The Cross and Christian Community
The premise of the past few weeks messages have centered on the Cross of Christ, and the significance of the work of Christ in shaping how we think of ourselves, how we relate to one another and how His work shapes our worship.
Paul spoke of a life centered on this truth in the simplest terms - For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Cor. 2:2) This is an extraordinary statement for a rabbi trained in complex principals of Biblical jurisprudence. You can be certain that Paul had the capacity to tear apart arguments, and postulate well reasoned Biblically based logic. But so radical was his experience on the Damascus Road that he had resolved to ‘know nothing…except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
This then forms the center of the life which God calls us to live out together. No other glue can hold us together except Jesus Christ, and in particular His work in demolishing the hold which sin has over the human heart. Once again Paul’s understanding of this is crystal - But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. (Romans 6:22)
New Life and a New Way of Seeing Yourself…
However, it is not just the promise of new life in Jesus that propels the possibility of Christian Community, it is also the radically new identity which comes from our identification with the work of Jesus on the cross. My sin can be faced with honesty, and without all the defensiveness so common to human interactions. Think for a moment about just how much relationships are negatively impacted by our defensiveness. In the local church community this will often be manifested in how defensively people deal with parenting issues. If you want to step into a minefield just take a shot at trying to address a child’s (other than your own) bad behavior and watch the explosion of rationalizations and defensiveness. All this is quite unnecessary if the work of the Cross remains at the center of my sense of who I am. Jesus’ death on the cross reminds me that my sins are pretty serious, to require that extreme a remedy. Jeremiah 17:9 states it in the starkest of terms - 9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?“
It is liberating to believe this. But it is also a little death to the self which can be quite excruciating. I know from 20+ years of experience as a pastor this ‘little death’ is spectacularly displayed in the struggle of our souls to handle criticism, particularly when it has to do with our children. If the human heart is ‘the most deceitful of all things’ it shouldn’t be any surprise that when it comes to our kids we are very susceptible to self-deceit. Add to this the fact that our children are also sinners, capable of being deceitful, manipulative and in general pretty rotten from time to time. The mixture can be incredibly challenging in terms of loving each other and of being patient and gentle with one another. The Cross is the only antidote. Reject its life leveling influence and you will find yourself defending things that really need to be faced rather than rationalized or blamed on others. The Cross of Jesus is the historic monument which stands as the undeniable reality that my sins are so horrible that an innocent man had to die in order to procure pardon and liberation from the bondage which sin carries. That is also true about my children - they need a savior just as much.
But so often the fear of loss drives defensiveness - what if people find our I’m not a perfect parent? What if people see my children doing things that are nasty or cruel to other children? I can’t bear the thought that someone will judge me a ‘bad parent.’ Proverbs 29:25 clarifies the dilemma - The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe. Christian community’s great enemy is the fear of man. The need to be perceived by others in a certain way is an opiate to our sin nature. It is ‘another gospel’, one which relies upon my own goodness to obtain acceptance, not from God but from men. It kills intimacy with brothers and sisters. It drives us away from one another because it perpetrates falsehood as reality.
What is the snare of the fear of man? A snare is a trap, something that one doesn’t expect which suddenly and surprisingly gets a hold of us and takes away our freedom. A snare ordinarily is baited with something that entices us and somehow distracts us from the danger. What then is the ‘bait’ which the fear of man sets for us? It is the lure that if I can please others, or appear in a certain way that I will have what I desperately desire. It may not appear to us at the moment that we are being enticed by such a false hope - but our lack of honesty, or our defensiveness and the rationalizations we make are a dead give away. What may seem startling is that we can talk the talk of ‘I know I’m a sinner‘ while at the same time reacting with anger and blame when someone touches our fragile ego’s with anything resembling a criticism.
My own experience…
Let me tell you as a parent of a child who was a pretty notorious prodigal I know what it is to feel the temptation to rationalize and be defensive. When things were at there worst both Gail and I felt very vulnerable. I experienced the self-doubts, the recriminations, and the worry - ‘what must people think of me as a parent?’ I despaired of myself with tears many times. But in the end it was the Cross which gave me the courage to say - brothers and sisters, please pray for my daughter. How thankful I am that instead of seeking to cover I choose to expose my need, especially to my dearly loved fellow elders and to my beloved friend Mary Anne. They prayed for me and for my family. Those prayers sustained Gail and I and ultimately God marvelously answered those prayers and restored my daughter to the faith of her childhood.
The Cross as a hammer…
Shame is a powerful motivator to construct elaborate defenses against the truth. The Cross is the only hammer that can break down those defenses without destroying us. Because even as Christ’s death proves how serious my sins are, it also says how far my heavenly Father is willing to go in order to save me. I am not my failures, I am not my inadequacies, I am not my sins - I am made in the image and likeness of God, and I am the object of my heavenly Father’s profound interests and affections. I deserve wrath, but I get love. I deserve judgment, but I receive blessing. I deserve rejection, but I get adoption into the family of God. One of the punch lines of the prodigal son story is this - you expect to find the father angry with his wayward sons irresponsibility, but instead you find him running out to lavish love and favor on the kid. Amazing. The immense importance of knowing the love of God is a theme of Paul’s pastoral ministry: (14) For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, (15) from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, (16) that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, (17) so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, (18) may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, (19) and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3) My sense of who I am is a balance between redeemed sinner and beloved son/daughter of God. I need not fear honesty, for even in my weakness and immaturity I am loved. So unlike Jack Nicholson’s famous quote (A Few Good Men) ‘You can’t handle the truth‘, in fact I can, because of what Jesus has done for me.
The Struggle to Be a People for God
There is a saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. I have a variation I would like to introduce - ‘hell hath no fury like a person trying to protect their fragile ego.’ Herein lies the great difficulty in walking out Christian community. Get a bunch of people together and eventually there will be tension, often flowing out of the protection of our self-interest. But it is at this point where the great possibility of authentic community unfolds before our eyes. Humble yourself, acknowledge your neediness and turn toward, not away from your brothers and sisters and allow Christ to pour out his mercy. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. (Romans 15:1) Everyone of us is in either category from time to time. Under certain circumstances I may have certain strengths that may help you to stand, or overcome difficulty. At other times the shoe will be on the other foot and I will be the weak one who needs your strength to help me stand. In all of this Christ is made real, because it is his strength which in mitigated through my brother or sister.
Man’s anger does not accomplish God’s righteous purposes…
There is a powerful variable in all of this, and that is the destructive power of anger. Proverbs has many scriptures which speak to this, for example Proverbs 15:18 is characteristic - A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. It is very often the effects of anger uncontrolled or unconfessed which help to keep us from biblical fellowship. It may take the form of slight ‘irritation’ all the way to distain. My experience is that the most virulent anger is related to feelings of being rejected or criticized or in some other way made to feel inadequate. Very often these perceptions of ‘rejection’ are rooted in my own over sensitivity to any possibility of public embarrassment (like the kind caused when our kids misbehave or otherwise make us feel like the world’s worst parents). But how in the world is it possible to avoid these feelings of vulnerability when our weaknesses, immaturity’s and sins are exposed in close proximity to one another? The short answer is that it isn’t possible to avoid this vulnerability. But it is a soul nourished by the truth of gospel which works through these vulnerabilities to the place of fellowship. If Christ gave his life in part to effect reconciled relationship, first with God and then with others how can I not persevere in working out my difficulties. It is the willingness to work things out, to persevere to face my weaknesses, immaturity’s and sin that makes Christian community such a powerful witness to the world. If you will think about it for a moment Jesus sets it forth as the ultimate criteria for the reality of the incarnation: I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:23) In another place in the gospel of John, Jesus lays it down in the most explicit terms - By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
Relationships that fall apart are no surprise to the world. This is what they expect. That is one reason it stands as such a dramatic testimony to Jesus when we overcome our selfishness, our offenses, our judgments, our irritations, our ‘thin skinned-ness’ to real fellowship. That is why the Bible calls us to work at this. It is for Christ’s sake that we must.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Hi Scott,
This is the first time I’ve gotten onto your blog…or any blog, pretty much. I related to your comments about anger, because I’ve been angry recently, and exprerssed it vehemently, twice at work. It’s very uncomfortable and upsetting. I have a difficult boss situation that I need to look at as an adventure and opportunity from the Lord. And He will give me victory over the digestive upset and loss of sleep!!! (Work is much more of a challenge than grad school.)
Anyway, I wanted to say that, when I’ve been away from church, I’ve been visiting friends (and attending their churches, for Christian friends). Someone told me that they had heard that I’m visiting churches, but I’m definitely not. Just visiting friends.
I praise the Lord for all His works at Lamb.
Love in Jesus,
Claudia