The Apostle Paul is very often my ‘go to’ bloke when I’m struggling with sin (mine, other people’s, and ours corporately) or needing directions (who said blokes don’t stop and ask the way?). So it would come as no surprise to those who know me to find I’m asking him questions here.
The issue is that people I meet often tell me that they believe in God but don’t go to church. They prefer to live out their ‘personal’ faith ‘personally”. One of the frequently heard things from my mother’s lips was that her faith was hers and for no one else. “It’s private,” she would say, “And I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.”
If she was alive today I’d tell her: “You can’t be a Christian without going to church!” The salvation thing is, as I hope I shown previously, personal but the reality is that our faith can only truly be lived out corporately. Let’s have a look at what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12.12:
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body (whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free) and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?
If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we treat with special honour. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment.
But God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
A long passage (sorry) but an essential one for just as sitting in McDonalds won’t turn you into a burger, separation from the collective reality that is Church (the corporate body of believers) will never enable you to reach your full potential as a believer.
The reality is that sitting in a church building, comfortable and still as it might be, whilst good, nice, or whatever word you’d like to use, will not (on it’s own) build your faith. Our faith needs company to grow and develop. It needs the company!
If you claim to be a footballer and yet possess neither the kit or the people to play alongside, then your claim will bring ridicule for those who hear it made. So it is with the ‘I Don’t need Chrcuh’ self-professing believer.
At a party many years back I met someone who told me they were a pilot. “What do you fly?” I asked. You might be able to imagine my surprise when they responded with, “Flight Sim,”
“Have you ever been up in a real aircraft?” I asked. Having received a response in the negative I offered them a chance of a flight, which to my great joy was taken up. The day came and with blue skies, no wind and sunshine beckoning us, off we went. Suffice to say, even though it was a straightforward out and return flight with no incidents or untoward excitement, after the flight the person left the field with the words, “I think I’ll stick to my computer!”
One of the joys of flying was attending ‘church’ - there were few hymns, but the sermons taught us how to get into the air and stay up in it until we wanted to be on the ground. There were readings from technical manual, the flying training books, and the Civil Aviation Authority. The Vicar (also known as the Chief flying Instructor) would preach a sermon and others would give their testimonies (“And it turned out I’d selected the wrong fuel tank . . .”)
‘Personal Faith’ is an error we have made ours through the culture of mass evangelism and lazy Church leadership. We get people to pray the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and like the bloke out for a good time on a Saturday night we bring children into the world without any real intention of fathering them.
In the ‘great commission’ Jesus tells His followers that He’s about to return to heaven with these instructions (Matthew 28):
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
Being a disciple is about being in relationship. It’s like being an apprentice where you hear the words, watch the action and then make one yourself. Life is meant to be lived with others - not in isolation. This is true of the Christian life. We need to live it in relationship with God - seem like most who believe in a God but don’t need Church believe in a god of their own making, made in their own images, and affirming everything they choose to see as right!
Our faith cannot be ‘private and personal’ - we corporately are the bride of Christ and prepare ourselves for the day when we will worship God before the throne - and just as that is in union with all believers, so too is our sojourn here and now.
A personal faith is a limited and stunted, Gollum-like reality.
Don’t let anyone con you - accept no imitations - life is there to be lived in the company of others. If this is true, how much more so is it for Christians who life in the reality that Jesus can not just to give us life, but life in abundance?
1 comment:
Two thoughtful posts.
If I reflect on how I came to faith (real faith, not a childish faith). A faith, cemented by a Road to Damascus moment, when I encountered Jesus in the Company of an Army Padre as we left the house of a bereaved service family, with all of the emotional exhaustion that nearly overwhelmed me.
When I relate the story, it seems to strike a chord with others, who've had their own moments, where they've encountered Jesus in a time of stress or distress and a feeling of overwhelming grief or sadness.
We say glibly that Jesus is with us, but as your narrative of the Great Commission reveals, Jesus promised to be with us always, as we work to make disciples and to build his Kingdom.
This isn't individual, it all of us, each working as part of the corporate to spell out the truth of the Gospels to new generations and by our own lives of example, to reveal in Paul's words, that as we are hidden in God through Jesus, we reveal that as witness to the Gospels. Not hiding that light under a bushel but out in the open, to decipher the hidden and to reveal the glory.
And the Creeds! We publically state what we believe, and than we need to live out that faith revealed in our corporate statement of belief, by doing what we say we believe.
And the Eucharist, the ultimate act of Remembrance, the visible sign of invisible grace, the remembrance of Jesus' supreme sacrifice, which we receive, and need to share more with all of God's people, whether they acknowledge that status or not.
The writer of Hebrews gives us some very good guidance. I like to think that it was Paul, but scholars disagree. I'd love to spend time with whoever it was, as he or she, got it right.
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