Everyone desires a friend who is willing to do this, but does not necessarily want to repay the favor. Not that we do not care, we are often overly busy and sometimes the effort is just too difficult. Now add 2 or 3 more individuals into the mix and you can begin to see why true community is so hard to achieve. Now add in our American individualism and all this seems quite impossible. Yet none of us is truly willing to abandon this community project. We have as Paul Tripp says, “A love hate relationship with relationships.”

Our problem is that what true relationship requires exposes what is inside us all, a sinful self-centeredness. The same self-centeredness would cause us to remark that it is right to look to our own needs first, but we all inherently know this to be wrong. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.”

Any good theologian will tell you all proper theology begins with God. This discussion does as well. Paul writes in Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (NASB).

Paul is teaching that true community is best expressed by the inner working of the trinity. “Notice how the word one is used. Each use is attached to a member of the trinity. There is one Spirit at work in the body. There is one Lord through whom we have one hope, faith, and baptism. There is one father who is over one family, the church.” (Tripp/Lane, How People Change)

All this is important because we have been created in the image of this Triune God (Gn. 1:26) who is constantly living in community. Our desire for this selfless community is deep within our beings. The reason we do not enjoy the same is that sin has corrupted us, (Rm 3:23) and our desires for community have become just that…OURS, again revealing our selfishness as opposed to selflessness. We must draw our example from the redemptive nature of the trinity. “God is a redeeming God who does something utterly amazing to reconcile us to Himself and others” (Tripp/Lane). At the core of our faith we know that Jesus dying on the cross has put us right with God. When you dig deeper you begin to realize that the very community existing between the Father, Son, and Spirit was ripped in two as Jesus bore a bloody death so that we could have a chance to be put right with God, and once again rightly relate to our fellow brothers and sisters.

I told you relationships were a messy business, and they delve right into one of the deep mysteries of our faith. The community of our triune God was broken so that ours do not have to be. The next time we are tempted to complain about the inconvenience of relational living may we remember the inconvenience our God bore on our behalf, praying for His spirit of selflessness to be at the center of our community life.

What a convicting statement by Luther.   How often do we always want to be around people like ourselves? To sit among the lilies and the roses as Luther says.  Make no mistake that we desperately need Christian community in an age of individualism, but if we are not willing to rub shoulders with the tax collectors and sinners how will we ever see the Kingdom of God advance? The answer is we will not. Can you imagine if Christ would have come to earth and only associated himself with others like himself?  He would have had no other person to commune with.   He is sinless and we are sinners; He is glorious and we are depraved; He is love, we are hate.  He would not have found anyone who was perfect like himself and thus could not have had any roses and lilies as it were.  If Christ would not have entered into the world and engaged sinners with the revealed truth from the Father, we would have all perished. He was, in the truest since the greatest missionary the world has ever known. He left the glory of heaven and dwelt among a fallen people who lived in a fallen creation. He walked among us and shared his life together with sinners. May we not be so arrogant and prideful to think we are any better than those without Christ. Apart from grace we are just like them. Let us not blaspheme or betray our Savior because we are only willing to be seen with devout people. Devout people killed Jesus! Let us instead be in the world not of the world and be missionaries like our Jesus who said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick”…”For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” May we be reminded that men and women are perishing and their only hope is the gospel.  May it be advanced so that men everywhere will repent and put their faith in Jesus.

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