Transcript: Communion of Saints

Communion of Saints (video transcript)
By David Feddes

Today, our focus is on the communion of saints, and we're going to be looking especially at some passages from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Philippians. I want to start just with how Paul says hello. Sometimes, when we read the letters of the New Testament—especially those of us who are preachers or people studying the Bible—we kind of hurry through the hellos and then get to the important stuff where he's talking about the truth they ought to believe or the practices they ought to do or to change. But I think it's a big mistake to hurry through the hellos.

We're going to look at a lot of the hellos, and let's just start with his hello to the Philippians: To all the saints in Christ Jesus. And he gives his usual grace, mercy, and peace to you. But I want to notice in all of these hellos how he speaks to them: To all the saints in Christ Jesus.

So you see just the outpouring of love, the feeling, and the affection that the great apostle has for the people who are going to be reading this letter. And the two words that we're going to be focusing on in this message are communion and saints.

Saints

You're a saint—that's one message that Paul is sending. And he says there's this partnership--the word there is koinonia. Where you see it in bold: Because of your partnership in the gospel, that's really your koinonia—your fellowship, your communion in the gospel. And down below: You are all partakers with me of grace. The very same word there is used again: your koinonia with me of grace—your fellowship, your communion with me in this grace. What is this word communion? We'll think about that a little later, but first, I want to just focus on the fact that we're saints.

I have one of those really complicated outlines: Saints and Communion.

Well, another hello: Hello to you Romans:

So again, there's this affection and this love, and he's saying, God loves you. Your faith is famous. You and I can build each other's faith and each other's gifts. He's again just affirming them and saying wonderful things about them and how much he loves them.

Or another hello: 

Now, if you go on to read some of the Corinthian letters, you find that actually a lot of these people are bickering with each other, fighting with each other, and dividing into factions. Some of them are engaged in some of the grossest sexual immorality. Others are treating the Lord's Supper in a very bad way, and you can find all kinds. Some of them are denying that the resurrection lies in the future. There are all kinds of wickednesses and sins that some of these Corinthians have gotten themselves into.

But what's the first thing Paul says to them? Hey, you saints! God has given you all kinds of grace. You're full of grace, you're rich in gifts, and you're going to look great on judgment day.

You know, it sounds kind of like what he said to the Philippians: that God began a good work in you, and he's going to bring it to completion. It's amazing when you consider what he was about to say to the Corinthians—that this is how he says hello to them and this is who he really considers them to be, in spite of all the stuff that he's about to talk about.

Paul's hello to Ephesus:

You have every spiritual blessing in Christ, and your faith and your love—they just fill me with thanks all the time.

Again, some people, when they think of the apostle Paul, think only of his doctrine. And Paul has a very strong doctrine of sin—of how terribly humanity has fallen, how all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and of our total corruption in sin. Some take that to be Paul's final word on Christians—that we're just totally depraved, and that God is going to pluck us from sin and bring us into glory. But that's not quite the whole truth. In fact, it's not the central truth about the believer. Paul is insisting that they are, first of all, saints.

Now, Paul is very clear that there's something about us that is much worse than we want to admit. Even after we become Christians, there's something called the flesh—some evil power within us that's worse than anything we want to admit. But even so, he still insists that there's something in us that's better and more glorious than many of us realize, and so he calls us saints. You have every spiritual blessing, and what I hear about you just fills me with thanksgiving all the time.

Hello to the Colossians:

So you're faithful, your brothers and sisters, your family in Christ. I'm thankful for your faith, your hope, your love—that's how he says hello once again.

Hello to the Thessalonians: We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. There's that faith, hope, and love that he sees in them and rejoices in them for. We know, brothers loved by God, that he's chosen you.

Paul is sometimes known for his doctrine of election, and some people find that very thorny and difficult and scary. Sometimes, the theologians can make it so. But when Paul talks about it, he says, Well, I know God chose you. And it's not because he had some secret notion and God's list of who got picked. He says, Well, when we came to you, you received the Word of God with joy—not just as the word of man but from the Holy Spirit—and so we know that he chose you. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, and you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. Your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything.

He says, Everybody's talking about you.

So that's the Thessalonians. When he writes another letter to them, he's still saying a lot of the same thing: Your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you're enduring.

You people are amazing. I brag about your faith and your love and your bravery. I brag about you all the time.

What a way to talk to these people to whom he's writing. Once again, later in this letter, he's going to say: You guys who've been sitting around and being lazy bones, you know, if you're not going to work, you're not going to eat. And, you know, he says some pretty tough stuff to them and corrects them on some mistakes they're making about beliefs about Jesus' second coming.

It's not that Paul is just in some la-la land when he says all these nice things. He's about to say a lot tougher things, but first, he says the basic truth about them.

And when he writes not just to churches but to individuals, listen to how he talks to Timothy: My true child in the faith. To Timothy: My beloved child, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and of love and of self-control—or of a sound mind.

I love you, Timothy. Seeing you makes me happy. And remember—always remember—you’ve got what it takes. Don’t let anybody look down on you because you're young. You remember that gift that's in you, and you remember that this faith wasn't just your grandma's faith, not just your mother's faith—that faith lives in you, and I'm confident of it. That's how he talks to Timothy.

How does he talk to Titus and Philemon? To Titus, he says: My true child in a common faith. To Philemon: Our beloved fellow worker, I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have towards the Lord Jesus Christ and for all the saints. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the heart of the saints has been refreshed through you.

Now, why does Paul say this over and over and over again to different people? One reason Paul says anything is this: because it's true. Okay, you don't find stuff in the Bible that's not true. And so one reason he says it is because it's true: you are saints. You are beloved by God. You are chosen by God. You are worth bragging about. I see evidence of great things, and God's going to keep it going until, on the day of judgment, you're going to be standing up tall in his presence, and he's going to be welcoming you and rejoicing in you. Paul says these things because they're true.

And another reason he says them is because we need to hear it. It is so easy to forget. It is so easy to forget that we are saints. What is a saint? Somebody who is set apart, somebody who is made special, somebody who is declared holy and made holy by God. And we hear these things in the Scriptures because this is how God wants us to know who we are and how he wants us to see our fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it needs to be said again and again and again.

A saint is somebody set apart, and a saint is not just somebody who, after careful examination by a church hierarchy, is decided to have performed at least two miracles, has lived quite an extraordinary life, and is now somebody you can pray to. You don't pick out a few unusual people and make them saints and pray to them.

You are a saint if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. That was something the Reformation recovered when it emphasized the priesthood of all believers—the holiness, the set-apartness, and the ministry of all believers to all believers.

There is one letter that Paul wrote that did not start out with a really nice hello, at least regarding the people. He did say: Grace, mercy, and peace to you, and gave them a warm greeting, but he didn't have much nice to say about them at the beginning. I am astonished, he says of the Galatians, that you are so quickly deserting him who called you into the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. And if anybody believes a different gospel, let him be damned. That's how he starts.

Well, sometimes strong problems take strong measures, and he's not quite ready to call them saints from the get-go because they're in danger of ditching the whole gospel. And you're not a saint anymore if you were actually going to abandon the gospel. But by the time he gets to the middle of his Galatian letter, even writing to them, he's starting to remind them: Now really, what I want you to know is you are not slaves. I don't want you to fall into slavery again under the old law and the old way of doing things. I want you to realize that you are sons, and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

So this was the letter that he started out the harshest of any of them, but by the time he's halfway through the letter, he's saying: You are a son of God, and one who inherits everything that God has.

So again, when we think about the communion of saints, we need to just accept what is said again and again and again in the hello parts of these letters that remind us over and over and over again who we really are in Christ Jesus and by the mercy of God. And Paul didn't invent this stuff. It was Jesus himself who said: You are the light of the world. It was Jesus who said: The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, because Jesus knew that when he transforms and gives someone a new heart, then, whatever else is true of them, they are saints, and they do have that new and good and holy heart that he has put within them, even though there are still these elements of the flesh that they have to fight against—of the old fallen nature.

To quote Paul again: Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you? That's why you're a saint—you have the life of God himself, the life of Christ, through his Holy Spirit inside you. Or to quote another apostle, Peter: You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

That was a lot of verses and a lot of words to make a couple of basic points: see yourself this way. See other believers this way. When you're—I mean, right from hello, it's our task to see others as saints of God and to realize that we ourselves are saints of God.

Some of you have read The Silver Chair. I'd like to remind you of this story where Rilian has been under an enchantment for ten years. He's supposed to be the future king, and he's under the enchantment of some evil being. And only about one hour a week does he really remember who he is. And then he's bound to a silver chair until it passes, and then he's back under the spell again. But eventually, some people from Narnia get there and rescue him from that chair. And then, when he sees them, he also begins to realize again who he is: You may well believe that I remember Narnia, for I am Rilian, prince of Narnia. While I was enchanted, I could not remember my true self.

One purpose of us getting together every Sunday, as well as just our interactions with fellow believers throughout the week, is simply to remind each other who we are—we are saints.

So that's the first point—that was complicated. Who are we? Saints. 

Communion

And then the second, related to that, is what is this thing called communion? How do we relate in this communion—or koinonia as the Greek word is—koinonia of saints?

And here, let's look at some of the words from later in Philippians 1 and then Philippians chapter 2: Whatever happens, writes Paul, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one Spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

Just want to highlight a little bit of that from verse 27 in particular. Paul says: Stand firm in one Spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel. This is a picture I always like—of the reenactment of the old Roman formation where they learn to march in harmony, where they've got shields on all sides and above, and that protects them from the arrows of the archers and from other attacks.

And in order to be a unit like that, one thing you really can't have is somebody inside that little formation hauling out his dagger and stabbing his fellow soldiers in the back or knocking each other out of formation and attacking each other. Sometimes we hear tragic stories from the battlefront of how soldiers are killed by friendly fire. They often accidentally—occasionally on purpose—are shot by members of their own military force.

So what a tragedy that is. But that's what happens when the communion of the saints becomes a warfare against each other rather than a warfare against the things that attack the saints.

And later in this letter, in Philippians chapter 4, the apostle says: Now Euodia and Syntyche, you two women, please get along. You know, he said all these things, and then, near the tail end of the letter, he says: Ladies, please get along. You've been great fellow workers. It's time to team up again.

And we need that, don't we? We need those reminders too in our communion of saints—that friendly fire is devastating. It’s when we're together that we're able to stand against the attacks of the enemy and not forget who the real enemy is. Not our fellow believers. Not our saints. Paul says in another place, in one of his letters: Now, you've got to straighten some people out, but don't treat him as an enemy—rebuke him or correct him as a brother. There's a big difference between saying, You no-good rotten enemy, and saying, Brother, there's something we need to deal with here.

And so, he wants us to stand firm in one Spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel. And we need to contend for that faith against a couple of different kinds of attacks. There could be many more, but I'll just mention two kinds. One is the attack of false teaching. When we're together—when we hold fast to the faith—then, when one among us is under attack or maybe finding some new ideas that are far from the gospel and makes them scratch their head and say, Oh, I wonder if what I've always believed is really true, the reinforcement of fellow believers and directing them again to the truth of God can be very valuable.

And so, we're contending for the faith of the gospel, the truth. The church of the living God is the pillar and foundation of the truth, says Paul in another passage. Part of the way it is a pillar and foundation of truth is not that it replaces the Bible or is equally important to the Bible, but that it is basically the community of the Bible—the community built on the Bible that keeps reminding each other of what God says and what his Word teaches us.

And so, we're contending for the truth of the gospel because if it’s just you and your Bible on your own, you're going to have some pretty whacked-out ideas, for one thing, because not every individual reader of the Bible gets the message. It’s when we’re together, reading the Bible, that we can often correct each other's misunderstandings. And anytime you're an individual, you're easier to pick off by yourself than when you're together.

Every so often, there has had to be a heroic and prophetic figure or a reformer who had to stand almost alone when the truth of God had fallen into such disrepair, even in the church itself. But for the most part, God intends it that we, as the church, will be reinforcing each other in the truth. So, that's one way to contend for the faith of the gospel—just helping each other to know and hang on to the truth when it comes under attack. And oh, it’s coming under attack in our age like never before. It's coming under attack from many academicians who undermine and attack the Word of God. It's coming under attack from a moral perspective, where ideas on morality that have rarely, if ever, been tried in the history of the western world are being introduced as what's normal and moral and ought not even to be questioned anymore. And the church had better stand together in such times.

Another way the saints need to stand together is when the attacks come in the form of grief, suffering, and trials. Paul wrote about that. You know, there are people who attack you, and there are persecutions that come. There are also circumstances that just weigh very heavily on you, overwhelm you—griefs, the death of loved ones, painful sicknesses, and trials that exhaust you, drain you, and make you feel like collapsing.

And that's when we need to bear each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ—where we support, carry, and defend each other when Satan tries to exploit those painful and difficult circumstances to bring us down. The communion of the saints is felt very strongly when we are in trouble and when our hearts are breaking.

And so, we need to stand firm in one Spirit, contending for the truth when heretics and lies challenge it, but also contending for the truth when it's just hard to believe that God is in charge—when it’s hard to believe that things are going to turn out well, that Jesus Christ reigns. We need to remind each other of these things.

And then Paul goes on to speak of how this expresses itself. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ—this is chapter 2—if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This is one of the great passages in all the New Testament about what it is to live as Christians, and about who Jesus is and what he’s done. I want to highlight what this passage is as Paul applies it. The latter part of that passage—about Jesus being equal with God, then humbling himself, and then being exalted again—is, of course, extremely valuable in revealing the ministry and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. But the apostle Paul is using this hymn, which is probably not one that he wrote originally. It’s probably a hymn the church was already singing at that time in praise to Jesus, and he uses it and says: Now I want you to be like that. I want you to have that mind of Jesus Christ in you.

One thing this means for the way we relate in communion to each other is that we relate out of a sense of wealth—we’re aware of the wealth that we have. This is important because sometimes, you can misunderstand Paul’s command to do stuff out of humility and consider others better than yourself, and you say: Well, in order to help others, I guess job one is to feel like I am quite vile and quite worthless and I ought to be ashamed of myself. And now I better really try to help others.

If that’s your approach, you're going to be about useless to others, okay? If you start with nothing, you have nothing to offer. You’d just be wallowing in your own shame and worthlessness.

What happens in this passage for Jesus? Did Jesus come and minister to us because he was kind of worthless but was just going to try to help some other people out? The passage says he knew that he was in very nature God but didn’t hang on to all of his riches as God.

Well, as Jesus knew his riches as God, Paul appeals to the fact that we know that we have encouragement in Christ, we have comfort in his love, we have fellowship with the Spirit, and we have tenderness and compassion. When he says if you have these things, actually, the construction is often better translated since you have these things. In Colossians 3, for instance, it says if you've been raised with Christ, but he’s obviously speaking to people he assumes are raised with Christ. So, he’s saying: Since this is the case, then do this.

So, he’s saying: Since you have encouragement in Christ, comfort in his love, fellowship with the Spirit, and tenderness and compassion, since you have all that, now minister to one another.

And so, just as Jesus had this tremendous wealth and then, out of his wealth, poured it out for others, we have a tremendous wealth that we can pour out for others. As Jesus joined humanity and slaved and sacrificed for us, then we join other believers and put them first.

Again, when he says consider others better than yourselves, you're going to be wasting your time if you go around saying, Now I have to look at every person I've ever met and persuade myself that they are a superior life form to me. Okay, is that what he's talking about? Consider others better than yourselves.

Okay, um, person number one: I'm going to look at Mr. Horn and try to persuade myself—he probably... that wouldn't be so hard. You know, he's lived longer, he's probably wiser than me, he probably is better than me. Okay. If I look at somebody else, I might have a harder time with that. They might be less mature, they might be less learned. I may know about some really bad stuff they did last week. Um, you know, am I supposed to now say, Oh, that person is vastly superior to me?

Well, you know, if that's how we're going to do it, we're going to be wasting all our time doing comparisons, which is not a wise thing at all. You really ought to get out of the comparison game completely. When you consider others better than yourself, it means you're putting them ahead of yourself. You're putting their interests ahead of yourself.

And occasionally, there is maybe an element of truth in it—that you can consider them better than yourself just because you really ought to know your own sins better than you know anybody else's. So, there is that element of truth in it. But overall, the point is: out of the wealth of what God has given you in Christ, be ready to pour it out for others because you're putting them first.

And you don't have to be locked into two things: selfish ambition and vain conceit. Now, selfish ambition and vain conceit are often signs of people who don't know who they really are. And so, they're always grabbing—they're always trying to climb the ladder and stomp on any hands on any rungs beneath them on the ladder. They're acting out selfish ambition because they've got to get ahead of others.

And vain conceit—they're posers. They're always trying to show the good side and make an impression, and they're trying to hide whatever isn't so impressive. And this is true of all of us to some degree. When I emphasize that we're saints, don't forget that old flesh that's always there—that's always wanting to put ourselves number one, always wanting to look good in the presence of others. Stop trying to impress others and just seek to bless others.

That's how we're to relate to each other. And as we do that, no task is too low. Jesus was humble. Does that mean that Jesus thought he was worth less than anybody else? He knew better. He was humble because no task was too low for him to do—even the washing of feet. And no suffering was too terrible for him to bear. And no sinner was too rotten for him to associate with.

That's what it means to be humble—nobody is too bad for you to associate with. No task is too lowly for you to do. No trouble is too nasty for you to endure. You're not too good to go through those kinds of things or to hang out with those kinds of people. That's what real humility is—not going around comparing and saying, Oh, I just found 5,843 people that are better than I am.

That's not how it works. It's forgetting about that whole comparison entirely and just saying, I'm rich in Christ, and there's a lot to do, and I want to serve humbly as my master did.

When we look at how that's rooted, we find it in the words of Jesus Christ himself. When Paul says to have the mind of Christ, he says you can have that mind of Christ because the Holy Spirit is already in you. And God the Father, who exalted Jesus, is also the one who has adopted you as sons and is going to exalt you.

And all of that that Paul is saying is just echoing the voice of the master. In John 17, Jesus prays: They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. That's what a saint is—your origin, your life, your identity doesn’t come from this world. It comes from another world and from God himself.

Sanctify them—in other words, make them holy, make them saints—by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent them into the world, as you sent me into the world, I've sent them into the world. And then Jesus says: I also pray for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one.

That's communion. That’s union: That they may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you—the union of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you’ve sent me. I've given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them, even as you have loved me.

Jesus’ point is that the unity and love among believers is the way the church proclaims the blessed Trinity. And if you proclaim the doctrine of the Trinity and do so in a church of bickering, fighting, divided people, your words might even be sound and orthodox. But who in the world is going to believe you about what the life of the blessed Trinity is really like—about this love of Father for Son, and then the love of the Holy Spirit—and that that love is poured out in our hearts, and that God is in us and we are in God, and we are bound together as one?

That trinitarian communion is the source of our life and of our unity, and it is also the supreme way that we proclaim it. Jesus says: The world is going to know by that complete unity that we have.

And so, let's prize this communion of saints because it is one of the chief ways of proclaiming the gospel and of displaying the being of God himself. How do we relate? Well, koinonia, or communion. It’s sometimes translated communion, sometimes fellowship. If you go through a concordance and find out how koinonia gets translated in the New Testament, you'll find it sometimes as communion, sometimes as fellowship, sometimes as partaking—you know, taking in, whether it’s food or involvement in something, participating. Those are just some of the different shades of what communion means.

And the Bible gives a bunch of images, and any of them are worth a whole message and a lot of meditation. A body—it’s got a lot of parts, but they're all working together as one body. A household—it has a dad and mom and kids, and in those days, some employees or others who were part of the extended household, and yet they’re all working together. A temple—it has many different stones and building blocks and yet all comes together into one splendid building.

An assembly—that's the word that's translated church—ekklesia, the people who are called out or called into an assembly. And again, it’s a picture of a group that becomes one. And of course, an army—different soldiers but one objective and one commander.

As we've said, it's rooted in the communion of the Trinity. It's experienced in the personal connections that we have with one another as well as with our God. And part of this relating that I want to finish with and emphasize is just noticing and nurturing the Spirit's presence in other people—his actions and his activity in other people and his gifts in each other.

This is where, in our life together as a congregation, friends, this is where the communion of the saints is extremely important: to help people notice that God is in them when they may have a hard time noticing it themselves, and to see what God is doing in their lives. And also, of course, for our spiritual gifts—our different talents and personalities—to bless each other.

Larry Crabb, who's a Christian psychologist, says that a careful exploration of the redeemed heart is like mining for gold in a dirty cave. You may have been listening so far and said, Well, that Paul, you know, he said all that nice stuff about people and all this stuff about saints sounds pretty good, but we know each other, don't we? You know, a lot of us have been around a while. You know me, and saint isn’t the only word you would use to describe me. You know, on some days, at some moments, it might almost have come to mind—probably not that often. And I know some of you, and saint doesn't always just pop into my mind the moment I look in your face. Well, that's the way it is.

Now, when people go looking for gold, do they expect to find it in ready-made bricks just lying on the floor—100 percent pure gold? You don't find gold that way. Sometimes gold gets made that way after a lot of processing, but gold starts out mixed in with a whole pile of dirt. And if somebody said, I am not going to look for gold unless I find it free from any dot of dirt, there would be no gold discovered or mined in the entire world. Every gold mine, in fact, is mostly dirt if you got right down to it. But a little bit of gold in a lot of dirt means that is a supremely valuable gold mine.

And when we relate to each other, too, sometimes the dirt might almost seem to be more than the gold. But if you were still totaling things up, the gold that's in there—the gold of God's presence and of the work of the Holy Spirit and the things that God has begun in redeemed people and in their hearts—outweighs any of the clutter and the dirt that still needs to be gotten rid of. And one of the great favors we can do for each other is to notice and point out the gold, as well as sometimes to help sort through the dirt and say, I don't think that's so golden, buddy. That's something that needs to be refined. And God will use other means to refine us as well—sometimes through trial, sometimes through other difficulties or blessings in our life.

But one of the ways that we sort out the gold from the dirt is simply through our interactions with each other. So when we're exploring each other's hearts and getting to know each other, even when you come across some dirt and you say, Ooh, yuck, don't be too quick to write someone off who's a fellow believer. Instead say, Well, I know there's some gold in there somewhere. You know, sometimes we talk about someone having a golden heart as kind of a proverb, but it is the truth that every believer has a golden heart—it's just not pure gold yet.

And so, we need to be confident in that. And one way to do it is just to take the cue from Barnabas. When there were some new Gentile believers who became Christians, you can bet that these former idolaters, who had lived very wicked lifestyles and had just come to Christ and didn't know much of the Bible yet, had an awful lot of dirt. Well, the believers knew who to send into that situation where there were these new believers in Antioch. They sent Barnabas—Joe Encouragement.

And when he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. He had this goodness, this faith, and this Holy Spirit flooding out of him. And so, wherever he went, he could see the evidence of the grace of God. And when he saw that, he was glad. Even if he saw some other stuff, if he saw evidence of God's grace, he was glad. And that's what an encourager does—that's what koinonia does. An encourager believes in you and comes alongside you to mobilize the Christ-life—the life of the Holy Spirit that God has put in you when you were born again.

And when we connect with each other in Christ, something wonderful happens. Christ puts this unique glory in each of us, and we display that in the way we relate to others, and we delight in it when we see that glory in the people around us. And I know that just in conversations with other people, sometimes they say, Well, you know, I don't see anything all that special.

I had that conversation just with my wife a week or two ago. You know how, for me, I know there are quite a few people in this church who wouldn't be here if it weren't for her. And she thinks, Oh, there's nothing very special about me. Or, she doesn't always think that, I hope. But you have to be cautious because you can underestimate who you are and the impact—the huge impact—and not by any particular thing you're good at. There is the matter of spiritual gifts, and sometimes you are especially good at something that others can recognize and say, Wow, they really stand out for being able to do that.

But just being able to be who you are and who God made you to be—and what a marvel that he is creating someone who has this glory, this gold, this wonder in them—that is a remarkable thing. So we're to display that just in the way we relate to others—not by showing off, but just by knowing that when we connect with people, it's there. The Holy Spirit's in me. Jesus promised that if you're thirsty, Come to me and drink, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.

When you've got the Holy Spirit in you, you've got rivers that are going to bless others. And at the same time, you're looking for those rivers of blessing in them, and you delight in them. You connect in order to share what Jesus is doing in you.

Now, it's nice—it's nice when we just give each other compliments. And there can even be an element of the Spirit in that. Oh, you look really nice today, or I like your dress. I guess that works better for ladies, because I'm not a very good complimenter, and I can't remember what anybody wore a day ago. Okay, sorry. Maybe I need to work on that.

But the flip side is that those kinds of compliments—like You look nice or That was delicious food—you know, those are good kinds of encouragements to have. But there's also a deeper communion of saints, where we're starting to look for what God is really up to and what is really special about a person—and where we say that to them.

So, instead of just saying to your son, Sonny, thanks for bringing me my slippers—I don't know if any kids bring their dad their slippers; mine don't—but anyway, you can thank your kid for taking out the garbage or whatever it is they do. It's good to again say thanks to people and compliment them, but it's especially important to be looking for where God's hand is at work in them and to be alert to that.

And I can't say what that means for everybody else—I'm just saying to be on the lookout for that with the people you know best for starters—with your own spouse, with your own children, with your dearest friends. Be on the lookout for that, and then be ready to speak of it when God gives you a chance.

And so, we can share what Christ is doing within each of us. We can battle against those hindrances, as we talked about before, and then just strengthen each other. And as the Holy Spirit of Christ in you connects with the Holy Spirit of Christ in me, then we grow in Christ's power and in his love and in his insight.

I've mentioned before the philosopher Schopenhauer's statement that humans are a lot like porcupines—they have a difficult time staying warm apart from each other, but then, when they push closer together, they poke each other too much. And so they've got to kind of find a polite distance where they're not too close but not too far. Schopenhauer was an atheist, so I should just throw that out there.

But we need to realize that even porcupines are able to snuggle up pretty close—they just gotta let the spines relax a little and get close together. And then let the encouragement, the comfort, the tenderness, and the compassion—the warmth, in short, the warmth—flow.

And you don't get that warmth when you're maintaining a polite distance, when Hi, how you doing? is the deepest your conversations go. Warmth comes when we really know each other, when we know each other's glories, when we know each other's struggles, and when we show that encouragement and comfort and tenderness and compassion.

And this, said Jesus, is the test. You know, I know that in formal doctrine, I've learned that the marks of the true church are the faithful preaching of the Word, the right exercise of the sacraments, and the proper administration of Christian discipline. Well, there's some truth in that. But Jesus did have a test as well: As I have loved you, you're to love one another. By this, all people will know you're my disciples, if you have love for one another.

We know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. And whoever does not love abides in death.

So again, the marks of orthodoxy or the proper conduct of the church’s institution are one thing—and they're important. But this test is: Do you love each other the way Jesus loves you?

Well, let's end by simply asking these questions that we read a few weeks ago from the Heidelberg Catechism:

What do you believe concerning the holy catholic church?

I believe that the Son of God, through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community, I am and always will be a living member. I'm a saint of this community, and he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion. I am and always will be a living member.

What do you understand by the communion of saints?

First, that believers, one and all, as members of this community, share in Christ and in all his treasures and gifts. Second, that each member should consider it a duty to use these gifts readily and joyfully for the service and enrichment of the other members.