Simple Church 2: Back to Basics (7) - "What Does Biblical Church Life Look Like?"

Hebrews 10 and Romans 12: The Biblical Pattern for Church Life

Hebrews chapter 10, 24, says, and let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.

Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12 and verses 9 through 16, Romans chapter 12 and verses 9 to 16. Once again God's words, let love be without hypocrisy, detest evil, cling to what is good, love one another deeply as brothers and sisters, take the lead in honoring one another, do not lack diligence in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, be persistent in prayer, share with the saints in their needs, pursue hospitality, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, live in harmony with one another, do not be proud, instead associate with the humble, do not be wise in your own estimation.

We pray that God would bless that reading of his word and grant us all understanding. Let's pray together and ask for the Spirit's help as we come to this portion of God's word. Gracious Savior, we would ask that as we come to your word once again that you would open our eyes, that we would see wonderful things out of your Lord, cause us to grow in our understanding, cause us to be inclined in our will, and cause us to love these things in our affections.

Father, it's our normal habit to pray for area churches, but Father I take a moment to pray for our own fellowship this afternoon. Father, this is a weighty word to bring. As we think about life in the church, we wrestle with presuppositions and previous backgrounds.

We ask that you would be at work helping us even to understand these things. We ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Eddie, you might want to unplug it and re-plug it to get the internet going.

Okay. Please be seated. We don't have our slides working yet. My title for this afternoon sermon is slightly a long one if you have the study guide in front of you, and I hope you do. I've called it Biblical Church Life 101 or What Does Life in the Church Look Like?

My reasoning for giving it two titles is not because I couldn't pick between the two, but I'm intentionally cluing you into the fact that we're going to do something that might be a little bit Puritan today, and the reason why that's the case will become apparent as we go.

But we're thinking about biblical church life. What does life in the church look like? Well, as we begin this afternoon, I want to begin on a note of vulnerability with you, if I may, for a moment. I'm not generally one to get vulnerable in public.

Save that for close friends, but I think this may prove helpful as to why I'm going to say some of the things that I will say this afternoon. I grew up in church. I think I've alluded to that more than once in my time here at Redeemer.

I grew up in church. In fact, I think I've mentioned it a few times, but I'm what they call the PK, preacher's kid. That meant, for me at least, being in church a lot and being around church a lot. I've seen healthy churches and I've seen incredibly unhealthy churches in my short life.

Of course, the irony is everyone thinks that the church that they're a part of is healthy. At least they hope so. I mean, that's why they're there. At least I hope so. But then that begs the question, how do you know if a church is actually healthy?

I mean, like I said, we all assume that the churches we are in are healthy, but does that assumption actually bear up when we start to ask some questions? Well, that was the question that I was faced with in 2019.

My wife and I have been married just over two years. I was serving an area church here. I won't name the church because I don't really need to. I was serving there as an intern and I had the privilege of mostly getting to plan and teach Bible classes as well as leading a home group.

If you had looked at my life at that moment in 2019, from the outside looking in, I was involved and I was serving and I was happy to be there. And I mean, I was involved and I was serving. But by the winter of 2018, I knew something was off.

You ever had that feeling where you know something just isn't quite right? One of my favorite Shakespeare plays is Hamlet. In act one, it's Marcellus who says that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, referring to the death of the king of Denmark, which is kind of suspicious if you read the play.

I'm somebody who, when something is off, I can't let it go. And it's like, something about what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing doesn't make sense to me. And so whenever I get that sense, I understand that as a human being sometimes your emotions get the better of you and you think things are true that aren't true.

And so I've gone to the place where I question myself when I have that feeling and then I take it back to scripture and ask, okay, let's go to the Bible. Let's see, is this thing you feel accurate or is it just you?

And so began an in-depth study into the doctrine of the church that really hasn't let me go since, so much so, that despite being in a church that my wife had attended for years, it was the church that married us, it was the church that gave me an opportunity to serve when I got to this country when I thought it might be a while.

As my wife and I wrestled and talked and wrestled and talked, went back to the scriptures, we became painfully convinced that this church that we were in, that for lots of people who were there would have considered it the greatest church in the world, that this church wasn't living up to what I saw in scripture.

Now, I'm someone who doesn't particularly like gossip in the life of a church and so I made a conscious effort to not tell anybody what I was feeling at that moment, to just continue serving, continue not to be a nuisance, but I did eventually speak to the leadership of that church because that's, I think, the biblical thing to do.

If you've got a concern, don't talk to everybody else, talk to the people who might be able to do something about it. Unfortunately, that went on to deaf ears and so in 2019, we left. We left and we came to this church plant as it was getting started.

I'd like to say that the story ended happily ever after and okay, yeah, we didn't have a great time at that church, but things have been great here. Well, they are now, but it was apparent that the Lord had some more lessons about the church for me to learn.

This church started with the desire to be a healthy, Bible-teaching, Gospel-cherishing church and for the most part, we've kept to that, for which I'm incredibly thankful. Unfortunately, I learned very quickly that desire only gets you so far and at the time, there was little desire for much else beyond preaching and the gift of one person.

Well, that one person decided to leave in the middle of the pandemic, no less and that's why our church reset. That's why we're now known as Redeemer Bible Fellowship. Those of you who've been here a long time will know we weren't always called that.

Story from another time, but hey, that was kind of a rough start, but now we could get to the business of worshipping God, of making disciples and evangelizing the lost and everything I'm about to say is just my opinion and then we didn't.

I watched confusion and personal ambition and an inability to set aside one's desires, unwillingness to acknowledge wrong until it was too late and infighting, oh Lord, how much infighting. At the time, I wasn't in, it was a weird situation, wasn't in leadership, I was kind of in leadership, it was a mess, but I sat back and watched this church almost tear itself apart at one moment and at the time, I thought I was powerless to stop it, probably could have done more than I did, but it became very apparent that again, something was very wrong.

At times, I thought God was disciplining us and that His discipline would be so severe, things were so bad, I thought the only way I can see this ending is if God just said, you know what, I've had enough of this church, I'm pulling the plug, I'm done.

After all, God is just and He says in the Bible that He does that to churches, we read Revelation chapters two and three, but God is equally merciful as He is just and over the last couple of years, I've seen Him shepherd our church through the various struggles and weaknesses of the flesh that we experience to the place where we are today, where things are healthy, where things are stable and like I said, that's a little more vulnerability than I would have publicly talking about some of this stuff, but I start there because beloved, the stuff I'm going to talk to you about in this message, by the way, this message is going to go long, I apologize, I tried my best, I cut things out, cut things out and it's still going to go long, so I apologize, but I start with that because this isn't experimentation or theory for me, beloved, this isn't stuff that, you know, I sit up in my ivory towel with my thousands of books and just think about for the fun of it, I've seen churches that lost their way and couldn't find that way back and though they're still going, it's very clear in the words of first Samuel, Ichabod, the glory has departed, I've seen churches that started off not so great and eventually did a better job and I unfortunately know of too many churches that missed their divine purpose and are no more today.

As the pastor of this church, I think constantly about the survival of this church and if this church is going to survive and not just survive, I don't think God's will is for churches to just survive, I think God wants churches not just to survive but to thrive and if our church is going to survive and not just survive but thrive, then it's going to take all of us knowing what health looks like and all of us pursuing that together.

The reality is though that all of us come with presuppositions, none of us come as a blank slate, we all come with previous experience, things that we think are important, we all come with our idea of what church and life in the church ought to be.

Now that's not always a bad thing, God has made us all that we are different, he in his providence allows us to go through different life experiences and to view things through the lens of our own experiences, that's fine but we've got to be careful that we don't so lean in that direction that we do or that we proceed to think about life in the church purely based on what we want out of the church.

If I can say that lovingly, we just cannot do that, our views of the church cannot be formed by us, after all think back to week one, we didn't invent the church, the triune God in eternity past predestined that there would be a thing called the church of Jesus Christ, it's his idea.

Those of you who grabbed the bookmark that we make for every series, you'll know that this was supposed to be the close-up, this was going to be the end of the series but just as I had various conversations this last week and was made aware of some things, I finally called an audible, I generally don't like to call audibles like that but I did this week, I said you know what, this message is too important to weigh another week and it was Wednesday night when I finally said okay, yeah, I'm doing this and as I thought about this on Wednesday night, I had a flashback to one of the many, many, many meetings I had with the man I consider to be my mentor in the faith, I'll spare you the story of my friend and father in the faith, Pastor Nathaniel, who's gone home to be with the Lord now, though that is a story you should ask me sometime but I had a flashback to sitting in his house in Stoke Newington, which is a part of the borough I lived in, I was a little further away but I remembered sitting in his house one day and us talking about the church and him pulling a book off his shelf and grabbing his Bible that he loved so much and walking me through some teaching about life in the church and I remembered as a teenager at the time how impactful that was for me, so again I'm now sitting in my bedroom in Medford, I'm like I wonder if I have that book, so I start scratching my head, I was like I think it was a John Owen book, so I walk into our guest room, that's where my Puritan sets all live and there it was, volume 13, it contained the book I was looking for, John Owen is considered one of the most precise authors of the Puritan era, he's generally quite hard to read sometimes if we're honest, but he was a pastor as well as a scholar, in fact so much was he a pastor, he actually went and planted a church of his own and in planting that church, he wanted that church to be on a solid foundation, so he wrote a couple of books, one of which is going to form the basis of the message you're going to hear today, I'm not a plagiarist, I have no business in being one, so I'll tell you up front, a lot of my thinking that wasn't driven by the text was driven by Owen this week, you can actually get that book in a much more modernized and readable format, our friends at Banner of Truth publish it, it's called Duties of Christian Fellowship, it's in their paperback series, it's a relatively new one, but as I read that book it became painfully apparent that, and this is my big idea for this message, that biblical church life requires clear principles and determined actions, very simple, that's all I really want to say in this message, that you can have all different kinds of versions of church life if you want, but biblical church life, the only kind of church life we should concern ourselves with, biblical church life requires clear principles and determined action, and so as I said this afternoon I'm going to do something that's very different for me, and yes we are going to go to the text of scripture, but Dr. Owen is going to be our guide through a couple of texts, and we're going to think biblically and historically about what life in the church should look like.

Healthy Church Life Is About Encouraging One Another

For the rest of our time I want to consider three crucial truths about church life that we need to consider if Redeemer is going to be the healthiest church it can be, three crucial truths, and like I said we're going to do this with a little help from Dr. Owen, so three truths, like I said I've got a long way to go so I should just jump in at this point, number one, healthy church life is about encouraging one another, healthy church life is about encouraging one another.

I hope you have Hebrews 10 open, keep that open we'll be there for a little bit. In Hebrews chapter 10 we come to a section where the author has been lifting up the high priesthood of Jesus Christ, the fact that Jesus' work as a priest is greater and more glorious than Aaron's work ever could have been, and in chapter 10 he's starting to land the plane of that discussion with some application, and beginning in chapter 10 verse 22, you've got three sets of exhortation, they all revolve around faith, hope, and love, so in chapter 10 verse 22, look at it with me for a moment, 10 22, in fact in verse 21 it says, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our conscience, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water, that's the first exhortation he gives in light of the fact that Jesus is our high priest.

Verse 23, he gives us a second one, let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful, and then we come to the text I want us to focus in on for a few moments, verses 24 and 25, and let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.

The third command relates to love, and in particular we're to consider how to provoke one another to love and good works. The word provoke is an interesting one, it carries the idea of rousing somebody to activity, apparently we have an English word, I've never heard of this word, but it came up in my research this week, the word paroxysm apparently comes from this word, I've never used it ever in my life, but apparently it means a sudden attack or a violent expression of something.

Now rest assured this is not a call for church sanctioned violence, please do not hear me say that you're meant to go put your hands on anybody, do not. This is not a call for church sanctioned violence, but it is a call to church sanctioned encouragement, that's what some of your Bibles will say, encourage one another to love and good works.

The point is that we are called to intensely encourage one another to pursue love and good works with a passion that borders on violence. Now I said that Owen would help us, Owen actually doesn't write on this verse in the book I'm talking about, but he also did write a massive commentary on Hebrews, and he does touch on it here, here's what Owen says, quote, this provoking one another to love and good works is the great end of the communion, the fellowship, that is among Christians in the mutual consideration of one another.

Considering the circumstances, conditions, walkings, abilities for usefulness of one another, they do excite one another unto love and good works, which is called the provocation of them, or the stirring up of the minds of men unto them.

In other words, Owen says that this was the great purpose why God puts people together in churches, that they can encourage one another to pursue love and good works, and not just encourage, that they would provoke or stir up the mind to pursue these things.

Here's what I find interesting, Owen goes on and says this, bear in mind he's writing in the 1600s, it's 150 years thereabouts after the reformation has taken place, listen to what he says, I found it, he says, excuse me, this was the way and the practice of the Christians of old, but is now generally lost with most of the principles of practical obedience, especially those which concern our mutual edification, as if they had never been prescribed in the gospel.

Remember, he's writing that in the 1600s. We tend to look back at that age and think that was a glory age of Christianity, and here's Owen saying, no, actually, even in this day, Christians back in the day understood this, and they don't understand it now.

If he could say that writing in the 1600s, I'll pause for a moment and just ask, what would he say in 2022? Allow me to get practical here for a moment. How many people, I don't know if he uses expression over here, we use it in the UK where I'm from, you get the hump with something, you're unhappy with something, how many of us get the hump with a church for reasons other than this?

How many people leave a church because the church, in their mind, didn't love them enough, didn't make them feel wanted, and insert varying themes on that idea? I don't think that's necessarily wrong or inherently wrong.

In fact, we'll look at Romans chapter 12 in a few moments, and we're commanded very clearly to love one another earnestly, but again, like I said, I've grown up in church and been around church long enough to know that how often is it that the folks who complain about that, that they happen to be the same folks who are thinking about serving others.

Usually those two don't go together. The folks who generally complain about that are usually the ones who aren't serving others. It almost becomes as though church life is a one-sided transaction. You need to do for me, you need to pour into me, you need to invest in me, and then I'll invest in others.

And if we're honest, how many of us have been in churches where that's been the norm? But what if we didn't start there? What if we didn't start with whether we felt loved, but with loving others? I read the New Testament, and it amazes me how much the New Testament focuses on the call not to be loved, but to love others.

So Galatians 5 .13 says that we are to serve one another through love. Ephesians 4 .2 says we are to bear with one another. In fact, it's bearing. It's active, present. Bearing with one another in love.

Paul prays for the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 3 .12, that they would increase and overflow with love for one another. Beloved, at the risk of sounding somewhat callous, and really that's not my intent, so please receive this in the Spirit, which is intended.

But church, like the rest of life, just isn't about us. It's ultimately about God and His glory, first and foremost, and then how I can pour into my brother and my sister. And then it's about you. And even then, it's not really about you.

It's about your growth in godliness, so that you can turn around and serve your brother and your sister. The Old Testament Hebrews would have us to understand from chapter 10 verse 24 that church life begins with recognizing that church life is about passionately encouraging one another to pursue Christ-like love for one another.

And how does that love manifest itself? In good works. It's practical. It's not just a sentimental feeling, it's an action. Okay, so far so good. Okay, church life is all about encouragement. Okay, it's about encouraging one another.

All right. Well, how do we do that? Well, point number two this afternoon, church life happens in the context of gathering a lot. Church life happens in the context of gathering a lot. For a moment, I need to walk you through the grammar of this passage, because oftentimes people will separate 24 and 25 into two different commands, but they're not two different commands.

They're one unit of thought. In the men's training program, I've been telling them about diagramming a passage, seeing how the structure of it works. Well, let me do my best to kind of visually illustrate this to you.

Verse 24 is the command, is the what. Here's what you're supposed to do. But do you notice that verse 25 says not neglecting to gather together, or not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together?

That's a participle. A participle explains how you do the action. So if the action is to provoke love and good works, here's how you do it, verse 25. You do it by, and it's interesting, he doesn't say gather together.

He says not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing. A few observations that, again, I want to point out. First one I just gave you, which is that gathering isn't the command, it's the means to fulfill the command.

That's just the first observation I'd have for you, if you want to put technical labels on it. Verse 24 is the imperative, the command. Verse 25 is the means by which the imperative is acted on. Simple enough.

But let's push in a little bit deeper here. Gathering isn't the command, it's the means to fulfill the command. If that's true, then secondly, not gathering is both spiritually dangerous as well as a sin.

Not gathering is both spiritually dangerous as well as a sin. In his commentary, Dr. Owen notes, at least he can surmise from the context of Hebrews, three reasons why people weren't gathering and the author felt the need to say this.

I mean, it makes common sense. If he's telling them not to gather, or not to neglect gathering, excuse me, that implies what? They're not gathering. Owen gives three reasons. First of all, some neglected gathering due to fear of suffering.

In other words, there's persecution, which is very clear in Hebrews. There's an overtone of your suffering because of your faith. And so for some people, it was easier to have what they would consider a private faith.

Yes, I believe in Jesus, but sorry, I can't be seen to be worshiping with the Christians. So for some, it was because of suffering. But Owen also notes that for some, it wasn't suffering. He calls it spiritual sloth, Owen.

Other things will offer themselves in competition with the diligent attendance unto these assemblies. If men do not stir themselves up and shake off the weight that lies upon them, they will fall under a woeful neglect as to this and all other important Christian duties.

Such persons are influenced by, as are influenced by them, will make use of many species, in other words, questionable, please, taken for the most part from their occasions and necessities. These things they will plead with men and there is no contending with them, end quote.

So even in Owen's day, he acknowledged some people don't and they just make a bunch of excuses as to why they don't. Fear of suffering, spiritual sloth. Thirdly, he said that some just stopped gathering because actually they were apostatizing and that was one manifestation of that.

I would argue that's in the extreme. I don't think for most people that's where they're at, but it does happen. They're abandoning the faith and the first thing they did was they stopped coming to church.

Regardless of the reason, the author to the Hebrews tells his readers that, listen, in order for you to obey this command, you need to stop neglecting the gathering of God's people. He had such a high view of what happened when Jesus' people came together that he was willing to plead with his brothers and sisters not to stay away but to be present.

And it's clear when you read him that he counts this every bit as important as drawing near with a true heart in full assurance of faith and in holding on to the confession of our faith. All of us as Christians would say those are super important, but he puts gathering together with God's people on the same plane.

Owen again, great diligence is required of us in a due attendance unto the assemblies of the church for the ends of them as they, in other words, for the reason why we gather, as they are instituted and appointed by Jesus Christ.

The benefit we receive by them, the danger of their neglect, the sense of the authority of Christ, concernment or importance, importance of his glory in them, with the vanity of the pretenses for their neglect, call aloud for this kind of diligence.

Now, I'm a Western Christian, so I know exactly what I'm going to be told at this point. Kofi, that sounds legalistic. Nobody is more sensitive to legalism than the one who's preaching to you right now.

As you all know, I love my distinction between law and gospel. We must always separate between what God does freely by his grace and what God commands of us. And nevertheless, while we keep that, those things distinct, it is not legalism to take the commands of Jesus.

And by the way, every command you read in your New Testament is a command of Jesus. It is not legalism to take the commands of Jesus seriously. And not just to take them seriously, but to move heaven and earth in obeying them.

One of which, according to this passage, is to give earnest thought to how we can exert every effort to encourage one another to love and good works by gathering together. There's a third observation I want to make, though.

And here's this. Gathering in itself is an act of encouragement. Gathering in itself is an act of encouragement. So again, look at verse 24, it says, 25, excuse me, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.

So parallel to not neglecting to gather is encouraging, which tells me that gathering itself is a form of encouragement. And it says you're to do this all the more. We'll come back to that in a moment, as you see the day approaching.

So encouragement in our faith, encouragement in the face of the trials of life and attending church, according to the authors of the Hebrews, are hand in hand. Think about it. It's encouraging for you.

I don't know if this is how it is for you. It's for me every week. It's encouraging as you come together and you witness your brothers and sisters worshiping our great prophet, priest, and King Jesus, as you hear his word, as you hear his voice serenading your soul through the preaching of his word, as you partake of the food that he provides for the strengthening of your soul, as you minister to one another in conversation and seeing how things are.

It's encouraging for your brothers and sisters, not just you, as we check in with each other and we see how we can minister to one another. Gathering in itself, if we are diligent about it, brothers and sisters, is an encouragement of its own.

If that's true, then my final observation is this, we need more gathering together, not less. If I haven't weirded you out enough, allow me to push back against the conventional wisdom of so many churches today.

So many churches will tell you, okay, fine, we do Sunday, but that's not where church life happens. Church life happens in, insert, other events apart from church on Sunday. Well, yes, the totality of church life doesn't happen on Sunday, but can I put it like this?

You need more formal gathered times of worship in your life, not less. I didn't say it, the text did. And in verse 25, see that little phrase right at the end? And all the more as you see the day approaching, which day is he referring to?

The final day, the day of the Lord, the day when God will pour out his wrath on an unbelieving world, and he will finally bless his people with his eternal presence. You see, Christian, it's precisely because we have a end time new creation perspective.

It's precisely because we believe a day is coming when we will eternally be with the lover of our souls. It's precisely because we know we are headed to a time and a place where one day there will be no time.

It's precisely, if we understand that properly, it's for that precise reason that we are willing to give our time now for the purpose of gathering. Call it a spiritual advance on what we will one day enjoy in full, unlimited and unbounded communion with our God and his people.

Again, I am a Western Christian, just as many of you are. So no doubt you have heard the excuses that people will bring up at this point. Kofi, this is starting to feel like a guilt trip. Well, I hope not.

And if it does, I apologize. That's not my aim at all. You know, the reality is I can't go to everything. Nobody said go to everything. We recognize that there are various things that happen. People get sick, people travel, work will call late into the day.

Older saints used to talk about this language of being providentially hindered. You in your power wanted to do everything you could, but stuff happens in the providence of God. That much we get. But if the statistics are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them, there are some who are here, some who are not here, who could have been here and aren't here.

Or they're willfully inconsistent. Key word there being willfully. Can I plead with you, brothers and sisters, that every gathering you miss is another missed opportunity for growth, for encouragement, for deepening our knowledge of and our worship of our triune God.

Could it be that every time that we fail to gather, we are missing out on the, remember I call this a spiritual advance, we're missing out on a little bit more enjoyment of the advance on what we are going to enjoy in eternity.

But again, I think it's the third time I've said this now, I'm a Western Christian. I know what the response will be to that. Kofi, Kofi, Kofi, Kofi. I don't get anything out of the meetings when I turn up.

I've had people point blank tell me that. I don't get anything out of it. Just we come, we open the Bible, we talk about the Bible and we go home. You know, as someone once told my pastor, there's no fellowship in this church.

My pastor asked, okay, do you turn up for the things that happen? Well, no, because they don't appeal to me. Listen to Owen again. The end, the purpose of these assemblies, the gathering of God's people was twofold.

The due performance of all solemn stated orderly evangelical worship in prayer, the ministry of the word, singing of Psalms and the administration of the sacraments. Secondly, the exercise of discipline, and he doesn't mean church discipline here.

He means, he tells you, or the watch of the church over its members with respect until their respect onto, in other words, in relation to their walking and manner of life, that in all things, it be such as becomes the gospel.

End quote. You'll encounter some people for whom they like church when church has social events. Oh, we love those. No, here's the thing. I don't think social events are bad. We're having one next Saturday.

I hope to see many of you there. They're not bad in and of themselves, beloved, but when we say that's where the real fellowship happens, now we've got a problem. Kofi, you're really laboring this point.

I labor it because I think all of us, myself included, we all have to set our expectations accordingly, especially if you've been blessed to, like me, grow up in church, or you've been in church a long time.

Depending on where you've been to church, all of us carry baggage from the places we've been, and we have to ask ourselves, when we gather, are we gathering for the right reason, for the right purpose, and with the right goal in mind?

Now, I understand at this point, it sounds like, man, this sounds very relationally dry. Well, turn me to Romans chapter 12, and here's my third point. So we've talked about the fact that church life is about encouragement.

We've talked about that church life happens or involves gathering together a lot. Thirdly, church life is relationally robust. It's relationally robust, and for this, I want you to have Romans 12 in front of you.

So Romans chapter 12, the passage that we read, and verses 9 through 16. I put it to you that Romans 12, 9 through 16, is one of the most neglected texts about life in the body, and in his duties of Christian fellowship, the books that I refer to you.

Owen provides, again, for this church that he was starting, he provided what he called a number of rules. Now, we hear rules, and we think laws. What he means are principles. That's the word they would have used back then.

He provides a number of principles for Christian fellowship, some of them based on this passage, and so for a few moments, I want to walk us through Romans chapter 12, 9 through 16, and for us to see what God has designed life in the church to be like.

Now, in full disclosure, those of you who have a study guide in front of you, you'll see some of these have an asterisk next to them. If they do, that was one of Owen's original points. Owen doesn't deal with all the verses in Romans 12, 9 through 16, so I added one or two more based on the verses, but we're going to march our way through it, and hopefully, we'll learn a thing or two about how church life is relationally robust.

You also tell if it's Owen, because Owen's ones are really long. In fact, here's number one. He says, quote, believers have a duty of affectionate, sincere, genuine love in all things toward one another, a love compared to that of Christ for the church.

So look at verse 9. What does Owen say? Let love be without hypocrisy. I grew up in the King James Version. It says, let love be without dissimulation, the act of simulating, pretending. Let love be without hypocrisy.

Detest evil, cling to what is good. Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Everything in church life flows from this foundational principle. Love for one another. Without this love for one another, we are nothing, 1 Corinthians 13 tells us.

So again, let's get practical. Let's get practical. If we say we love one another, then we want to know how each other is doing. Check in with each other. Ask about each other. Find ways to help each other.