[Audio of this message may be heard here. The manuscript is below. Note that the sermon was not preached from the manuscript, so there may be slight differences between the two.]
“Just Once Before I Die”
Community Accountability, pt.1: Formative Discipline
1 Peter 2:1-5
1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
In 2006, the late Richard John Neuhaus wrote about the difficulty that many students from Christian high schools were facing in trying to get admitted to the University of California, Riverside. The problem is that the University of California, Riverside, feels that religion courses in Christian high schools are biased towards Christianity. That, for this university, is a problem. In a press release explaining their unease with Christian religion courses, they said this (now listen carefully):
“Religion and ethics courses are acceptable as long as they do not include among its [sic] primary goals the personal religious growth of the student.”1
In other words, talking about Christianity is ok so long as it remains just talk and doesn’t have as its goal the formation of Christian character.
Now that’s an amazing idea: Christianity as mere talk. But is it possible that even churches have fallen into the trap of forgetting that true Christianity is never just talk? Is it possible that some churches have forgotten that we ought to be places where Christianity is not just discussed, but Christian character is formed and nurtured?
Dallas Willard has argued in his amazing book, The Great Omission, that churches have forgotten discipleship. Willard says that we now talk almost exclusively of getting people saved but almost never of seeing people become Christians in their character and habits and worldview. Listen to what he says:
“We have counted on preaching, teaching, and knowledge or information to form faith in the hearer and have counted on faith to form the inner life and outward behavior of the Christian. But, for whatever reason, this strategy has not turned out well. The result is that we have multitudes of professing Christians who well may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live, and can hardly get along with themselves, much less with others.
Most statistical measures and anecdotal portraits of evangelical Christians, not to mention Christians in general, show a remarkable similarity in the life-texture of Christians and non-Christians.”2
Did you catch that? “The result is that we have multitudes of professing Christians who well may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live, and can hardly get along with themselves, much less with others.”
Is this possible? Unfortunately, I believe it is. It is now possible to be considered a successful church on the basis of numbers alone without anybody ever asking whether or not a church has been successful in nurturing and growing Christian character. We now judge success on the basis of the number of converts without ever asking what it means when a church has a large number of converts but very few disciples.
Let me just declare myself: if we are to become a New Testament church, we must become a place where discipleship and Christian growth is encouraged and developed. This conviction is driving our efforts to move the church to a covenant model of membership. Our current model of membership does not assume or encourage any real connection between saying you are a believer and recognizing that, as a believer, you will join in this particular kind of life. We want to change that.
To be “an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God” is to be a community of growing disciples and not a community of stagnant converts.
Put another way, you should be growing in your walk with Christ, in your understanding of the gospel, and in Christian character as you involve yourself in the body of Christ. Our church must not be a place where the story is merely told. It must become a place where the story is embraced, lived, and increasingly reflected in our lives.
This is why 1 Peter 2:1-5 is so very crucial. This text gives us a picture of Christian growth. It assumes what our forefathers called “formative church discipline.” This week and next we’re going to be talking about “church discipline.” Today we are going to be talking about formative church discipline. Formative church discipline refers to all of the efforts and ministries that churches undertake, under and through the power of the Holy Spirit, to see Christian character formed in the lives of the members. Next week we will look at what’s called “corrective church discipline.” Corrective church discipline is the church’s ministry to wayward or fallen members who have turned against the church’s stated purpose.
But formative church discipline is our focus today, and well it should be, for we are in danger of forgetting what we are here for. We are in danger of seeing Christianity reduced to mere talk. But, brothers and sisters, let me remind you of this fact: if we are gathering converts but not making disciples we are failing in the Great Commission that our Lord gave us.
Let us hear again these amazing words of our text, 1 Peter 2:1-5:
1 Peter 2:1-5
1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
I. The church is a gathering of disciples transfixed by a holy longing. (vv.1-2)
In verses 1 and 2 we are told to reject one way of life – “malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” – and are told to embrace instead a life characterized by holy longing. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.”
The church is to be an authentic community with an authentic longing for true spiritual sustenance and true spiritual growth.
I once read an interview with a large church pastor who said, “I would like my church to grow up before it grows big.” I don’t think he meant that in a patronizing way, and neither do I when I say it of all of us: I pray we all grow up in the Lord before we grow big as a church. The Scriptures say that the body of Christ is to be a growing body.
But notice: it is not a begrudging growth. It is not a stingy growth. The church is to be characterized by a longed-for growth. We should desire to know more of Christ, to be drawn deeper into Christ, and to grow up into Christ. If we are not a community characterized by this holy longing for growth, then we are not a New Testament church. We may be a stable for the saved, or an aquarium for the duly dunked, but only a body of disciples longing to know more of Christ can lay claim to the beautiful word, “Church.”
Barclay passes on a story that illustrates well the necessity for the church to grow up in Christ and carry on the life of Christ:
“Dr. John Foster tells how an inquirer from Hinduism came to an Indian Bishop. All unaided he had read the New Testament, and the story had fascinated him and Christ had laid His spell upon him. ‘Then he read on...and felt he had entered into a new world. In the gospels it was Jesus, His works and His suffering. In the Acts...what the disciples did and thought and taught had taken the place that Christ had occupied. The Church continued where Jesus had left off at His death. ‘Therefore,’ said this man to me, ‘I must belong to the Church that carries on the life of Christ.’”3
“I must belong to the Church that carries on the life of Christ.”
Let me ask you a very pointed question: is your life characterized by a holy longing for more of Christ? Do you come to worship wanting to see and know Him? Do you sing the hymns with expectant hearts that the God you are praising and worshiping is the God who is at work in you, forming, through the power of the Holy Spirit, a Christian character in you?
I love how Eugene Peterson’s The Message renders our text:
"So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You've had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God's pure kindness. Then you'll grow up mature and whole in God."
Yes! “You’ve had a taste of God!” Do you not want more?
I have seen babies cry out for milk and I have seen Christians snooze through the gospel. This should not be! Peter says we are to long for Christ and for Christian growth in just the same way that a baby longs for milk.
Furthermore:
II. The authenticity of the church is at stake in its desire (or lack of desire) to grow in Christ. (vv.3)
Verse 3 offers us a provocative and frightening conditional statement: “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Peter adds this thought almost parenthetically. “Long for Christ…if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
If you have tasted the sweetness of the gospel, Peter is telling us, you will not be content with a mere taste. If you have tasted the gospel, you will desire more of it.
The Bible presents this as a settled fact. The Bible assumes that a man or woman or boy or girl who has truly tasted the sweetness of the gospel will want to grow in the gospel. This presents us with an absolutely chilling question: if you do not desire to grow in the gospel, have you truly tasted of it?
I would not ask it if the text did not demand it.
Can a man claim to know Christ in His glory if that man does not desire more of Christ?
Even the world recognizes that there is something wrong with a church that is not journeying deeper into Christ and Christ-likeness.
In William Faulkner’s Light in August, Rev. Hightower ultimately comes to reject the church because he comes to see them and their steeples as useless and almost evil:
“He seems to see them, endless, without order, empty, symbolical, bleak, skypointed not with ecstasy or passion but in adjuration, threat, and doom. He seems to see the churches of the world like a rampart, like one of those barricades of the middle ages planted with dead and sharpened stakes, against truth and against that peace in which to sin and be forgiven which is the life of man.”4
Maybe Faulkner was giving his own opinion of churches here: without order, empty, bleak, dead and sharpened stakes against truth and peace.
This is what the world thinks of churches that fail to strive for Christ-likeness. Somebody once said that nothing smells so bad as grace gone sour. I agree.
Let it be said and recognized and acknowledged that our authenticity as a church depends upon our love for Christ and our desire to grow in Him.
Finally:
III. To be a Christian is to be, by definition, a building project for God (vv.4-5)
James Montgomery Boice tells how “someone once asked David Livingstone when he was back in England briefly after having worked for many years in Africa, ‘Well, Dr. Livingstone, where are you ready to go now?’ Livingstone answered, ‘I am ready to go anywhere, provided it be forward.’”5
Peter says that the Christian life is one of forward progress, or, more precisely, upward progress.
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
To be a Christian is to be, by definition, a building project for God.
Notice that Peter is not describing “super Christians” here, he is describing you! “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house.”
You are a building project! To come to Christ is to come to the architect of your heart, soul, and life.
Are you submitting to God’s building goals in your life? Are you joining in this project by opening your life through submission to God’s Word, through faithful participation in corporate worship, through humble prayer, and through acts of service? Are you joining with the Lord in His building project by sharing the good news of Christ with others? Are you a vehicle for construction in your family’s life by leading your family in family devotions, in prayer, and in learning about the Lord?
Notice what is at stake: “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
This is what God is building you towards and this is what God is building you for.
This is formative church discipline. This is being an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God.
“Watkinson, the great preacher, tells how once at the seaside, when he was with his little grandson, they met an old minister. The old man was very disgruntled and, to add to all his troubles, he had a slight touch of sunstroke. The little boy had been listening, but had not picked it up quite correctly; and when they left the grumbling complaints of the old man, he turned to Watkinson and said, ‘Granddad, I hope you never suffer from a sunset!’ The Christian marches on, not to the sunset, but to the dawn. The watchword of the Kingdom is not, “Backwards!” but, “Forwards!”6
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I hope you never suffer from a sunset.
Forwards, not backward!
Upward!
Grow in Christ!
1. Richard John Neuhaus, “While We’re At It,” First Things. January 2006.
2. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 69.
3. William Barclay, The Acts of the Apostles. The Daily Study Bible (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrews Press, 1969), p.2.
4. William Faulkner. Light in August. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p.487.
5. James Montgomery Boice, Philippians. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), p.196-197.
6. William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke. The Daily Study Bible (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1970), p.134.