Gospel Community (Part 1)
Colossians 3:12-17
We’ve been talking about how our core values, and in particular, how the Gospel drives what we do. It is the engine of our ministry and life.
Last week P. Dwight mentioned how Gospel Transformation happens through community.
We encourage you to join one of our community groups.
We want to spend 2 weeks on exploring this value of Gospel Community.
Gospel Community
The gospel does not only save isolated individuals, but creates a new humanity knit together in community as the body of Christ. Belonging to the church is integral to gospel life and is not optional for the Christian. The grace of God compels us to dwell in community, loving and extending grace to people we once disdained or envied. A gospel community is marked by grace, love, and humility between fellow weak, messed up, sin-strugglers, as opposed to a community of performance where people put on the appearance of moral uprightness, success and respectability. In a culture of gospel grace, people are free to be vulnerable about the deepest of struggles and weaknesses, and open to loving care, counsel, and accountability for gospel transformation.
We’ll look at our passage with a focus on vv. 12-15 this week and vv. 16-17 next week.
The Engine of Gospel Community: the Gospel
12Put on then, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
13bearing with one another and,
if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
14And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.
16Let 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.
17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Chosen, holy and beloved (12)
Forgiven by God (13)
Reconciled to God (15)
Word of Christ dwelling (16)
we’re teaching and admonishing each other about Christ
we’re singing about Christ
not privately, individually, but corporately
Thankfulness (15, 16, 17)
We’re talking about, singing about, thankful for all that Christ is and has done for us—that’s the Gospel: We are chosen, made holy, beloved, forgiven and at peace/reconciled to God.
It is a picture of a worshipful and thankful community.
We’ve spent several weeks talking about the Gospel, Gospel Worship, Gospel Transformation. This is where it starts. This is the engine.
What happens when a group of people experience the Gospel, are transformed by the Gospel? We want to start moving outward. It produces a kind of community, a kind of culture, way of relating with one another. We want a Gospel-driven community, a community produced by the Gospel.
The Characteristics of Gospel Community
As loved, we are loving (vv. 12-14)
Compassionate, kind, humble, meek
As people who’ve been given much, we are kind and generous.
As people who’ve been shown mercy and compassion, we show mercy and compassion.
It’s not just that there’s an obligation or some sense of rightness. It’s that the love and kindness has changed us.
As forgiven, we forgive (v. 13)
patient, bearing with one another
As people who’ve been shown grace, we show grace
As sinners who’ve been accepted, we accept sinners too.
Christians are still sinners who hurt one another. We’ll have difficulties, offenses, conflicts one another. The difference is in how we handle/respond to our conflicts and offenses. We can forgive.
If I could fill in the picture, if I add the context of these two statements, I would summarize this as:
We are sinners, but we are forgiven and loved.
Which sounds a lot like what we’ve said before:
The Gospel tells us we are more sinful than we realize and more loved than we can imagine.
And when we realize and believe this, it changes us within and changes our relationships.
1. Authenticity and Transparency
We live with guilt and shame, and so we wear masks, we hide. Often, we’re afraid of being embarrassed or ridiculed or rejected. We are protective, defensive. We tend to minimize our sin. We try to show people we’re not sinners, not messed up. But all this guilt, shame, fear hinder authenticity and intimacy. They keep people at arms length.
How do we minimize sin?
Defend we don’t like confrontation, and when confronted, we explain away, give excuses
Blame its not my fault, I’m a victim. We don’t own our sins.
Fake maintain an image, we pretend things are better than they really are
Hide shame, we feel deeply inadequate/embarrassed, and so we wear masks, hide.
Exaggerate we make things sound better than they really are; we want attention, puffing up
Downplay we make things sound not as bad as they really are; my sin is not that bad; denial
These all hinder authenticity and intimacy. They hurt others and keep people at arms length.
But in the Gospel, we accept that we’re sinners. This doesn’t threaten us anymore. We’re loved and forgiven, so we can talk about our sin and mistakes. We see we’re sinners, and we’ve been forgiven.
Last week Jason confessed how he struggles with his pride, P. Dwight shared how he is a people pleaser who wants people to like him. I’ve confessed how I idolize productivity and getting things done—I’m a busy beaver, and care more about my “to do” list than about loving God or loving people. I also care about how people view me as a preacher/pastor.
I’ve seen couples come and seek help for deep and serious marriage problems. There are people in our church who’ve experienced domestic violence, who’ve been raped, who’ve struggled with homosexuality, and many who struggle with pornography.
And that’s okay. The Gospel says we’re all fellow sinners who have been shown grace and mercy. We don’t have to act like we’re righteous and hide our sin. The Gospel has already told us that we’re more sinful than we even realize. But we don’t have to fear rejection or ridicule or shame. We’ve found love and acceptance in Christ, and now we extend and receive that love and acceptance with one another.
We don’t want this to be a place where we have to hide our problems. This is to be a safe place where we can talk about our problems and find Christ and the Gospel together.
This points to a second characteristic:
2. Openness and Unity
We can be transparent because we’re more accepting of other people.
We don’t condemn or look down on others. We aren’t self-righteous or condescending. Because we realize we’re sinners, more sinful than we even know, and that we’re saved by grace.
Someone who smokes, swears, gambles—it’s not a big deal. Welcome to our community of fellow sinners.
Someone who has slept around, used drugs, had trouble with the law, been raped, raped someone—we want to confront sin—it hurt the person and others. But we accept people. We’re all sinners.
Let me add another dimension to this characteristic of openness and unity.
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Col 3:11)
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
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The old categories are gone.We have a ways of categorizing people:
Guys/girls, married/single, Asians/Caucasians/African-Americans, etc.
Democrats/Republicans, Mac/PC, Ivy-league/2nd tier college/no college
Good looking/not as good looking, nerds/jocks, “Good”/“Bad”, Pastors/leaders/lay people
We categorize people and then we place value judgments on those categories. Often, we think some groups are better than other groups, and we treat them differently.
God has categories too. In heaven, there’s (a) God and (b) sinners saved by grace. The old categories are gone. They’re not important. What’s important is whether we have put our trust in Christ, whether we are in Christ, or not.
God doesn’t see a distinction between a Jew and a Greek, a mailman or a millionaire, security guard or a surgeon, a drunkard or a deacon, a prostitute or a preacher. To God, He regards them all the same.
We draw lines where God does not draw lines. We make distinctions where God does not.
And the Gospel teaches us to see people the way God sees people. The Gospel removes the old categories, erases the lines. The Gospel makes us more accepting of other people. We are not looking down on some. Nor are we overly impressed with others. We recognize the only thing that really matters is Christ in us.
What is God looking for? He’s looking for hearts that love and trust Him.
It is in the Gospel that we have a real hope for unity and oneness that the world does not know. That’s what happened in the early church: Jews/Gentiles, men/women, slaves/free—all together as members of one body.
Renewal, we are a rather narrow group of people. We can open ourselves more ethnically, social-economically, demographically, etc. We can see, not “us” and “them,” but all people in one category of sinners who need Jesus.
Notice v. 14, love binds everything in perfect harmony.
V. 15, the peace of Christ rules in our hearts
This is primarily vertical, our peace with God.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death (Col 1:21-22)
Now that we’re reconciled to God, we’re also united to one another.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.”
As reconciled to God, we become reconcilers/peacemakers (v. 15)
This overlaps with point 2, as forgiven, we forgive (13)
3. Forgiveness and Reconciliation
There are so many bad ways people address conflict.
Avoid/withdraw—they leave the CG/church, they change the subject, they live in denial.
Win—they push, argue, bully, display their anger, intimidate, etc. Unloving: I win, you lose.
Yield—they let it go, though the resentment remains and builds until eventually it explodes. It’s not really forgiveness, it’s a lot more about fear than freedom.
But the Gospel produces a culture of forgiveness and reconciliation.
The Gospel teaches us to see ourselves as sinners. We’re not victims. It’s not the other person’s fault. It produces a humility that says, I’m more sinful than I even realize. It teaches us to ask for forgiveness. “I apologize. Please forgive me” –to God and to one another.
I’ll have to say I’m not always good at apologize, especially to my wife. But I think the Gospel is teaching me to do this better. It’s teaching me that I’m as a sinner, almost as much as her =).
The Gospel says, I’ve been given more than I deserve. What I deserve is hell, but I’ve been given heaven. I am thankful. The mode of my life isn’t complaining and resentment but thanksgiving and praise. There is a generous spirit.
Thankfulness 3x in this passage. Thankful people don’t fight as much. There’s an emotional cushion; things don’t upset/offend us as much. Thanksgiving: a practice I strongly recommend.
The Gospel says, I don’t need to be treated right. I don’t need to have it my way. I don’t need to be vindicated. I don’t need to be loved and appreciated and respected. The Gospel should free from using people to meet some need or want within us. Christ has met those needs; we are loved by Him, so we can love people freely, regardless of how they respond to us. (Discussed with Gospel Transformation)
I’ll have to say, these are all hard, impossible.
Although there should be authenticity and transparency, we all play our image-management games and keep our secrets.
Although there should be openness and unity, we have cliques and biases; we see ourselves and others through our categories of “good” and “bad.”
Although there should be forgiveness and reconciliation, people fight, churches split, missionaries leave the field over conflicts, Christian couples right and get divorced.
You see, true Gospel Community is a miracle, a work of God, a taste of heaven, the fruit of deep Gospel Transformation. It is the evidence of God’s reality: our love and unity are to show the world that Jesus and His Gospel are real.
This goes back to our first point: the engine, what drives and produces this kind of community is the Gospel saturating and transforming our lives. We are saved by this Gospel and we’re to live and grow in this Gospel.
To be clear, this message is not primarily telling you to be more transparent, loving, forgiving. Our passage is telling us to do these things. But our focus is on Christ, the focus is on the Gospel.
You are chosen, made holy, beloved, forgiven and at peace/reconciled to God.
You are more sinful than you realize, but you are completely forgiven and utterly loved.
Then, our lives and our community would be transformed.