Community

Sadly, there are many people who claim to know Christ, but then turn around and claim that they don’t go to church because they do not believe in organized religion and of course my first thought is asked him if he liked it better was disorganized? When you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. It is from that moment on whether you like or not you become a member of his church. Even if you do not officially put your name on the roster and become a member of any church you are still a member of the church. It is our faith in Christ that allows us to be called a hold of God. And by default, all who put their faith in Christ our children of God, and all become members of the same family. We can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with the church. Then we can be a person and not be a member of a family. For the church to function in unity it must first become a community.

Psalm 133

Behold, how good and pleasant it is

when brothers dwell in unity!

2 It is like the precious oil on the head,

running down on the beard,

on the beard of Aaron,

running down on the collar of his robes!

3 It is like the dew of Hermon,

which falls on the mountains of Zion!

For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,

life forevermore.

No child of God is an only child. But just like all families, we do not get to pick who we are going to let in to our family. I’m sure there are some of us who would’ve liked to have chosen whether our brothers or our sisters are members of our family, or perhaps we have that one weird uncle we wouldn’t want him to be part of our family, but we don’t get to make that choice. The Christian community is just like that we do not get to choose who God calls into his kingdom and like any community of diverse people, our church community is susceptible to the fact that we are not all going to get along at all times. There will be people in our Christian community that are difficult to love even hard to be around at times. The reason for this just because you become a Christian does not mean you will suddenly become accepting of all people and automatically love all people, and no one will ever annoy you. It does not mean that you will suddenly become immune your emotions and never hate, envy or become jealous of another person in the church. Becoming a Christian does not mean that will go through some sort of magical metamorphosis and suddenly become a great conversationalist that has no problem in being engaging with every word that you speak, or you will become a glowing inspiration to everyone that you meet. There is no such thing as a perfect Christian community. There will be community members that will get cranky at times and some of them are going to be annoying and some of them will try our patients and we will try theirs. Through it all, we are to remain united as one community, built upon the foundation of our love for Christ.

I can imagine sitting around a table with Jesus as one of his disciples as makes statement “A new commandment I give to you” This idea of a new commandment perks our ears and we all lean in closer so that we do not miss a word. “That you love one another”. Wait this is not new, and we have been struggling to do just that in spite of our differences. The Jesus brings down the hammer “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” As a community of believers this is the standard we must strive for. We must strive to function together even knowing there will be trouble, and there will be disagreements. We must always be aware that the world is watching, they are judging the love of Christ by how we love and function together as a community of believers. The way we do this is with love, but not an earthly love but a heavenly love. A love that is built upon the common bond we all have through Christ Jesus, a love the supersedes anything found on earth.

There is nowhere in Scripture where we are told to be alone act alone to stay alone, from the beginning. We are meant to be in community. In the book of Genesis, God states “It is not good that man should be alone.” God is relational there is a holy communion between the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit and having been made in his image we have an internal desire to be among others, to be relational. Jesus knew this when he surrounded himself with the 12, the roots of the church are based in community, as more and more people were added to the community of believers In the book of acts it says the Lord added to their number, day by day.