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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 11 The
Community of Christ I’ve mentioned how some
Christians view their particular church building as the “House of
God”. As a child I would
enter the church building every Sunday.
We could talk and laugh all we wanted outside, but as soon as we
stepped through the sacred doors we’d have to speak in a reverent
whisper. I’d sort of
understand this if our whispering was due to the presence of our Lord,
but I think it had more to do with the building than anything else.
In the early 1970’s I
found clarity on this issue, partly due to the Bible teaching of Charles
Simpson. Back then I used to
listen to countless teachings on cassette tapes which were a source of
valuable information. I
used to listen to Derek Prince, a co-worker with Simpson in ministry.
One set of eighteen tapes was entitled
“Systematic Theology”. I
pretty well wore those tapes out. I recall Judson
Cornwall’s teaching tape on “how to find a wife”.
I listened to that tape nine times in a span of a week or so.
Being twenty two years old and single, I thought I needed this
teaching. I still recall one
thing he said, and that was, “you don’t necessarily have a good
marriage. You make your
marriage good”. The very first teaching
tape I ever listened to was by Charles Simpson on the topic of the
“The House of the Lord”, based on Psalm 27:4.
The verse reads, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I
seek: that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple”.
(NIV) David, the writer of this
Psalm most likely understood the “House of the Lord” and the “ The House of the Lord as
seen in the New Testament is both the individual Christian and the
church. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:19)
People become God’s house when His Spirit comes to live in
them. It only makes sense
that if God lives in us, we must be His house. That’s why Christians
can’t go to church. You
can’t go to a place when you are that place.
I wish we’d stop speaking in terms of “going to church”. It’s
not Scriptural.
In 1972 I left the David says in Psalm 27:4
that he only wanted one thing from the Lord.
That’s not much. I’d like many things.
What David wanted most out of life was to dwell in God’s house.
So if David lived today, his life’s desire would be to live
among God’s community of redeemed people because that’s God’s
house on earth. This isn’t necessarily
the thinking in much of the ecclesiastical maze today. We
compartmentalize our lives. Church
is just one of many parts of our complex lives.
Church is someplace we say we go to, not live in or live among.
When we’re not in church as we normally say, we don’t think
much about church. This
isn’t the New Testament understanding of Psalm 27:4.
David’s desire became
my desire in the early 1970’s. My
allegiance shifted from an organized denomination to individual people.
No longer was I joined to a denomination with a membership card
to prove my allegiance. My allegiance was to Robert, to Jim, to Gerald,
to Glen, and to others. These were real
live human beings. Now this
is New Testament understanding of Psalm 27:4. We called this allegiance
to one another “Christian community”.
The Greek word “koinonia” became popular in our vocabulary,
as it did in other people’s vocabulary.
The word “koinonia” appears to come from the word “koinos”,
which means “common”. “Koinonia”
means “fellowship, communion, participation, or association. You can
see how the word “common” fits into the definition of
“koinonia”. Commonality
is fundamental to communion and participation with others. With this in
mind, we wanted our lives to be “held in common with each other and
with Jesus”. Or to put it
another way, we wanted close fellowship, communion, or participation
with one another as seen in Acts 2:44 and 4:32.
In Psalm 27:4 David also
says that if he could live in God’s house, he’d see the “beauty of
the Lord” there. Have you
ever thought in terms of God being beautiful?
The “beauty of our Lord” can be seen in God’s New Testament
home as well, when we are properly joined together in Christian
community. Where there is no
such joining, our Lord’s beauty can’t be seen.
Look at it this way.
A young lady is about to be married.
Everyone can see the glow on her face.
The glow comes from her relationship to her fiancé.
In like manner there is a glow that surrounds those who are
properly joined to Jesus and to each other.
This glow is the “beauty of the Lord”.
David also recognized the
fact that he could “inquire from God at His Temple”, as the King
James Version puts it. When
we find ourselves joined to individuals in God’s house, you’ll soon
find out that there ars many advantages. One such advantage is that
it’s a place where we can inquire from the Lord and those He has
joined us to. We can receive
input concerning important issues of life.
We don’t have to go through life alone.
It’s sad to know people who are joined to the ecclesiastical
maze, but have no one to share their important issues of life with.
In June of 1975 Glen
Shaver, who cared for me in the Lord as a young Christian suggested that
I think about going to Being joined to others in
the community of believers is much different than just being joined to
the ecclesiastical maze. New
Testament thinking concerning church is about being joined to
individuals for mutual edification and ministry.
Once again, I call this “functional relationships” because
you are joined as friends, and as friends you work together for Jesus
and with Jesus. For me, I
found in the community of God’s people both a place to live and a
place where my service to Jesus could stem from.
Ministry should begin
from the community of believers and proceed out into the world.
One problem I see in the ecclesiastical maze is that ministry is
confined to our meetings that are held in our buildings, which is more
self-serving than anything else. This
is foreign to New Testament thinking.
Our Lord’s house on
earth today is definitely not a building down the street.
We are His house if we are properly joined to Him and to one
another.
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