ommunitDiscipleship in C y: Discipleship in …...Discipleship in Community: The last few sessions we’ve been considering the fact of spiritual gifts and the role that they play

Discipleship in Community:

Transcript - SF501 Discipleship in Community: © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 10 of 24SF501

Church: Context for Spiritual Formation – Part V

Discipleship in Community:

The last few sessions we’ve been considering the fact of spiritual gifts and the role that they play in this whole aspect of corporate spirituality. We’ve looked at what spiritual gifts are, why they’ve been given, and then in the last session, we were talking about how to use them. And in particular we began by looking at some of the negative, wrong ways, and wrong attitudes. We want to conclude that section before we go on by talking about some of the right attitudes, the right aspects of a proper mindset for using the spiritual gifts.

The first thing that we need to realize and to remind ourselves has to do with the role of love. Love should be the context for the exercise of the gifts. First Corinthians 13, as we looked at briefly, already makes this very clear. And as we pointed out when we looked at that earlier, 1 Corinthians 13 falls right in the middle of a passage that’s dealing with body life, dealing with the life of the church together in mutual and reciprocal ministry, and in particular, the use of the gifts as both chapters 12 and 14 deal with those in particular. And right in the middle of that is chapter 13. It makes it very clear that the context for the exercise of the gifts, the motivation for the use of gifts, that which should govern all aspects of our ministry life together is love. That’s how the gifts result in the building up of the church for the common good as they are exercised in love with love being characterized by concern for the other person, sacrificial acts for the benefit of the other person with no hope or no thought of reciprocation. So we need to begin by realizing the importance of love in the exercise of the gifts. The spiritual gifts that we each have are really a means for us to express and demonstrate and manifest the love of God that is in us.

Secondly, we need to be reminded of the truth that Paul reminded Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:14. He told Timothy “not to neglect the spiritual gift which is within you.” Now the term “neglect” there means to be careless about something, to fail to pay close

John R. Lillis, Ph.D.Experience: Dean and Executive Officer

at Bethel Seminary in San Diego, CA.



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attention. The idea is that Timothy is to give heed to his spiritual gifts, to develop and to use them in the church. Far too often, needed spiritual gifts in local churches are not found there. They’re not being exercised. They’re not being manifested. And it’s not because they’ve not been provided to the church by God. They’re there. They’re just not available because the persons with them are neglecting them. They’re not available. They’re not using them. We have many sick churches as a result of that today, because not all the members are functioning fully. Not all the members are using the gifts that God has intended for them to use. I believe firmly that in every local assembly, God has provided all that that assembly needs at that moment at that time through the variety and the diversity of the gifts that He has provided through the various individuals and that He intends for those to be used. It’s just as Paul says over and over in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. It’s just like our human bodies. And we indeed would be sick if some of our organs, some of our members shut down, some of our members neglected, if you would, the function that has been entrusted to them. Then the whole body suffers. And so it is with the exercise of spiritual gifts. We all suffer when a few don’t exercise the gifts that have been given, when a few neglect the gift that is within them; because that gift has been given for a specific and an explicit and an important purpose regardless of how public or non-public the display of the gift might be. It’s important; just as every function of every organ in the human body is important. So a second proper attitude is the awareness that we all and each have the responsibility not to neglect the gifts but to develop them and exercise them in the context of the local church.

Thirdly, we also need to check our own motives. Why am I serving the body of Christ with this gift? Are we serving and using the gift to seek the acclaim of men, or am I serving because I am afraid people will talk about me if I don’t, serving out of a perverted sense of duty, if you would. Or am I using my gift because I want to serve the Lord Jesus Christ by serving the church which is His body and being a part of that church being built up. That’s the end. That’s the goal in spirituality as we’ve seen time and time again in prior sessions. As outlined so clearly for us in Ephesians 4:11-16, it’s the building up of the body. And verse 16 says, “The body is built up.” The body grows as each individual member, each individual part does his or her work. Is that our motive to see the body built up, or are we seeking the acclaim of men or serving out of some twisted sense of duty?



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Another proper attitude, a fourth attitude that will help us in using spiritual gifts in a proper sense is to seek confirmation and affirmation concerning our own areas of usefulness from the rest of the body. Now I’ve talked a great deal in the prior session about the fact that we’re not to spend a lot of time trying to discover our gifts. The New Testament simply assumes that we will be actively involved in ministry. However, the body is put together in such a way that we can seek affirmation and can expect confirmation concerning those areas that we can be useful in from those that are in the body. The observations of other people will confirm that we either have or don’t have certain gifts that we either should continue or not continue in certain areas of ministry. And so we need, as we exercise gifts within this corporate context and need to teach others as they exercise their gifts, to listen to others. What are others telling us that we’re good at? What kind of compliments do people pay us? In what areas do people look upon us with respect and conversely, in what areas are things not going so well? Perhaps these are areas that we should not focus so much on and use the other areas that are more expressive of our spiritual gifts. What areas do people come to us for assistance in times of need?

Fifthly and finally, an attitude for the exercise of spiritual gifts that I think is often absent in churches has to do with our attitude towards the gifts that others have. We need to be mindful of the scriptural admonition that again occurs frequently that we are to rejoice with others, rejoice in the gifts that God has given others, realizing that God has given to each individual as He will and that He has a purpose and that purpose relates to the edification and growth of the entire body and that each gift is given to fulfill that purpose. We need to realize also that because of that, the gifts that others have are contributing to our growth and our edification. Their gifts are very necessary in order for all of us to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because as we’ve seen, the very growth process itself is a corporate process. It’s a process very dependent upon the interpersonal and relational matrix that exists within the people of God. It’s a process that’s very dependent upon our mutual, reciprocal relations with one another. So we need to rejoice and not be jealous in the gifts that others have, not envy or be bitter towards others because of what God has given them. And then conversely, related to this, we need to be careful that we don’t look down on certain individuals or their gifts, that we don’t think less of other people because they don’t have the gift that we have, they’re not performing the ministry that we have. We need to guard against the kind of thinking that



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all Christian ministry is defined by what I am doing, putting people down because they’re not doing what I think is important or what I do. And this is a common, common mistake and fallacy that exists in ministry circles. I personally spent eight years in the mission field in Southeast Asia ministering in a host of Southeast Asian countries. I was involved in theological education. And I’ve run into the attitude from other missionaries that because I’m not doing what they’re doing, then my ministry couldn’t be valid cross-cultural ministry, couldn’t be valid missionary work. We need to realize that God has given the church, given the body of Christ, a diversity of gifts and that these individuals all have roles to play. And just because they’re not doing what we’re doing doesn’t mean they’re any less than we are or inferior to the ministry that we’re having.

As we conclude this section on the church and the Spirit, and looking at spiritual gifts and the role that they play in the growth of the church, perhaps a paraphrase or restatement of a quote that John Kennedy is famous for would be appropriate here. As we look at the exercise of our gifts realizing why they have been given and what they are to accomplish, perhaps we could say that our attitude ought to be “Ask not what the church can do for you, rather ask what you can do for the church.” For this captures the essence of what corporate spiritualty and corporate growth is all about. Well, we’ve looked now as we’ve looked at the means for this growth, looking at the church. We’ve looked at the church as the people of God, that interpersonal and relational matrix that provides the context, the necessary context for the growth of the body of Christ. We’ve looked at the church as event realizing that what is far more important than what the church is as a sociological entity is what is happening, what the church does as it grows. And that focuses, of course, on love. We’ve looked at the church as the family of God, this very important metaphor found throughout the New Testament. And without an understanding of which, you’re really at loss in understanding the full dimensions, the full implications, and significance of this corporate dimensions of spirituality.

Finally, we saw the church and the Spirit. To conclude this section dealing with the church as the means for spiritual growth, I’d like to talk about the church as redemptive community. As we’ve discussed in these prior four sections, the Christian’s experience in the corporate context of the church should have, indeed does have, a profound effect on our spiritual formation. The church becomes the formative environment for our spiritual growth. The



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church is the community by which we realize our redemption. It’s all sounded rather ideal to this point and perhaps by now you’re asking the question that many have asked me, that in spite of that ideal picture, we all realize that some of the worst times that we’ve ever experienced in our lives have been experienced in the context of a local church, in the context of that local family and local assembly that God has placed us in for this growth process. Is the ideal all that is or is the ideal unreachable because of the realities of our situations? Or are our situations even part of the process? Does the New Testament assume this less than ideal picture? As I’ve mentioned and as I’m probably aware, sometimes we are hurt rather than healed by our church involvement. And I think that we need to realize that this has been the case since the beginning. There’re passages throughout the New Testament that imply this. Let me just read a few for you. First Corinthians 1:10-11, Paul says, “Now I exhort you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all agree and there be no divisions among you but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment, for I have been informed concerning you my brethren by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you.” And then you know the entire book, the structure of the book of 1 Corinthians is built around the little statement now concerning. And each one of those “now concernings” points to a problem in that church. So in the church at Corinth there were problems right from the very beginning. As we look at other passages, Philippians 2:3 for example, Paul says “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.” And compare that then to Philippians 4:2, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord.” So obviously there was strife and division in the church at Philippi. Conditions were less than ideal at this local assembly in this local family.

And then the church that Timothy was ministering in, are the churches in his missionary endeavor. Second Timothy 2:14 as Paul is giving Timothy instructions concerning the teaching of future leaders for the church in this area, he says, “Remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.” Obviously there were problems in this group of churches. Finally in Galatians 5:13, Paul in talking to the churches here says, “For you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word and the statement ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if



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you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another.” So there, too, the situation was less than ideal.

As we develop these ideas of corporate spirituality, our picture of the church as the decisive context for the corporate spiritual formation of the people of God must include honest images and self-understandings. We need to realize that the less than ideal reality is indeed a part of God’s plan. It is an intended part of this whole corporate picture. The church actually exists in the real world in tension, tension between its ideal picture and its concrete, everyday reality. And that tension, as I’ve indicated to you, has been there since the first century. There is always a tension between what the church is and what it may become. Like the individual, the church is both redeemed and being redeemed. Craig Dykstra maintains that there are two basic theological realities which are central to a proper understanding of the church’s role in spiritual formation, two realities which describe the concrete realities of the interpersonal and relational matrix that the local church is as the context for spiritual formation. The first has to do with the fact that when we as humans are involved in this corporate entity of the church, we are often caught up together because of who we are, into mutually-reinforced patterns of self-destruction because individually we are those who are redeemed and being redeemed. We are in individual growth patterns as well. And so when you put people who are redeemed but are still being redeemed together in a social context, often what can result are these patterns of self-destruction, patterns that are being mutually-reinforced.

Secondly, within the church we need to realize that these patterns are constantly being modified and the destructive effects transformed by the work of the living God among His people. So we have these two factors that we need to be aware of, that we need to discuss a bit further as we talk about the church as redemptive community, church as the community of those who are both redeemed and being redeemed. The first when we are involved in the church together we are often caught up together into mutually-reinforced patterns of self-destruction and secondly, within the church because of God’s active participation, these patterns of self-destruction are being modified and the destructive effects transformed.

Let’s talk about the first principle a bit. We need to realize that specific patterns of self-destruction when people are put together in mutual corporate entities vary from culture to culture and from time to time. As we look at our own day and age and the



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Western world primarily, although I think that much of this applies worldwide. It’s been my experience at least in traveling throughout Asia and ministering in the Western world, that the patterns of self-destruction in the 20th century especially in the Western world and now as the Western world is exporting it, has to do with the achievement-oriented and competitive lifestyle that has become so prevalent in modern culture. It’s a style of life which has as its center the compulsion to succeed or achieve in whatever social world one lives. As individuals become part of various social worlds, as they go into business or take up certain forms of employment, as they belong to a variety of social groups, often the mentality is I want to be the best at what I am doing here. I know myself, in my own personal development this has been a struggle for me spiritually. I’ve always been what people have characterized as an overachiever. And so when as an adult I became a Christian, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was I’m going to be the best Christian that you can be. Now I’ve got to confess to you that the motive in those early days was not because I wanted to please the Lord Jesus Christ, not because I wanted to serve Him, but because in any social setting in which I found myself I wanted to achieve. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to find what the standards were, what the criteria were to be the best, to be seen as the best in that setting. And I think I’m not an exception in that. I think that type of attitude to varying degrees has greatly permeated our churches because it’s such a part of our society today. Who one is, one’s identity depends upon earning the affections of others through the value of what one produces or does. That’s how we earn worth in our society today. That’s how we gain, at least in our own thinking, other people’s affection. We gain it by what we do, what we produce. Self-worth derives from what we do rather than who we are. Think about it. When people are introduced to one another, when you’re introduced to someone, it’s never just well this is so and so but rather this is so and so, he works here. He’s a pastor, he’s a teacher. He’s an engineer. She’s an attorney, she’s a doctor. She’s a teacher. We always tack onto it what the individual does. It’s a part of the warp and woof of our culture of our society. It’s the way we think. Worth is ascribed to someone based upon what they do. And so that has contributed to again what Dykstra describes as an achievement-oriented and competitive lifestyle.

Now as we buy into that achievement motive and the lifestyle it creates, it means that we forfeit the one thing that we as humans fundamentally need. That’s the giving and receiving of unconditional love. You see competition keeps us from giving



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it. I’ve got to be better than you. I’m competing with you. Achievement addiction keeps us from receiving it. I can’t admit that I need your love. I can’t admit that I need your help then you would think less of me. Then you would think that I’m not climbing as I need to be climbing. You see people really need to be loved for just being here, not for what we can do or produce. We call that ascriptive love, being loved simply for who you are. It’s the love that the New Testament talks about that ought to exist among us. We don’t need to achieve. We don’t need to succeed or we ought not to in order to be loved by one another. Christians shouldn’t love one another based upon what they do but rather upon who they are in Christ Jesus.

As I’ve indicated, I spent several years in missions. And I’ve got missionary friends that went through a process similar to what I went through when I returned from the field. It seems to be a common observation. Missionaries have returned from the field to take up other areas of ministry, and they have found that certain individuals whom they felt were close friends, good friends, suddenly weren’t so close, suddenly weren’t such good friends. And what it turns out to be in the bottom line is that because they’re no longer missionaries, they’re no longer doing that glamorous cross-cultural ministry, then suddenly they’re not as attractive as friends. I’ve known individuals who’ve been very hurt by that as they, maybe not just in a cross-cultural ministry, but changed from a variety of functions or works or ministries and have found that there have been people who have literally dropped them from their friendship circles, people within the church of Jesus Christ because now they’re suddenly not doing certain things. That ought not to be in the body of Christ. That’s part of the mutually-reinforced patterns of self-destruction that are going on in the church that we bring with us into this family of God as people who have been redeemed but are being redeemed, being redeemed and transformed out of a particular culture, out of a particular worldview. Yet that doesn’t happen instantaneously. And so we bring that in with us.

The irony of it all is that pure, ascriptive love frees us to be the best that we can be. Pure ascriptive love enables us to do the things that God would have us to do. Yet we don’t realize that, and we become all caught up in the achievement and competitive motif. This achievement motive forces us to hide our true selves from one another. We can’t be loved just as we are so somehow, some way we must earn other people’s love. And that has some negative effects, negative results with respect to spiritual formation. For



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example, often people will strive for effectiveness instead of faithfulness where effectiveness is measured by productivity and by what you’re doing. And often the case is that faithfulness can be overlooked. Faithfulness is just not a concern. As long as I can produce, as long as I can put out certain products every so often whether it’s spiritual or whatever, then it’s okay. I’m effective but not necessarily faithful. And you have this at all levels of ministry, people who strive to be effective and miss faithfulness. Why? Because of this achievement-oriented lifestyle, this competitive-based idea of success in the spiritual life.

Another result with respect to spiritual formation and the growth of the church can be the desire to achieve to be successful no matter what or who the cost. And often we see this in Christian circles and the context of the local church the idea of programs over people. I’m going to accomplish this no matter what. Or we need to get rid of this person, this person, this person because they’re hurting the program. Well, that’s not the idea that we see in Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, throughout the New Testament. We are a body growing together, and we are as strong as our weakest link. And we need not to cut out the weakest link but to turn our attention on that individual and nurture them. God is concerned with people, not the programs. He is concerned with the growing up of the body together as each individual part does its work. The programs-over-people mentality is an expression of this contemporary, achievement-oriented lifestyle and is not an expression of the biblical emphasis. No matter what we say about quality and excellence, we cannot let quality and excellence in the way the world defines it in the sense of programs over people, we cannot let quality and excellence take precedence over the care and the concern, the mutual love and relationship that needs to exist within the body of Christ.

A third result that this achievement-oriented lifestyle has in the whole matter of spiritual formation has to do with projecting a public persona instead of revealing a real person. How often this happens in the church. We have deep problems, serious problems, serious situations in our lives, but we don’t dare share it with others because then they might think less of us. They might not think that we are as successful as we want them to think. The masks that we put over prayer meetings, cell groups with Christians in which we share our prayer requests often just deal with the trivial because we’re not willing to pull the mask off. We’re not willing to crack the public persona, the public façade that we’ve created and allow people to see the real us. And then that’s why



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we don’t grow both corporately or individually because we’re not totally honest with one another. Now I realize that there are legitimate hesitations here. Often people have been transparent, and sometimes that’s come back in their face. It’s backfired upon them, so I’m speaking to both sides of the mask, those that are hiding behind it and then those that would be receiving the information from someone who becomes transparent. We need to realize that this is a significant aspect of growing up together, the ability to be honest and sincere with one another, the ability and the freedom to share the problems, the difficulties, the deep hurts and then not to have that used as gossip, not to have people recoil in horror but to have people gather around us realizing that we’re not in competition. We’re not achieving one over the other, but we’re growing together in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are bound together in a relationship that is more intimate than even that of blood families. And we must have this honesty, we must have this sincerity. We must have this openness. We must reject the achievement-oriented lifestyle that compels us to construct the façades and the public personas.

What happens as a result of this achievement-oriented lifestyle, this competitive-based approach is that we become people who are tense. We become people who are manipulative, manipulating others. Brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the family of God manipulating them, that we might become and be what we feel is success that we might achieve. We become deceptive, not overt lies, not even necessarily conscious lies. But we’re not revealing who we really are. We’re deceptive, and that’s just as much a lie. We become controlling, and that’s not a loving behavior. We become competitive and cruel to one another and to ourselves; none of these characteristics— tenseness, manipulation, deception, control, competition, cruelty—none of those fit love. In fact, I think much of this was what was going on at the church in Corinth. The same type of thing, different cultural motives, different cultural forces driving but something very similar that prompted Paul as he was talking about the life of the church together in 1 Corinthians 12-14 prompted him to come to that thirteenth chapter and say, “let me show you the most excellent way.” You people have just missed the boat and then to list what love is. Love is patient, love is kind. Love isn’t these things that are so characteristic of this achievement-oriented, competitive-based lifestyle.

Paul talks about it also to the churches in Galatia. We read part of this passage earlier. Let me take you back to Galatians 5. In



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Galatians 5, beginning at verse 15, the verse that we ended with before, he says, “But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh for these are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” Now note here that the whole context of this is life together. It’s a corporate context. It’s the way they’re treating one another. It’s the way they’re interacting with one another in this interpersonal and relational matrix that makes up the church. He says,

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing and things like these in which I forewarned you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.

There’s the whole motif described. And notice again that the whole thing is described in terms of relationship one to another that even as Paul describes the fruits of the Spirit they have to do with our relationships with one another. It’s not talking about going out into your cave somewhere, into your prayer closet and going into some type of meditative experience and enjoying the contemplative peace that comes through these. It’s talking about the relationship that we have together as family as members of the body of Christ. And what Paul is describing here in terms of the positive as he describes the fruit of the Spirit is just the opposite of that which is so characteristic of the achievement-oriented and competitive-based lifestyle that so characterizes our life together.

Well the first aspect that we talked about, the first theological truth was the fact that when we are brought together, we are caught up in these mutually-reinforcing patterns of self-destruction by just the nature of the fact that we are people who are redeemed and



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are being redeemed. Well, that’s the bad news, and we’ve talked in great length about that.

Let’s finish this session by talking about the good news, that second theological truth that Dykstra suggests. And that is that these patterns are being modified by the fact that the church is not just another sociological group. It’s not just another organization, but it is a faith community of the redeemed who are being redeemed and transformed by the powerful working of God in our midst. Paul talks about that in Romans 8, beginning at verse 28. He says,

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom He predestined those He also called. And whom He called these He also justified. And whom He justified these He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died yes rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?

And then finally in verse 38 he says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So often we take these chapters here in Romans and we think about them individualistically. But the truth is also there for the corporate body of Christ that although when we come together we are creatures with our faults, with our problems and that often we become wrapped up in these patterns of self-destruction that are mutually-reinforcing. Nonetheless when we come together, it is within the context of the faith community that has at work within it the Everlasting One, the God who never fails, who is never absent, who wills more good for us than we do for ourselves as we see here in Romans 8. As we come together, we become involved in


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the worship of the true God, which takes our eyes from ourselves and from our self-destruction, thereby giving us freedom—a freedom from the achievement addiction, a freedom from the self-disgust, the self-aggrandizement, the self-righteousness, and the disappointment in one another. We become free to love one another in authentic worship of God, in authentic New Testament life together. The self-destructive effects of the achievement-oriented lifestyle become redemptively modified by the working of God through His Spirit in our midst, and we learn to love and you see it’s necessary. If we really had the ideal, there’s no way we could grow in love. True love, God-like love is exercised when we learn to love the unlovely, when we learn to minister to and to become concerned for those who are not particularly appealing, those who are not attractive, in fact those who might irritate us, anger us. We are brought together as imperfect people that we might grow together, not individually, grow together in our ability to love one another, to love the unlovely. Yes, the situation is less than ideal. It’s less than ideal because of who and what we are. But that’s the way God intended it. He has brought us together into these communities, into these families, into churches, local assemblies that we might grow in love. And you can’t grow in love in an ideal situation. You have to grow in the kind of love God wants for you in less than ideal situations dealing with less than ideal people.

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ommunitDiscipleship in C y: Discipleship in …...Discipleship in Community: The last few sessions we’ve been considering the fact of spiritual gifts and the role that they play