Means of grace – Community

Photo: Priscilla du Preez – Unsplash

How do you think about your church family? How would you describe them? Are they acquaintances perhaps, or friends, or partners? Are they those you share life with, or those you love – or even family? And how do you view your interaction with the church? It is a place to come to receive, rr to consume? Or is it a place you come because it’s a habit – it’s what you’ve always done? Is it a place you come to love and to serve, or to share life?

These are big and important questions. They get to the heart of our relationship with the church we are part of. And they’re among the questions we’ll be addressing in this final post on the means of grace, as we consider Community.

Our destination: Other-focused community

In the first post we saw that if you’re a Christian – that is, someone who is daily repenting and believing – then your final destination is ‘being with Christ, enjoying Christ, being like Christ, and being caught up in the life of the Trinity, in perfect joyful love forever.’ In this post we’re going to focus on the last part of that glorious future – ‘being caught up in the perfect, joyful love of the Trinity forever.’ In particular, we’re going to consider an idea that I’ve found profoundly helpful and life-changing: that the love of the Trinity is an other-focused love.

In a previous post we’ve considered the question ‘what is love?’, and we’ve defined love (including as found in the life of the Trinity) as

Happy, joyful, other-focused, faithful, sacrificial, active, life-giving, overflowing

‘What is love’

Assuming my working definition is right, we can observe that being happy, joyful, and  other-focused go together. I find that I don’t naturally believe that to be the case, because of the sin in my heart. One way of thinking about sin is as self-centredness – looking inward rather than outward. It deceives me, trying to convince me that I’ll be happier if I put myself first – if I look within and follow and prioritise what I see there and what I desire.

But Jesus, and the relationship between the Father and the Son in the bond of the Spirit, show us that the exact opposite is true: true happiness comes from being outward-looking and other-focused. At the heart of the life and love of the Trinity is a posture of being other-focused; it’s also at the heart of life. Indeed, the word ‘ecstatic’ comes from the Greek for ‘out of self.’

While preparing to preach on this topic a few months ago I self-consciously practised an other-focused posture for a few weeks. I starting the day praying “Father help me be other-focused today.” I failed many times, and even when trying to be other-focused I found my posture was often tinged with self. But I found that the Spirit helped me; I trust that I was a bit more other-focused; and I was certainly more joyful. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the joy of being other-focused at one time or another – perhaps without stopping to think about why that was.

This is what the love of the Trinity is like. It’s what our love will be like, in heaven, when we’re caught up in the life of the Trinity.

And just as we will be completely other-focused, so everyone else who is there will be other-focused. Thus we will receive the love we need and all that we need; not because we’re grasping at it as our right, but because those around us will see our needs and will joyfully give it to us with an other-focused posture.

Of course, the source of all love and other-focusedness is God. He is the fountain of love. All our love comes from him before flowing to others. That will continue to be the case when we reach heaven, our destination. So we will never have to manufacture love, or generate it ourselves. Rather, we simply receive it from him through his Spirit, and we pass it on. We’re like one small part of a stream flowing from a spring of water. The spring generates the water; we simply receive it and pass it on.

Notice therefore that the power and ability to love in this way doesn’t come from ourselves. If we try to do it in our own strength, we find that we can’t, and we revert to being self-focused – looking inward to find what we need. Rather, it comes through prayerful dependence on God, as we look outward to the source of the fountain.

And we don’t focus on others with a view to being happy ourselves. If we do that we are still ultimately being self-focused, using others for our own ends. Rather we focus on others for their sake. As we do so we find that a by-product of focusing on others is that we ourselves are happy.

I have referred a number of times to Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon ‘Heaven a world of love.’ Here’s what Edwards had to say about the nature of love in heaven in that sermon:

In its nature, this love is altogether holy and divine. Most of the love that there is in this world is of an unhallowed (unholy) nature. But the love that has place in heaven is not carnal but spiritual. It does not proceed from corrupt principles or selfish motives, nor is it directed to mean and vile purposes and ends. As opposed to all this, it is a pure flame, directed by holy motives, and aiming at no ends inconsistent with God’s glory and the happiness of the universe. The saints in heaven love God for his own sake, and each other for God’s sake, and for the sake of the relation that they have to him, and the image of God that is upon them. All their love is pure and holy

Heaven a world of love

Our journey: Practising other-focused community

We have seen throughout this series of posts that God gives us what we need for our journey towards our destination. What has he given us as he prepares us for the glorious destination of other-focused community we’ve been thinking about? He’s given us community! First and foremost community with him, as we’ve considered in previous posts; but also community with each other – and most significantly, with our Christian brothers and sisters.

Of course there’s much more to the Church than just being a means of grace for us. The Church is the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33), she is the pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), she is the household of God (Ephesians 2:19-22). But in his love and his grace God has also given us the Church for our benefit and blessing.

And God makes the Church for our benefit by causing us to look outwards – to be other-focused for the sake of others. Because if joy and happiness and an other-focused posture go together, then we need to learn to be brought out of ourselves and to focus on others for their sake in order to discover the joy and the happiness that that brings. Once we have seen this, the greatest commandment makes complete sense:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:36-40

Love God, love neighbour. For many years I had a ‘love-hate’ relationship with the Greatest Commandment because I loved it, but I knew I couldn’t keep it; and I knew Jesus had to die for me because I couldn’t keep it. But what if God has given us those commandments not to save us, nor to make us feel guilty – though sometimes he can use them to convict us of our sin – but mainly to help us get into practice for the heavenly life? As his redeemed people we will spend eternity joyfully, happily, other-focusedly loving God and our neighbour – and now we have an opportunity to get into practice.

It also makes sense of repentance and faith. Recall Jesus’s opening words in Mark’s gospel:

“The time has come,” “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Mark 1:15

Notice that in the words of Jesus repentance and good news go together! Why is repentance part of the good news? Why isn’t it just something you have to do – to grit your teeth and get on with it for a greater good? In his recent book Dane Ortlund puts it like this:

Repentance is turning from Self. Faith is turning to Jesus.

Deeper, Dane Ortlund

And if self makes us miserable and if other-focusedness makes us happy – then this is good news! And of course it makes sense of that statement of Paul – that he attributes to Jesus:

“It is more blessed to give than to receive”

Acts 20:35

Means of grace

What specific means of grace does God give us for the journey? Remember, a means of grace is God giving us himself. He takes a very human activity – we compared it to a jar of water – and through his Spirit brings it to life, just as Jesus turned the water into wine as recounted in John 2.

Christian community

In one sense Christian community is a subset of ‘church’ – but this is a helpful place to begin because ‘community’ can apply to two people meeting together; it can apply to a midweek small group; it can apply to the whole church family – and it gets to the heart of what we’re considering. We need Christian community; and God has given us Christian community. That’s why so many of us struggled so much during the covid lockdowns. We need community because we were made for it; and because it brings us out of ourselves: It teaches us to have an other-focused posture. And as others look outwards to us – we find they meet our needs without us needing to demand that our needs are met.

Consider this well-used verse:

Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25

Isn’t it striking that the writer doesn’t write “Let us consider how we may be spurred on by others towards love and good deeds”, or “meet up with others so you can be encouraged.” That is important but it’s not his focus, and in one sense it’s not my responsibility. Rather he says “meet up with others so you can encourage them” – in other words, be other-focused.   

Now of course Scripture tells us that ‘iron sharpens iron’ (Proverbs 27:17); and ‘a cord of three strands is not easily broken’ (Ecclesiastes 4:12). We do need each other. But my responsibility is to consider not how you might encourage me, but how I might encourage you. And if I trust you to do the same (and you fulfil your responsibility) then we will both be encouraged, and we will be living out the other-focused love of the Trinity in community together. (Of course, marriage and blood family can also teach us an other-focused posture; but that’s not the focus of this particular post).

A word to those who are struggling

It may be that you’re struggling at the moment – in life, in faith, in a relationship. When we’re struggling the temptation is to retreat into isolation. To think “I don’t want to be a burden to others” or “I can’t face them.”

But if we do that, we’re depriving others the opportunity to serve us in our time of need. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:

God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.

1 Corinthians 12:24-26

When we’re struggling, not only is that when we most need others; it’s also when we give others the opportunity to love us, serve us, mourn with us and suffer with us – in short, to be other-focused towards us. The devil loves to isolate us and keep us away from each other. But we need to meet together – to serve and love others; and to allow them to serve and love us.

Corporate worship

We’ve already considered the words ‘Do not give up meeting together’ (Hebrews 10:25). And we’ve noted that we can meet in other ways and we should meet in other ways; but there is something particularly important and profound about gathering together to hear God’s word, to sing his praises, to pray, to share bread and wine:

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³ to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

Hebrews 12:22-23

As we gather on a Sunday, however many or few we are in number, we are gathered together spiritually with thousands upon thousands of angels and saints in heaven and saints across the world today.

Sacraments: Baptism and Holy Communion

I’m very aware that I should have spent much more time considering these vital means of grace – and I sincerely apologise if they seem to be an afterthought. They are anything but. We could considered them in the second post – there’s a sense in which they are ‘visible words’ – God’s word to us acted out – and they play a vital role in strengthening and confirming our faith.

Financial giving, serving and sharing my faith

Why am I including financial giving and serving as means of grace? Because God is preparing us for eternity – for the extended other-focused love life of the Trinity. And what better examples of other-focused love are there than giving of our resources and giving of our time? As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9, talking about financial giving:

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹ You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

2 Corinthians 9:10-11

In the next few verses Paul goes on to write of the results of generosity, describing a wonderful upward spiral of thanks and praise to God:

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. ¹³ Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. ¹⁴ And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. ¹⁵ Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

2 Corinthians 9:12-15

What a wonderful picture of the extended love life of the Trinity lived out among God’s people! As we give financially and serve the needs of others are met; but we are the ones who are supremely blessed. For we are learning the way of other-focused, life-giving, joyful, happy, love.

And the same goes for evangelism: When I have the opportunity to share my faith with someone – they benefit by hearing the good news which might just transform their life and eternity; but I am also blessed (and often find myself elated for the rest of the day!)

Conclusion

As I draw this series of posts on the Means of grace to a close, I am aware that there is much more that could be said. I’d be very surprised if you’ve agreed with everything I’ve written – not least because we’ve been considering matters which are very personal, and each of us relates to our heavenly Father through his Spirit in our own unique and personal way. But I hope and pray there’s been something that has been of value as you look forward to, and are prepared for spending eternity

being with Christ, enjoying Christ, being like Christ, and being caught up in the life of the Trinity, in perfect joyful love forever

Means of grace – Our destination and journey

Taking it further

Jonathan Edwards sermon – ‘Heaven a world of love’

Formed for the Glory of God – Kyle Strobel

God’s new community – Graham Beynon