “common good”.
The New Testament word for community is “koinonia” often translated by the now malnourished word “fellowship”. This word fellowship is tossed around today in Christian terminology much like the word “love” is. I “love” peanut butter, I “love” my wife’s cooking, my son might say he “loves” the Dodgers. Fellowship is now synonymous with hanging out or riding a bike together.
True “Koinonia” however, which is linked to the words “common”, “commonality” and “sharing”, is about shared life in Christ. This means sharing in His Word, in His causes, in His purposes. Sharing in the life of Christ Himself. Jesus didn’t just “hang out” with sinners watching the ball game. There was purpose, intentionality. He was giving Himself to others. Sharing in Christ means sharing in His purpose of building up His body and the spiritual growth of each member. It means feeding on Christ together. True fellowship has to do with exhorting, instructing, teaching, meeting needs, encouraging, speaking the truth to one another. We are now in community with the Godhead, sharing our entire lives with one another.
So we find that God is glorified and continues to glorify Himself in and through this peculiar community that is growing in Christ, being made holy through sanctification and working the workings of God, and being made into the redeemed image of the 2ⁿᵈ Adam all the while bearing testimony to an unbelieving world and all this brings God glory. His purpose being fulfilled and His cause becoming reality through this new community.
Diversity in Unity that leads to Maturity – God’s plan for His People (Pt. 2)
So then we might ask ourselves.. How is the manifestation of the Spirit evidence of God’s plan in the redemption of his people?
1 Corinthians 12 – What role does the Spirit play in our sanctification? How does the active use of spiritual gifts provide clear evidence of the redemption of God’s people?
The classic body life passages are 1 Cor. 12; Romans 12; Ephesians:4; and 1 Peter 4:10,11.
A cursory background of 1 Cor 12 reveals to us some of the heart attitudes that work against God’s purposes in community and prove to divide, stifle growth and lead to factions, backbiting and unholy behavior.
Paul is writing a letter to the church at Corinth in order to address a multitude of problems. In chapters 12-14 he addresses this spiritually immature church’s lack of love and misuse of spiritual gifts. Prideful boasting being the crux of his rebuke has weaved through his epistle beginning in the first chapter. Pride was in the hearts of these congregants and was expressing itself in the church’s lack of unity. The example Paul uses to flesh out this pride is the self-centered inappropriate use of Spiritual gifts.
Paul is addressing two types of people in the church at Corinth, the feeling “inferior” group (15-20) and the feeling “superior” group (21-26). Both groups were out of God’s plan for His people and both needed correction.
It’s as if Paul is saying look… “Here is what this pride, self-centeredness and lack of love looks like, so you can identify it and understand that God has a plan for His church and you are not on the inside of His plan, in fact your working against it.” The Corinthians needed humility wrapped in love. They needed to recognize their error, turn and change course.
The apostle does this by describing what is the proper motive for using the gifts and to what end these gifts were given by God. In doing so he wants to show the Corinthians that these gifts are not innate they are given (V7), empowered (V6), divided (V11), arranged (V18) and composed (V24) by the unified Triune God (V4-6). God is unified persons in community therefore His people ought to be unified persons in community.
Not only does Paul stress God’s sovereignty over these gifts he also reveals that God has a holy and divine purpose for them. Thus, any misuse of these gifts is misrepresenting God himself. They were not the Corinthians gifts to determine how, when and why they were to be used, These gifts were instead made manifest by the Spirit and were a byproduct of their union with Christ therefore the Corinthians needed to align themselves to God’s purpose not their own.
There are no less than 4 truths about Spiritual gifts that we need to know.
- There are a variety of gifts (V4). There are a plethora of spiritual gifts and in no way are we led in the scripture to think the list’s given in all the passages of the NT (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12) are to be exhaustive. We should view spiritual gifts not as a singular gift but rather as a combination of gifts. This illustrates the unique diversity in the body. Just as no two people are exactly alike in appearance and personality we could say no spiritual gift is exactly alike. Only Christ has the perfect combination of gifts. We should not look down on those that don’t or think them spiritually inferior. God delights in variety and so we celebrate diversity in the body of Christ knowing that He has fitted His body uniquely in such a way as to bring about full maturity. The world celebrates diversity by removing it. The church celebrates diversity by embracing and enjoying it. The factions and back biting the Corinthians were engaged in revealed their worldliness.
- Every believer possesses a spiritual gift. (V6,7,11) - Every member of Christ’s body has a spiritual gift (1 Peter 4:10). There is a connection here that goes back to the booty or spoils claimed by Israel after they conquered a nation. God would often command Israel to gather the spoils of victory - as trophies of conquest. Paul summarizes Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4 where in context Paul appears to be making this connection with the ascension of Christ and taking with Him the trophies of Christ’s conquest over death and the principalities of the Spirit realm. Like the booty of which every Israelite participated in, these gifts were distributed to the saints at Christ’s ascension. This means that every time you see another gift operative in the body of Christ you’re a firsthand witness to the proof of Christ’s victory over death.
- Spiritual gifts are divided, applied and empowered by God (V6,11; 1 Peter 4:11)- Though these could be separated I have grouped them together in order to illustrate the Sovereignty by which God controls all aspects of spiritual gifts. They are a gifts not handed out and energized by the pastor. Gifts are not given according to what the believer desires nor are they empowered by carnal means. God supplies the power to make his people useful to His body. Your spiritual gift is hand selected by God, appropriated according to His sovereign will and made fruitful by His infinite power. The significance of this glorious truth is, love the gift you’ve been given. Why? Because God gave it to you and He knows what’s best for you. To not be satisfied with your gift is to say you have a better plan than God does and has a whole gaggle of consequences that disrupt the flow of the life of the church.
Self-powered gifts are nothing more than self-righteousness masquerading as religious activity. Worldly ambition has no lasting power and at Christ’s evaluation will ultimately be burned up (1 Cor. 3).
- The manifestation of spiritual gifts are for The Common Good – (V7). Our spiritual gifts are not designed by God to edify self (14:4,12,26). God has given them that their primary function is to build up others not self. Gifts are operating within the purposes of God when they are used to the benefit of other people. Consequently, I need to see your gift operative. I need to be the recipient of others gifts. I’m not looking to my gift to build up myself; I’m looking to your gift. I’m seeking you out. I’m looking for relationships that are mutually edifying. This is what the church does. This is God’s plan for His church.
Gifts are designed to build up not tear down. To bring unity that leads to maturity. Grace was distributed in varied measure to each individual. The proportionate allocation of gifts talked about in various passages including, 1 Cor. 12:11, Romans 12:3, and Eph. 4:7. Hence Paul’s goal is not to describe the nuances of each gift. So many preachers have missed this by zeroing in on all the particulars of the gifts themselves. Are they for today. Have they seized and if so when? I’m not saying we can’t know or that we shouldn’t know but that is not the main thrust of Paul’s argument! Paul’s goal is to deal with the heart issues and declare the correct use of those gifts - which is to build up. Do you know your source material for this 4 pt. outline on gifts?
One of the major heart issues Paul addresses is the Corinthians fascination with supernatural gifts. They had them, they were operative, and they were overly intrigued with them and as a result they were misusing them. This was a result of pride and Paul hits them right where it mattered as if to say, “Look, You don’t understand the purpose of gifts and you aren’t coming from a place of love and your infatuation with the “flashy” and supernatural is to the detriment of the church. Your heart and your understanding need to be corrected.” In short – “You are working against the purposes of God”
So there’s these countless variety of gifts and a variety of people groups and God celebrates this unique diversity by bringing them into ONE. By unifying them together. This is not “uniformity” which is what the world wants, this is “unity”. Uniformity finds its end through conformity. The world wants to conform everyone to a singular standard defined by society in order to bring oneness (utopian society). The world is moving towards utopianism (Australia – last of the democratic states to get on board with legalizing homosexual marriage – “holding society back”; “Don’t be on the wrong side of history”; the whole idea is progress.. and what were progressing to is a society that finds purpose and meaning through uniformity ushering in a utopian cosmos. In order to accomplish this false society that society must redefine order.
Divine order is the enemy of a utopian society because divine order leaves zero wiggle room for human autonomy. In order for man to complete his conquest of complete independence from God he must create an alternative order. These efforts are ultimately futile and we see man’s frustrations because man is unable to create anything. Uniformity is satanically inspired and it is not only found in the world. Uniformity in the church is legalism; true unity is spiritual and is organic. True unity celebrates distinctions and celebrates order. As we have seen unity is wrought in, applied and distributed by the Spirit of God. God brings it. Uniformity is man’s effort to unify apart from God. This is why the new creation model demonstrated in and through God’s people offers an organic living and breathing rebuke to the worlds false unity.
God has plucked out his own society in order to display them to the rest of creation as evidence of His holy handiwork. God celebrates the diversity of His creation by unifying them in a central cause and purpose and that is to bring glory to Himself. We were made to glorify God but in our natural condition we don’t do that. Yet by his grace our nature is radically altered and rightly established in our original purpose. This is redemption.
So God is sovereign in all these things and He is working and He is growing and His purposes will not be thwarted by man’s schemes. And so we need to bring our thoughts to His thoughts. We need to think the thoughts that God thinks. We need to find our purpose in His purpose. This is where we find ultimate joy and infinite blessing. We need to be one with God’s plan and this brings Him glory and we find our joyful purpose and it’s all in community all wrapped in love which has the best interest of it’s others in mind.
The necessity of love
The love of God is what binds us together. Love is the blood flow to distribute life to the body’s members. Without blood our body parts would become numb and eventually become ineffective. Have you ever fell asleep on your arm and tried to use it? The blood flow cut off. It sort of just flops around on you and you can’t control it. For the moment it serves no useful purpose and any activity it produces seizes to be profitable to the body. And the blood comes back and now it’s a useful member again. And so we need love. Love to the church is like blood to our members.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Natural vs Divine love:
“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake.” “Human love desires the other person, his company.. but it does not serve him.” Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false.. and human love cannot love an enemy.” “Genuine spiritual love, does not desire but serves.” “Spiritual love comes from Christ; it serves Him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves.” Source, title, page number
Though I do not endorse all of Bonhoeffers theology we would be remise not to heed what Bonhoeffer is saying here. The love for Christ defines and mediates all our affections, and desires. It is Jesus Christ who defines what love truly is. He IS love, he is the source of all love and we don’t get to redefine it. Any redefinition of love is a perversion of true love and its source can only be traced back to natural man. This means that where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of His love then I will maintain it. If he wants me to break fellowship for the sake of love then I will break it. He is my chief evaluator. He is the singular object of my love for which all other love passes through. “He is my Lord and my God” as the disciple Thomas says.
True spiritual love does not desire something in return but rather its nature is to serve. Divine love does not require “like’s” from the world because this kind of love finds its validation in obedience to Christ. When we receive God’s love it need not be affirmed by the World. It is “otherworldly”. This is why the use of our spiritual gift for the selfless building up of God’s family is evidence that we have received His love. This species of love is unique and it is distinguishable in true community.
This is how we experience God’s love in community. It is a divine love that comes from above and it moves out horizontally. God’s love is reflexive. It is not designed to stay stationary. God’s love is active. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and we are in Him and have received His love and now that love moves outward. There is no divine love in autonomy and the church alone has given the practical revelation of His divine love. It is a love “not of this world”. A man not in fellowship with the Trinity is a man where divine love seizes to exist. God purposed His church to exhibit this love to a lost world and it is through the love of His church that the world would be brought into God’s family (John 17:21-23).
Love has been operative forever in the Trinity. Love is eternal. Faith, hope and love – but the greatest of these is love. Why? Because faith and hope are a byproduct of the fall. Love has always and will always be. God didn’t need to create people so that he could express His love, His love is intrinsic and radiates within His very own personhood. It is active in the Godhead as we speak and it is active in our own selves if we belong to Him. A Christian that doesn’t exhibit divine love is a contradiction. God will discipline and correct that man so God’s love will find its way out.
So we receive love and we pass it on. That is the nature of divine love. And when we experience this species of love in community then we experience the love of God. The Apostle John says in 1 John that the love of the brethren is evidence of you having received God’s love. Our relationship to this kind of love is not contingent upon it being accepted by another, it is a love that goes out without any consideration for self. It is selfless and only interested in the benefit of its recipient. We love, because He first loved us. This is the only validation the Christian needs.