[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
Authentic Community: A Real Family in a Real Home
Colossians 3:14-16
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
When I was in high school I spent a couple of stints working in the concession stand at the Sumter Braves, which, at the time, was the single-A team for the Braves. Sometimes older baseball stars would pass through because they now worked as talent scouts for their teams. I recall once when the Braves (again, the single-A Braves!) were playing the Pirate’s minor league team. At one point during the game, while I was working in the concession stand, a large, solid-looking man in a Pirates cap came to the counter and ordered a hot dog. While I was preparing the hot dog another man behind the counter came up to me and said, “Son, do you know who that is that you’re making a hotdog for?” I said, “No.” He said, “That’s Willie Stargell, the Pittsburgh Pirates great.”
Well, I had heard of Willie Stargell, though, truthfully, I didn’t know a lot about him. I said to the man, “Is that so?” He said, “Yep, that’s me.” The other man said, “Ask him if you can see his World Series ring.” I did and Willie Stargell said, “Sure.”
So he takes off this massive World Series ring. I remember that I could put two of my fingers in that ring it was so big! It was a ring from the 1979 World Series, where the Pirates defeated the Orioles and became one of the few teams in the 20th century to win a World Series after trailing 3-1. Willie Stargell, the man I was making a hotdog for, was 39 years year old that year and became the oldest player to win a National League MVP and a World Series MVP. He hit .400 in the 1979 World Series and set a series record with 7 extra-base hits.
Well, that was a pretty neat experience, and one I’ll never forget, making a hotdog for Willie Stargell! But what I remember most was the phrase that was etched into his ring. It said, “We Are Family.” Some of you might remember that the Pirates adopted Sister Sledge’s song, “We Are Family” as their theme song for that year.
Now probably a lot of us know that song, though I was a bit too young to remember when it came out. It was the #1 disco hit of 1979, and when you hear the lyrics it will make sense why the Pirates adopted it as their song:
(CHORUS:)
We are family
I got all my sisters with me
We are family
Get up ev'rybody and sing
Ev'ryone can see we're together
As we walk on by
(FLY!) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won't tell no lie
(ALL!) all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a family dose
Want to know something? There’s power in family. See, that team understood that if they were just a team, they would be just one among many, but if they could become a family they could rise above the rest. Even the fans bought into that theme, “We are family.” During the 79 World Series, the song became a chant and all over the stadium Pirates fan chanted, “Fam-i-lee! Fam-i-lee! Fam-i-lee!”
There’s something very, very New Testament about that.
When we talk about the New Testament church being “an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God,” what we’re saying is that the church, biblically understood, is a family, it’s not just a team. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,” Paul declares in Ephesians 2:19-20, “but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.”
In other words, the Bible speaks of the church as a real family in a real home
I believe that part of our current predicament is that we have lost this understanding and we have put in its place inferior models.
I want it understood that when we abandon the understanding of the church as a family we will inevitably substitute, in its place, inferior models: the church as a club, the church as a clique, the church as Wal-Mart, the church as a country club, the church as a nightclub, etc. But this morning I want to show you that a New Testament church is a family and that, if we are to become a New Testament church, we must become a family as well!
I think that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was correct when he said, “There is in fact only one religion in which the idea of community is an integral element of its nature, and that is Christianity.”1 That’s well said! Community is indeed “an integral element of our nature.” We cannot have Jesus without having community with everybody else who has Jesus. He does not save us to live in solitary confinement. He saves us to live in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Let’s look at these beautiful verses, Colossians 3:14-16:
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
I. The church has a love that binds.
We have defined a New Testament church as “an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God.” Let us consider what it means to be “an authentic community around the whole gospel.”
First of all, it will be clear that a church formed on and around the gospel is a church formed on and around love, for the gospel is nothing but the good news of God’s amazing and immeasurable love. To say that we are “an authentic community around the whole gospel” is to say that we are an authentic community grounded in radical, incarnate, agape love…because we are a church founded on Jesus. This divine love draws us in and makes us a family. This is what Paul undoubtedly meant when he wrote in Colossians 1:17, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Love holds us together. Specifically, the love of Jesus holds us together. We might picture it like this:
We are drawn in by love and our fellowship is grounded in love. Fred Craddock passes on a story about…
“…a certain a village [in which] the school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. to call the children to class. The boys and girls left their homes and toys reluctantly, creeping like snails into the school, not late but not a second early. The bell rang again at 3:30 p.m., releasing the children to homes and toys, to which they rushed at the very moment of the tolling of the bell. This is how it was every day, with every child except one. She came early to help the teacher prepare the room and materials for the day. She stayed late to help [the] teacher prepare the room and materials for the day. She stayed late to help the teacher clean the board, dust erasers, and put away materials. And during the day she sat close to the teacher, all eyes and ears for the lessons being taught. One day when noise and inattention were worse than usual, the teacher called the class to order. Pointing to the little girl in the front row, the teacher said, “Why can you not be as she is? She comes early to help, she stays late to help, and all day long she is attentive and courteous.”
“It isn’t fair to ask us to be as she is,” said one boy from the rear of the room.
“Why?”
“Because she has an advantage,” he replied.
“I don’t understand. What is her advantage?” asked the puzzled teacher.
“She is an orphan,” he almost whispered as he sat down.2
Outside of Christ, we are all orphans, and it is the love of Christ that draws us in and binds us together.
Everybody needs love, and the Bible lifts up love as the greatest clothing of the church: “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Paul has elsewhere lifted up love as the greatest, most famously in 1 Corinthians 13, where we are told that there now abides faith, hope, and love, “but the greatest of these is love.”
And this is not difficult to understand is it? I mean, if we are founded on the cross of Jesus does that not mean that are founded on an incomprehensibly staggering divine love? And, if so, how can our community in the gospel not be a community of love?
How can I profess to dwell beneath the Lordship of One who left His throne in glory and gave His life for me and not do the same for you?
Paul tellingly addresses his first epistle to the Corinthians to “the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2).
Christ and His love is the glue that binds us together and it is also the defining mark of our community. I join together with you in worship and in witness because we have all partaken of and know the amazing love of God in Christ. We have had a common experience with incarnate agape love and that love therefore becomes the common thread running through our family. Here is a great statement from J. Brown on the priority of care among Christians, especially the final sentence:
“Every poor and distressed man had a claim on me for pity, and, if I can afford it, for active exertion and pecuniary relief. But a poor Christian has a far stronger claim on my feelings, my labors, and my property. He is my brother, equally interested as myself in the blood and love of the Redeemer. I expect to spend an eternity with him in heaven. He is the representative of my unseen Savior, and he considers everything done to his poor afflicted as done to himself. For a Christian to be unkind to a Christian is not only wrong, it is monstrous.”3
We cannot be unkind or unloving to one another if the gospel of Christ lives among us and if we are united around it, for the gospel is a gospel of immeasurable, incomprehensible love.
In addition to a love that binds, our passage this morning shows us that…
II. The church has a peace that rules.
Our text this morning says:
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”
The church has a peace that rules. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.”
Ours is a family of love and ours is a family of peace. Why? Because the devil no longer has victory over us. Because we are no longer blinded to the truth of the gospel. Because we now have the blessings of Christ on our relationships with one another. Because we no longer live in fear. Because we no longer are bound to sin, death, and hell. We are at peace because, as our Lord Jesus said, “It is finished!”
Life has now begun! Victory is now ours!
R.C. Sproul has written about being a kid and playing stickball in the streets of Chicago in the summer of 1945. He writes how they were out there playing when all of a sudden they heard the sound of tumult and of screaming. People were cheering and banging wooden spots on pots and pans. Chaos erupted everywhere. Sproul says his mother came running out of their house and she picked him up and hugged him tight, screaming over and over again, “It’s over! It’s over! It’s over!”
It was VJ day, or "Victory Over Japan" day. The war in the Pacific had ended, signaling the end of World War II. With it ended all of the anxieties, fears, and uncertainties that war brings. Peace brought with it joy and celebration and life again.
It is no different with the church. Worship is our collective celebration of the peace of Christ. Evangelism is our effort to let those who have yet to hear the good news know that peace has come for them as well. The church is a community of peace-entranced believers who know the joy of Jesus Christ.
“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” Paul writes. It’s a peace “to which indeed you were called in one body.”
Note that we are called to “let the peace of Christ rule.” That means it’s possible to be God’s people and allow petty anxieties to cloud our peace and silly distractions to cause us to forget the peace that has been achieved for us.
In 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul pleads again for peace: “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”
Notice again that Paul’s appeal here is “by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Our peace is no abstraction. It is no fiction. It is not hypothetical. It is a concrete, actual, living peace rooted in the person of Jesus Himself.
A love that binds, a peace that rules, and…
III. The church has a word that dwells.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” we are told, “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Genesis 1 tells us that creation itself is founded on God’s Word. “Let there be…” we hear the Lord say again and again. And it was.
So, too, with the church. Christ looks at His church and says, “Let there be love. Let there be peace. Let there be My word.” The word of God is our foundation and is our life. John, of course, powerfully refers to Christ Himself as “the Word.”
In our text we see once again that we are exhorted to let this reality be our reality: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
To be “an authentic community around the whole gospel” is to be a community around God’s Word. That is why our worship is word-centered and the operation of this church is word-driven. We are not centered on our own words or opinion. We are centered on God’s Word.
We are held together in Christ and we are sustained through His word. His word is to be our life: His teachings, His example, His atoning work on the cross, the power of His resurrection. His word confronts us in each of these powerful and salvation-bringing realities, and it is that Word that must dwell among us in power.
In Ephesians 4:15-16, we find: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
We are built up in his word, as He has spoken it to us and as we speak it to one another.
Again, Fred Craddock shares a powerful example of what a New Testament church looks like:
“Before I married and served in the little mission in the Appalachians, I moved down to a place on Watts Bar Lake, between Chattanooga and Knoxville, a little village. It was the custom in that church at Easter to have a baptismal service. My church immerses, and it was held, this baptismal service, in Watts Bar Lake on Easter evening at sundown. Now out on the sandbar, I, with the candidates for baptism, moved into the water, and then they moved across to the shore where the little congregation was gathered, singing around a fire and cooking supper. They had constructed little booths for changing clothes with hanging blankets. As the candidates moved from the water, they went in and changed clothes and went to the fire in the center. Finally, last of all, I went over, changed clothes, and went to the fire.
Once we were all around the fire, this was the ritual of that tradition. Glenn Hickey, always Glenn, introduced the new people, gave their names, where they lived, and their work. Then the rest of us formed a circle around them, while they stayed warm at the fire. The ritual was that each person in the circle then gave her or his name, and said this, “My name is…and if you ever need somebody to do washing and ironing…” “My name is…If you ever need anybody to chop wood…” “My name is…If you ever need anybody to baby-sit…” “My name is…If you ever need anybody to repair your house…” “My name is…If you ever need anybody to sit with the sick…” “My name is…and if you ever need a car to go to town…” and around the circle.
Then we ate, and we had a square dance. And then at a time they knew, I didn’t know, Percy Miller, with thumbs in his bibbed overalls, would stand up and say, “Time to go,” and everybody left. He lingered behind and, with his big shoe, kicked sand over the dying fire. And my first experience of that, he saw me standing there still, and he looked at me and said, “Craddock, folks don’t ever get any closer than this.”
In that little community, they have a name for that. I’ve heard it in other communities too. In that community, their name for that is “church.” They call that “church.”4
First Baptist Dawson, we can become that close. We can become such a family around the gospel that we too could say, “Folks don’t ever get any closer than this.” That’s a New Testament church. That’s a family. That’s the church.
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol.1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), p.131.
2. Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories. (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001), p.16.
3. Quoted in Timothy George, Galatians. The New American Commentary, vol.30 (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1994), p.425.
4. Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories. (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001), p.151-152.