In our Wednesday night study of ecclesiology we are looking
at the issue of church membership. Our discussion last night was so beneficial
that it seemed like a good idea to reproduce part of it here.
While there are no passages that instruct us to officially
join a church, there are responsibilities given to us in the New Testament that
do necessitate a commitment to a particular body of people.
In Ephesian 4:1, Paul exhorts us “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been
called…” The preceding context
indicates that what Paul has in mind is our calling to live as one regenerate body
united in Christ. What follows in
ch4 is an explanation of what it looks like to walk in a manner worthy of this
call. There are three commitments
that are wrapped up in walking in a manner worthy. The first is a commitment to love. Eph 4:1-6:
1
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of
the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness,
with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit--just as
you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call-- 5 one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through
all and in all.
These verses speak of loving
commitment to one another in keeping with the unity that Christ forged when He
reconciled us to God. Think
carefully about those first few words in v2: with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another in love. Why are those
words necessary? What do they
imply? They imply that we don’t
always get along. We have
different preferences, convictions, and tastes. We sin against one another and offend one another.
All of us could probably testify
that those differences and offenses have been present at every church we’ve
ever gone to. That seems to be the
one constant. We have differences
with people no matter where we go.
That’s why Paul writes this.
Every church everywhere is a
collection of people with different preferences and convictions, who rub each
other the wrong way and sin against one another. And we have a sinful tendency when those differences arise
to latch onto those differences and make them a serious issue. We allow them to become lines in the
sand that separate us into constituencies within the church.
Sometimes, we allow those
differences to provoke us to one of two negative reactions. Metaphorically speaking, we resort to
either fight or flight. We may
decide a preference or conviction is something worth fighting for. And we convince ourselves that we are in
the right, not realizing that all we have done is taken our own preferences and
convictions and elevated them to the level of essential doctrine for everyone
else.
Or we resort to flight. “This place is never going to see eye
to eye with me on this. Maybe I
don’t belong here. Maybe I should
go somewhere where people have the same preferences and convictions.”
Sometimes it’s not preferences and
convictions, but rather someone has sinned against us or offended us in some
way. We can sinfully resort to
those same to negative responses.
We can fight and make a war out of it, or we just retreat from the relationship until the other party learns to appreciate us and treat us with
respect.
It is to that tendency that Paul
writes these words, I urge you to walk in
a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. When it happens that “you hurt me”
or “they’ve offended us” or “we disagree with that,” and we’re tempted to
either fight or fly the coop, that’s when this exhortation finds its fullest
meaning and most crucial application.
That is when we must walk in a manner worthy, walk in committed love for
one another.
Our culture seems to have no concept
of commitment. I’m committed to
you…unless things get difficult.
That’s the opposite of commitment.
Commitment is undetectable when everything is going well. Commitment proves itself to be
commitment when things are not going well, when someone has offended you, when
someone has insulted one of your convictions or disagreed with one of your
preferences. Walking in a manner
worthy is a commitment to love one another no matter how we offend one another or
annoy one another.
God spilt the blood of His Son to
unite us in one body in reconciliation to the Father, and it should take a
whole lot more than personal differences to pry us apart. The gospel constrains us to love one
another, with humility and gentleness and patience. “I will bear with you in love.” That is commitment.
The unity of the body and the picture of reconciliation that it shows is
more important than our preferences and convictions and offenses.
Unregenerate people can remain
committed to one another when there’s no friction. But it takes gospel power in the life of a person born again
to be committed when there is friction, and that’s precisely why God is
glorified when we do it. He is
glorified when a body of selfish, crazy people are able to love one another in
spite of each other. Only God can
do that.
That we are called to humility,
gentleness, patience, forbearance, and love assumes two things: 1) We are not
going to agree on everything. And
(2), we are expected to be committed to one another anyway. And we must keep at the forefront of
our minds, when those differences, annoyances, and offenses begin to really
bother us, that this is an opportunity to walk in a manner worthy of the
gospel.
Whatever things there are that
make us different, we can’t allow them to separate us. Why? We have the most important things in common. v6: One
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and
through all and in all. We’re
united by the gospel. And that
gospel places a heavy responsibility on us, the commitment to love one another.
I mentioned that there are three
commitment shown in this passage.
We’ll look at the other two next time.
Posted by Greg Birdwell
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