CHRISTCOMMUNITY CHURCH

If you follow cricket you would know that the Aussie cricket world was dirty on Ricky Ponting’s decision to bat first in the Australia vs. Pakistan test.  Australia won the toss with the option to bat or bowl.  The pitch was apparently “green as a frog” and ripe for wickets but Ponting chose to bat.  The result?  Australia all out for 127, the lowest score on home soil for 13 years.  Ouch!

 

Ponting was summarily taken to task for his decision.  Former test opener Michael Slater, former Australian fast bowler Geoff Lawson, numerous fans, and even the ground curator piled on poor Ricky.  Keep in mind that Ricky Ponting is Australia’s test cricket’s most successful skipper.  I guess performance and results, not history, matter in the cricket community. 

 

Performance matters in most communities.  I once was part of an ultimate disk (frisbee) club that played games against other teams.  I dropped a perfect frisbee pass that would have been for a score and was never thrown to again.  No, I didn’t pout, but you have to admit that’s a tough standard! 

 

What’s different about Christian community?  What about Christ Community?  Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together says, “Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a human reality. In this is differs from all other communities.”  What binds Christians together is not race, education, income levels, or politics.  What is common among us, and what makes us into a community, is that we’ve each been loved by Jesus.  As a result we love one another for Jesus’ sake. 

 

Our love for one another is not based on performance nor is it withheld because of a blunder or even a sin.  The gospel of grace moves us to live in grace with one another.  Bonhoeffer goes on to say,

 

I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s [not mine.] Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love will meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him. Human love produces human dependence and constraint; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service and creates freedom. From the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume over against that person. It is vitally necessary that every Christian face this danger squarely and eradicate it.

 

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. As love to God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them. It can be greater service than speaking. There’s an impatient, inattentive listening that despises, only waiting for a chance to speak.

 

The second service is that of active helpfulness. This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. We must allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed the man who had fallen among thieves, perhaps reading the Bible.

 

We speak, third, of the service of bearing others. It is only in bearing with my brother that the great grace of God becomes wholly plain. To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness.

 

Where Christians live together the time must inevitably come when in some crisis one person will have to declare God’s Word to another. It is unchristian consciously to deprive another of the one decisive service we can render to him….We admonish one another to go the way that Christ bids us to go. We are gentle and severe….

 

“Confess your faults to one another” (James 5:16.) He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship, living in lies and hypocrisy. But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that says: “You’re a sinner, a great desperate sinner. Now come, as the sinner that you are, to the God who loves you”….A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.

 

What a wonderful thing it is to live in grace with one another.  What an ugly thing it is when the Christian community reflects the cricket, frisbee, or some similar community. 

 

Lord Jesus, give us a deep knowledge and experience of your love so we may love one another as you have loved us.  Make Christ Community into a community that reflects all you desire for your church.  For your glory and our good.  Amen.

 

By grace alone,

 

David Cunningham

david@christcommunity.org.au