September is always a busy month, as everything ramps up after the summer break, and it is inevitable that we get caught up in what’s going on in our particular context more than wider concerns. But it is a vital time for our Church. Very practically, the elections for General Synod are now underway, and it is really important to ensure all who can vote, do so before 13 October. Reminders are often needed in busy lives – so please vote if you can.
But over these past months, a repeated theme has been reflected back to me – a concern about our fragmentation. In various ways, our energies as a constituency, let alone as a church, have been in danger of replicating the main spiritual divisions of Jesus’ day among the covenant people of God. Some have sold-out to culture, as the Sadducees did – amending their doctrine to be acceptable to the politics of the day – there have always been revisionists! Others commend the Essene’s approach – quarantining from anyone or everyone that might corrupt them. Others are like the Zealots – for whom radical politics was the driving force, even justifying breaking laws to assert their leadership. And the Pharisees – Bible experts who were great at pointing out the faults in others without doing anything to help them. Most of us have a bit of each in us, but when you define yourself in these ways, you leave the Way of Jesus.
Jesus managed to transcend those factions with the grace of faith, and a gospel decision. Responding to the accusation that he was corrupted by his associations with people, he said: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Luke 5:31-32. So he preached grace in the temple run by the revisionist Sadducees, he attended the synagogues run by legalist Pharisees, he had a Zealot and a compromised tax-collector on His team, and recognition from the nearly Essene Baptist, John.
How? He embodied the grace He proclaims. His vision for His church, whose unity was His passionate prayer in John 17:20-23, and whose love for each other was to be the defining distinctive virtue in John 13:34-35, needs to love each other more than we just love to correct each other, or (worse) condemn each other from afar. The gospel freedom we are given to proclaim is a call to “serve one another humbly in love” Galatians 5:13-15. We are called to win people by grace, not score points on the basis of our arguments.
13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Galatians 5:13-15
My fear is that in the effort to contend for the gospel in this day, we end up contending with each other more than proclaiming and embodying the grace of the gospel to the lost world. The new covenant is signed and sealed in baptism and secured by faith – it proclaims that we are family, even when (like many today) there is confusion and distortion of the love that should bind us together. Paul’s warning is stark: If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other; but his command is practical and radical: serve one another humbly in love. Get your heart right: make sure love and grace moves you in your action – make sure the fruit of the Spirit grows through what we do and how we do it. Then Get your act together: make sure you are humbly serving the ones you are seeking to change. We cannot be too loving or too kind or too peace-making, if we’re following Jesus, can we? Love builds up 1 Cor.8:1. It is our calling, right back from Abraham; those who are blessed are called to be a blessing to the world.
So pray Jesus’ John 17 prayer for our unity, because the risk of our fragmenting is great, not just for our fellowship, but for our witness and faithfulness to the gospel of grace. Let’s rather be known for serving one another humbly in love, that the world may see reflected in us the one who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many!