For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
INTRO/REVIEW
Before the beginning, God existed alone, but not alone. Father, Son, and Spirit, existed in perfect love. The triune God lived in perfect unity, completion and flawless holiness. In God’s triunity, he experienced perfect joy and pleasure and satisfaction in his own presence forever.
And this is where community begins. All true community has its’ beginnings and foundation in this perfect community of God. This is where our community begins.
Community begins with God
It is this community by which we will examine all community. Through him all things were made that were made.
Community is three or more
For the purposes of this series, we will define community as the relationship between three or more individuals. One is an individual. Two is community. Three or more is community. The relationship of the Trinity, where community begins, will be our example of perfect Godly community.
The Community of the Trinity is
1. Joyful Love
(And Joy, and Pleasure– God is Love – 1 John 4(esp. vv.7-8), Psalm 16:11)
Godly community is a community of love.
2. Humble Unity
(Mutual, Humble, Willful Submission – Phil 2)
Members of Godly community are humble, considering others before themselves.
3. Mutual Generosity
(Common Ownership - Matt 11:27 – Father handed everything over to Jesus - John 16:15 – Jesus and God share everything.)
Godly community is generous and shares together.
4. Honesty and Understanding
(1 Corinthians 2:11 – Only the Holy Spirit fully understands the thoughts of God.)
Members of Godly community are honest, seek to know each other better, and live in understanding.
5. Fruitful
(Co-Creating, and co-redeeming – Genesis 1:26, John 1:1-5)
Godly community is open and ready to share their community with others.
Godly community is fruitful, begetting more community.
Like a family, the love within a community only grows in fullness as the community grows. As a parent’s love grows with each new child that their love produced, so also does Godly love in community seek to share that love with others, and see the community grow. God’s love (and therefore our community’s love) is an outward focused love, a love that includes anyone who would receive it.
From the eternal joy, pleasure, and fulfillment experienced by God, all of creation was formed.
PART 1 – THE COMMUNITY OF GOD CREATES COMMUNITY
Genesis 1:25-28
God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number
1 God created man in his image
From a place of completion and satisfaction, God welcomed mankind into community life. He didn’t need to do it. God was whole. God was fulfilled. God existed in perfect joy and pleasure.
Psalm 16:11
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
The great joy of perfect community is to grow and create and share with others.
Alone, God existed in joy and love and pleasure forever. Man created in his image was now able to learn from God the path of life, to glorify God and enjoy love in him forever.
In the image of God he created them, male and female. From the very beginning, the image of God was expressed in our relationships with each other.
God’s first command for mankind was to be fruitful. The community grew to grow.
2 God created man to be fruitful
Genesis 2
18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
. . . But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Adam, Eve, God - a perfect and Godly community of three. The two naked humans shared with God in love, unity, generosity, honesty, and fruitfulness.
Genesis 1:28 – be fruitful and increase in number.
Right from the very beginning, God created from his community a community that had the seeds of more community.
Godly community creates more community
It is in relationship that we spread and reflect and communicate the glory of God among humanity. One person alone can glorify God, but in relationship is when we have the opportunity to reflect the nature of God in Love, Forgiveness, Humility, Transparency. It’s easy to be loving, humble, forgiving, and transparent when no one’s around. But that isn’t real.
God creates community, and he brings community together. God brought Eve to Adam.
Humanity started in unity, as close as ONE FLESH.
PART 2 – GOD REDEEMS COMMUNITY
Just as with Adam, Eve, and God in the garden, Godly community includes a vertical relationship, and a horizontal relationship. If our desire is first to please God, we will seek to serve one another. This is spiritual community.
If our community is natural, existing only in horizontal relationship, our desire will be to satisfy our natural affections. We end up seeking community to fulfill ourselves. This leads to self-righteousness, judgment, and our expectations of the other that leads to control.
Genesis 2:8-9
Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Knowledge of good and evil is not what happens in the mind. This is a knowledge that is intimately and personally acquainted with its’ subject. This is a knowledge that, apart from God, is possessive and seeks to make the subject its’ own. The knowledge of good and evil removes the right to judge from God, and seeks to become its’ own judge, and the judge of others.
Genesis 2:17
“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
After eating the tree, both Adam and Eve found themselves no longer safe in the righteous judgment of God, and the safe knowledge of one another. They were sinners. They became their own judges, and the judges of one another. They could no longer be naked together. They were ashamed before themselves, each other, and God.
In eating the tree, they broke mutual submission and unity. The result was hiding - lack of transparent knowledge. Godly community was broken. Outside of the active presence of God, our natural attempts at approximating community will ultimately fail.
This is why Cain killed Abel.
Natural affections and spiritual affections (Bonhoeffer)
Adam and Eve create two sons from their intimacy, reflecting the nature of God who created the two of them from his intimacy. But the broken spiritual community means that the new relationships reflect the natural, not Godly community. Mutual humble submission is gone. Vulnerable knowledge of each other is gone. They now deceive each other instead. Cain lies to Abel. Cain kills Abel. Cain receives a mark. A wall of hostility has been raised between man and God. A wall of hostility has been raised between people.
James 4:1-3
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
This is the cancer of our natural affections outside of God. Submitted to God, we take on his super-nature in community. Separated from God, we become natural only, we are selfish and covet and seek to own for ourselves the right to judge. We are autonomous individuals, but from this place of pride, we rot community from within.
If we are the judges, we each become the accuser. We are the accuser of the brethren, ourselves, and eventually God.
Christians must become disillusioned with the idea of an idealized community. If we hold an ideal, our expectation holds the seat of our faith, rather than Christ. It is not because of the ideal of community that Christians share life together, it is because of the demonstration of the gospel on earth. God’s creation of community is beautiful. God’s restoration of broken community is even more beautiful. It is in our weakness and imperfection that we most have the opportunity to look like Jesus, to offer grace and forgiveness to each other. As we receive forgiveness by faith, we also forgive by faith, and so fulfill the gospel in our lives. We glorify Christ and are encouraged in our faith. We become the broken body and gracious love of Christ to one another.
If we live according to our ideals instead of faith in Christ, we will begin to judge and accuse each other based on our standards, instead of living in grace by the common equality of our standing in Christ. Our idealism will destroy the Christian community.
(James 2:1-4, 8-9
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.)
(In the spiritual, faith-based community, there is humility and order. In the emotion based community, desire for pleasure which subjects other Christian’s to one’s own desires. In Spiritual Community, all Christians are submitted to the Word as the final authority. In the emotional community, the charismatic or exceptionally gifted persons will rule alongside the word.
In Christian Community, we offer to one another a love that is without coercion and control. I love with the mediation of the life of Christ between us, offering the unconditional grace that I am able to give to one for whom Christ has died and rose again. Each of the others in my community has had forgiveness of sins and eternal life won for them by the same savior who also graciously won them for me.
I must offer my community the freedom to be Christ’s. In others I must see not my own constructed image of them, but the image of Jesus Christ himself, and the perspective of Christ of them, who gave his life for them.
Jesus Christ alone is our unity. He is our peace.)
Godly community is not an ideal we strive to realize. It is a gift already created by God, and a reality in which we may participate in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit among us.
Our hope for community is in the restoration between us and God. We separated ourselves from God and perfect life and community. God returned to us completely when Jesus becomes man. Jesus was humbly submitted, when humankind was self-righteous. When humankind was ashamed and hid, he became naked and vulnerable. He is perfectly honest, generous, and true. He takes hostility into himself, and overcomes it. He has opened the door of reconciliation between humanity and God. He has opened the door of reconciliation between all people, everywhere.
Ephesians 2:14-16
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
COMMUNITY BEGINS WITH GOD
COMMUNITY IS CREATED BY GOD
COMMUNITY IS RESTORED THROUGH GOD
Next week – God’s Covenant Community
No comments:
Post a Comment