Discipleship in the Church

Discipleship in the Church

Well, it's always a joy to be able to preach in this setting, to be able to have an opportunity to sit under a passage that we've all been hiding in our hearts over not just days but weeks. There's always something very special about gathering in worship with a word that's been concentrated upon and chewed, meditated, reflected, shared, celebrated.

We've had opportunities to look at verses 18 through 24 over the past two days. And now I have the great privilege to look at verses 12 through 17. So we looked at discipleship in the home as far as children and parents are concerned.

We looked at discipleship in the workplace. We looked at discipleship in marriage. And now this morning we look at discipleship in the church. Now if you remember, I structured the talks on Friday along three categories.

Calling, character, and commitment. The calling of parents, the calling of children. The character of parents, the character of children. And the commitment that God requires of parents. The commitment that God requires of children.

Those same three categories will guide our focus on verses 12 through 17 this morning. We're looking at discipleship in the church and we're wondering, what is that calling? What is the character of a church that is faithful?

To not only make disciples but to be faithful disciples. And what's the commitment that we need to have? To be a discipling and discipled church. So that's what we're looking at together this morning.

Within each of those categories, calling, character, commitment, we're going to look at two things. The largest part will probably be in the middle but we're going to have two things. Two things first that we are.

Two things that we are. Secondly, two things that we do. And lastly, two things that we need. This will all correspond to calling, character, and commitment. What we are, what we do, what we need according to Colossians 3, 12 through 17.

So we begin first with calling. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another.

If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body.

So there's a calling. Calling, as we saw even on Friday, calling is very much related to identity. So this is where we're talking about the two things that we are. Well, just in those verses, notice the two things that Paul highlights.

Two things that we are. First, we are, as Christ believers, as the church, we are the elect of God, holy and beloved. That's the first thing. This is all going to correspond to calling. The elect of God, holy and beloved.

And secondly, we are one body. These are the two things in Colossians 3, 12 through 17, that we are. We are the elect of God, if we believe in Christ, if we've repented and trusted in Him for salvation.

We are the elect of God, holy and beloved. And we are one body in Him.

This is our calling.

The fact of our identity frames our calling. What we are determines what we are called to do. It's very important we establish that. The fact of our identity frames our calling. And you remember within this calling that much of our calling as Christians is bound up with how we treat other Christians.

And what I've known, what I've experienced, and what I've witnessed is it's always easier to love other Christians from other churches than it is to love the Christians that you actually gather with regularly.

The Christians you have a lot of time, a lot of opportunity, a lot of friction, potential friction with. It's always easy to love Christians in the abstract. When you actually get a little bit closer where the warts and the wrinkles exist, it's a little bit harder to love Christians.

But this, Paul says, is what we're called to do. To which you were called in one body. Holy, beloved, elect. One body called, as we'll see in a moment, to operate with all of these things we're called to put on.

So all of these things correspond to our calling. All of these things correspond to our identity. This really brings up the so-called one another's. The things that we're called to do, the things that we're obliged to do, the things that Paul says we must do.

We must do because we're one body. We call each other brother and sister. We're one family. A church is a household of God. No wonder Paul can often speak of himself as a father or as a mother, speak of those in the church as little children.

This is the household of faith. And you know what it's like to be in a household. You didn't say, Mom and Dad, I was thinking last night, here's the list of what I want in my sister. Listen, if you're thinking about having another kid, yeah, here's a short list of what I want you to produce.

This is what I want my brother to be like. Family is not determined by you. It's not determined by Mom and Dad. It's determined by the Lord. And whoever is born into that household is part of that family, like it or not.

And so you don't have to like your family members. You have to love them. They're family. It's non-negotiable. What can you do? All of this corresponds to the household of faith. It's a household. One another, the one another's of Scripture, it's not a way of playing favorites.

We can't console ourselves and say, look how glorious my love of others is, if the others are a very narrow and select group of people. The others are not a select proportion within the church that I love with richness and lavishly.

The household of faith is what I'm called to love. The identity of the household of faith, elect, holy, and beloved. I'm called to love this body. I'm called to do the one another's in life with all of these people named brother or sister.

So the one another's are the one body. And this is to what we're called. We're called. Paul, more explicitly in Ephesians, where again in 5 and 6 he has the same idea, the same framework of what we're called to do in the relationships of the home, of the workplace, and in the church.

In Ephesians 4 he produces all of this, his going toward that in light of calling. He says, to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. With all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another.

What does that sound like? Sounds like Colossians 3. Bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Because there's one body, one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling.

You see, for Paul, when he thinks about the one body and the need for lowliness and humility and the way that we're to forgive and love one another, he recognizes that one body type of love is the call of God.

That's our calling. And he doesn't just say it once. How many times did I say it? Four, five times in Ephesians 4? The calling with which you were called, as you were called with that calling. He's reminding him, this is the call.

This is what you must walk worthily toward. And Paul knows better than most the unity of the Spirit, that bond of peace, of wholeness. It doesn't snap into place overnight. Some people come to a church for the first time.

Some people are converted and have never experienced belonging, love, forgiveness. All of the glories of the Christian church, what John Bunyan called the house beautiful. And then those of us that have been here for 13 years, we just kind of look cynically.

You haven't been around here long, have you? It's not as pretty as it may seem. You're just that recruit that came into the platoon. And you're all fresh and you've got everything tied up and knit tight.

And you're cowering at every explosion. You don't know what it's like. We've got our uniforms sagging. We know who to avoid and how to walk. No, the church, the call, the one body, it's something that doesn't snap into place overnight.

It's something that has to be maintained. Paul says we have to endeavor to maintain. He doesn't just say we have to maintain the unity. He says you have to endeavor to maintain the unity. It's two steps removed.

Why? What's the goal? Why do you endeavor to maintain the unity as part of this calling with which you were called, as part of this call that requires humility and lowliness and long-suffering and all sorts of forgiveness in all sorts of directions?

Why? What is that going toward? Well, he tells us, verse 13, until we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, mature man, a whole man, the bond of perfection, the bond of peace.

Paul says we maintain the unity of the Spirit. We endeavor to maintain it toward that end. We're all maintenance workers. You didn't know it, but every time you gather, the church is this massive machine.

It's the size of a hanger in the airport. It's this massive machine with all of these moving parts, and they all need to be tended to. And every time you gather with saints in the church of God, you put on a blue uniform, and it has your name sort of embroidered on the collar, and you grab your toolbox and your grease gun, and you go around and you make sure that this thing is running smoothly.

Where is there a loud creaking and stuttering and smoke is beginning to billow out into the church?

That's where the workers go,.

And you hear hammering and jackhammering and sparks flying. You're trying to get the machine running toward unity again. That's Paul's idea. You're a maintenance worker in the church. You didn't know it.

Where does this unity come from? It comes from God. Walk worthy of the calling. Who's calling? God's calling. Walk worthy of the calling to be one body in a Christlike love. Walk in this calling. When Paul thinks of it in that way in Colossians 3, he says this body, this peace of God that is to rule,.

To which you were called.

You were called to this. It's not optional. It's not bonus. It's just what it means to be called by God. When you're called by God, you're called to the church. The spirit and the bride say come. So God creates the unity.

He gives the unity. He actually gives not only with the new heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone. Not only does he give a desire for unity, but he gives the ability, the propensity, the capacity for unity.

And so if he's giving the unity, it's our job not to disrupt it, keep it running smoothly. It's our job not to break up that unity. It's certainly our job never to take the unity for granted. This is all what it means to maintain the unity and the bond of peace.

Now, how are we going to arrive at that? Well, you realize you can't do the one and others that you've been called to do without others. It's easy to do the one and others if you're in a wooden cottage in the hills of Vermont.

All I have to do is forgive myself and love myself, be patient with myself, nurture myself, admonish myself.

Pretty easy to do church.

You can't do the one and others in the way that God intends, in the way that God has designed without others. Here's the problem. We often want others to arrive at our place. We want others to come to our view.

We want others to rush to our need. In other words, we want the others to conform to our image. But God wants the others to conform you to Christ's image. That's all downstream from what Marty was pointing out in the marriage talk last night from Romans 8.

We want everyone else in the church to pad and comfort, and there's something to say about comfort, to vindicate, to hold up, to affirm, to basically orient everything around where we're at, how we're seeing things, what our needs are.

What can you do for me? What have you done for me lately? Why don't you see this? Why aren't you here? Why won't you conform to me, to my needs, to my machine, to my operations, to my vision, to my ambition?

And yet all of those others are perfectly placed in God's providence so that in learning to love them with Christ-likeness, led by the Holy Spirit, in endeavoring to maintain a certain unity with them in lowliness of mind and humility, you will be conformed to the image of Christ.

It is mind-bending to me that the peerless, sinless Son of God could stick it through with 12 filthy men for three years of the most intimate ministry imaginable. And there's a truth in that, that the only way the saints can actually fulfill their calling is if we do it with the mind of Christ.

The mind of Christ. That's what Paul tells the church in Philippi, in lowliness of mind, to esteem others better than yourself. You don't let anything be done out of selfishness or conceit. Why? You have the mind of Christ.

And so you're looking out not only for your own interests. That's inescapable. There's needs you do have. There's problems that you're facing. You do need comfort. You do need support. Sometimes you do need to flag for some help.

But the goal, even in that, is not to force the whole church to become your handmaid. It's rather so that the church can do what it is meant to do, help you become a disciple of Jesus Christ, conformed to His image.

You need the mind of Christ to view the church in that way. And the church needs to have the mind of Christ to serve you in that way. So let's talk about, secondly, character. So the two things we are, they frame what we are to do.

Our identity frames our task. So secondly, let's talk about character. And again, here I'm going to talk about two things we must do, particularly two things we must put on, according to Colossians 3.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

Here's the second thing. Above all these things, put on love. So this is what we do. We put on tender mercies. We put on love. This is the character of a church that is discipled by God and is engaged in making disciples.

They understand their calling. They know their identity. They know they are elect, holy, and beloved. They know they've been called to one body to do the one another's with the mind of Christ. And now, as a way of fulfilling that, they put on tender mercies.

They put on love. That's the character of the church. Alicia and I, on our road trip with the kids, we went out to Niagara, and we were walking down the street toward the entrance to that state park, and there was a little stand set up with a cartoonist.

And you've seen these. Or they'll have maybe a tourist or a couple, and they'll sit in front of the artist, and they can't see what he's drawing. And he has this big sketch pad, and he's making the most hideous cartoon of what he sees.

He's taking little features and anomalies of their face, and he's exaggerating them. I don't know why people pay $25 for this. If you're a husband, if you're a man, you are a fool to make your wife sit on the stool of that kind of artist, because she's going to be scarred for life.

You're going to end up paying for plastic surgery or rhinoplasty or something. You're giving her a complex and a paranoia for the rest of her life. But what they get right is they notice something subtle, and they magnify it.

They find a trait, and they zoom in on it. Paul is saying, here's the character trait of a mature church. Here's the tendencies. Here's the subtle things that are noticeable about a mature Christ-minded church.

I'm going to zoom in on it. I'm going to exaggerate it. I'm going to enlarge it. A mature Christ-minded church puts on tender mercies. There's just kindness. It's warm. It's warm, but it's not stifling.

It's comforting. There's humility and meekness, so there's no airs. A church shouldn't feel like you're walking into the middle school lunchroom, and it's like, oh, what table am I? I can't sit at that table.

I wish I could. I guess I'll sit at this table, even though I don't really want to. There's one table for the church of God. There's one body. There's not tables and factions and parties and groups. We're called to love the body as one body, called to have the mind of Christ so that we can love the body as one body.

Let this mind be in you. These are the traits of a mature church. They put on tender mercies. They, above all, put on love. So we're talking about putting on this imagery that we almost think of putting on garments or putting on clothing.

So if we put on tender mercies, that's like the overcoat. That's the outer garment. The above-all love is what's underneath that. That's the layer on the skin. That's the very core of the garment of a mature church.

We put on love above all, and because we've put on love, now we can put on tender mercies. Now we can put on kindness and humility, meekness and long-suffering. Now, because we have love within and underneath and close to the skin, now we can wear outside of us this amazing Christ-likeness and Christ-mindedness that we can actually bear with each other.

We can actually suffer in a relationship with another over a long period of time. That's what it means to be long-suffering. It's because of what you've put on. It's because of the character of the Christian which characterizes the church.

We said that on Friday in terms of parents. The character of godly parents will characterize the home. When you walk into a home, the home has a certain character to it. When you come to church, you are helping in one way or another to characterize the church.

What would the cartoonist exaggerate about Grace Reformation Bible Church? What traits would they zoom in on to say, this is what they look like. We put on tender mercies. This tender mercy, this overcoat, it's such a large garment.

When you have an overcoat, it's almost like wearing a parachute, right? There's a lot of room to not only cover yourself but cover others. Some of you guys, if you had this trench coat or overcoat and it was raining, you could get your whole family under that and kind of bring them between the buildings if you had to.

And when you put on love close to the skin and then over that put on tender mercies, you can now have a love that covers others' sins. And so you ask the question, do I have love close to my skin? Is that the core of my covering?

And then over that, am I laying and layering tender mercies? The kind of mercies that I can actually cover others with. As I bear, as I forgive, as I show humility and meekness, I'm able to forgive because of what I'm wearing, because of what I have put on.

So we put on love, we put on tender mercies, we cover the sins of others. Paul, he gives us a little window into his heart for the church, the kind of heart he wants others in the church to have for the church.

And he does that in Philippians 1.

And he says,.

Let me let you in a little bit on how I pray for you. Here's a little window into my prayer for you. This I pray, he says, that your love may abound, still more and more in knowledge and discernment, but that you would approve things that are excellent and be sincere without offense until the day of Christ and be filled with the fruits of righteousness which come by Jesus Christ.

So Paul loves this church and he's trying to teach and help this church also love the church. And he says, I pray that your love would abound more and more. That's my prayer for you, that your love would abound more and more.

The thing that's surprising about that is when we look at Philippi and read between the lines, the church in Philippi is one of the most loving churches.

In the New Testament.

It's not the church at Corinth. It's not the church in Galatia. This seems to be a church that has a lot of things going right. You do have some issues. There's always trouble in the wings. Euodia and Syntyche need to be of the same mind in the Lord, but generally speaking, he can commend their love, commend their warmth, commend their kindness.

And yet that doesn't stop him from praying that they would love even more. It's striking. Paul never says, I take for granted that you're a loving church. He never says that. He never says, well, you've got the love figured out, so I'm just praying for these other areas.

No, he just says, I'm always praying you just love more. That's my constant prayer for you. I pray for myself in that way. God, just help me to love this body the way that you love it. Help me to love my wife, my children, the way that Christ loves the church, the way that my Father in heaven loves his children.

Help me to love the body the way that I ought to love the body. This is to what I was called. And so he's yearning to see the church's love abound. It's the top of his list. He doesn't take it for granted.

We should not take it for granted. I think we do. We do take it for granted. You'll know you're taking it for granted if it's not a priority of your prayer. If you catch yourself praying, God, help me because the church isn't really loving me in the way that I want it to.

God, will you please stir people to finally just love me?

What does Paul pray?

Oh, God, help me to love the church. Help these people in Philippi to love, to abound in love more and more. Give us all the mind of Christ. He's yearning to see their love abound. Now, I haven't studied this.

This is my hot take. This is me shooting from the hip. I have not studied this, but it's my impression that Paul is far more zealous to see God's work continue than to see it begin. That's my impression.

Paul is far more worked up in Galatia than he is on the stump at the Agora. He's far more vehement with desire to see his children formed in maturity than he is about drawing people that seem to have no interest in coming to Christ.

Not that he's lackadaisical. He's a zealous man through and through. But where is his heart really beating? Where is his energy really drained? It's that Christ would be formed in a church that needs to abound more and more and more in love.

That's my impression. He says this earlier in Colossians. What comes before Colossians 3 is Colossians 1. He says, Kim, we proclaim. This is my baseline. This is what I do so that we can present everyone mature in Christ.

I'm not a peddler, he says. Whoever God brings to me, that's where the work really begins. That's where my heart really is.

Great, we have a harvest.

Now what happens with that harvest? That's my whole desire. That's all of my soul. Kim, we proclaim, just so that we can present them mature. For this, he says, I toil, struggling with all of the energy that he's working in me.

That's where his heart is.

That's where his energy is. That's his desire. It's not in making the convert. It's in making that convert a disciple unto Christ. You see that intensity. If that's not intense enough to you, listen to what he says in Galatians.

I shared this on Friday. He says to the Christians in Galatia, to a church that is no longer walking in their first love, is being tempted by apostates that are preaching a false gospel, and he's watching his children waver and waffle, and he's effectively tearing his garment, tearing his hair out if he had any hair left.

Not easy being an apostle. But he says to the Christians in Galatia, I'm in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. Think through that. Think through that. I've seen four experiences of child labor.

I have never mimicked that kind of intensity.

Toward this church.

I can tell you. I'm in labor until Christ is formed in you. This is ancient childbirth. No offense to modern technology, but this is not bouncing on a big rubber ball in a warm shower with an epidural waiting.

Again, no offense. Easy for a guy to say, I know. This is put your feet in the stirrups and scream. That's ancient childbirth. Put your feet in the stirrups and scream. And Paul says, that's what I'm like for this church in Galatia because I'm so desperate to see Christ formed in you.

Do you feel the burden of Christ toward the people sitting around you this morning? This weekend has emphasized so much about the areas and things that are the most meaningful and also the most challenging in our lives.

Our marriages, our children, our vocation, the way that we get provision, the way that the world around us structures all of their categories of meaning and value and worth and identity. And we've touched on all of those things.

If those things are more of a burden to you than the people sitting around you, the people that you have been called into one body with, I would say you haven't even begun to understand Colossians 3. Do you feel the weight of your brothers and sisters being formed in Christ?

Are you, if not in labor pains, at least restless until you abound more and more in love in your own walk? John Stott has this marvelous statement. He says, you can become a Christian in a moment. Praise God, you really can.

You can become a Christian in a moment, but you can't become a mature Christian in a moment. You can plant a church pretty quickly, but you can't be a mature church pretty quickly. Christ can enter, cleanse, forgive you in a matter of seconds, but it will take a lot longer for your character to be trained and transformed and molded to his will.

We talked about marriage last night. It takes just a few minutes, as we'll know in 12 days, it takes just a few minutes for a bride and a groom to be married. And Stott says rightly, but in the rough and tumble of their home life, it will take many years for these two strong wills to dovetail into one flesh.

And so when we receive Christ, that moment of commitment leads to a lifetime of adjustment. If you're here this morning and you've been chewing on Colossians 3, 12 through 17, and you think, if only the church could adjust to me, to where I'm at, to what I need, you have not understood your identity.

You have not understood and heard rightly the call. You have not thought deeply enough about the kind of character and mind and need that you have in Christ. Church is where the adjustments take place.

God knows we all need to adjust to one another, but that's all going toward the end of being formed in Christ. This requires a love that abounds. Paul says, put on that skin-close garment of love and overlay it with tender mercies.

Do that with the mind of Christ. And in this way, with this kind of emphasis, Christ will be formed in your very midst. What kind of church would we be if we prayed for each other more than we vented about each other?

What kind of church would we be if our prayers were almost entirely directed toward the needs and goods of others, rather than the desire that others would meet our needs and be for our good? Paul is spelling out his prayers in order to help these believers have some conscious awareness of where they are and who they are in Christ, of what their need is in Him.

Essentially, this is what a church is called to do. I was sharing with Beth last night this insight from a book that I've been working through with Peter and the warning against a certain way of doing ministry, of viewing church, that the author called Messiah ministry.

The pastor is going to be the solution for every problem, have the answer to every question, know exactly how to handle and what to do. He's going to run it like a tight ship at the hands of a wise admiral.

And then they burn out three years later,.

Or they get chased out,.

Or there's some absolute scandal because of that spiritual pride that we warned against on Friday morning. No church is called to have a Messiah ministry. If we said to parents, you are not the Savior of your children.

No elder, no shepherd, no one in this body is the Savior of the people of the body. There's one mediator, there's one Savior. So it's not the church's Messiah. You can't say if the church could just meet me here and conform to this and conform to my needs, my image, my vision, then my problems would be solved, then my life would be fulfilled.

Listen, the church is not your Savior. And God has arranged it in such a way that in fact you'll be conformed to Him. And so ministry then looks like not trying to become the fulfillment for the people in the midst, but rather to help those people be attentive, consciously aware.

What has God done? What has He done for you? What is God doing? What might He be doing? Why might He allow this?

What will He do?

What has He promised?

That's the church.

We gather in lowliness and meekness, we're other-oriented with the mind of Christ, and we're helping each other be attentive. We're not the solutions for each other, only Christ is. So we're helping each other be attentive.

What has Christ done? What is He doing?

What will He do?

That's essentially what we do when we gather together. And this means that we'll love each other in this way. We'll be able to bear with each other. We'll need to forgive each other. We have this affection that comes from God and is directed back toward Him.

Beloved, if God so loved us, John writes, we ought to love one another. Paul says we must love one another. We must forgive one another. We have to work at this affection. It doesn't come naturally. Sometimes in church, you go through a season for many different reasons, for many different sins, and almost always in a church, sins are a two-way street.

Almost always. And sometimes in a given season, you feel a mile away from the person you're sitting next to, but you feel like you're right next to the person who happens to be a mile away from you. That happens in a church.

You feel like there's a canyon between the person you're talking to a foot away, and you feel like you're practically joined at the hip with someone who's not even in the same city. That happens in a church.

But how can you love God whom you do not see if you don't love your brother or your sister or that neglected, estranged, messy, long-suffering kind of relationship that you do see? How can you love God?

Do we reflect this kind of concern, this kind of love toward one another? That's the kind of love that's held out to us. When we receive the mind of Christ, we receive the love of Christ. That mindset comes with that affection.

So there's no place in the church for a chess strategy of vying over others. What makes me differ? What makes them differ? What makes me better? Why should I be more noticed? Why should I be more admired?

Why are they more noticed? Why are they more admired? All of that jockeying and vying comes from the evil one. With the mind of Christ and the affection that that bears in a Christian's life, you don't measure yourself against one another.

You weigh others in light of Christ. I don't line up with brothers and sisters and say, where am I in relation to them? How can I measure them against me?

What do they have that I don't have? And what do I have that they definitely don't have?

And I'm just going to put my jaw up. We don't measure each other against us. We look around with the mind of Christ, the affection of Christ, born from the Spirit, with the call of God to be one body, that one another is being exercised in humility and meekness, long-suffering and bearing, and we weigh every soul in front of us in light of that, in light of Christ.

And this comes, thirdly and lastly, to commitment. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.

If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection, wholeness, maturity, to which also you were called, in one body, and be thankful.

Now, listen here. For commitment, there's two things I want to point out, two things that we need, two things that we need to let occur, let happen. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called, in one body, and be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. I'm keying in on those two paired phrases.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. This is what we need. This is our commitment. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. And notice what comes with that.