(A)

The Church is the family community of those redeemed, called, and united to God; the church is defined in terms of the gospel, and the nature and life of the church is seen and understood in correlation to the gracious work of God’s salvation in the lives of His people. In the closing of the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul, in highlighting the need to walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, Paul then took pains to address what it means to live in the community of God as Spirit-filled people, as contrasted to living in the flesh.

The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost signaled the birth of the Spirit-endowed, Spirit-empowered, Spirit-led community – the church. The Spirit would focus His work on the new community, the fellowship of the followers of Christ. All believers now enjoy the presence of the Spirit, who forms us into one fellowship (1 Cor. 12:13). Through our union with Christ and His community, we participate in the fullness of the Spirit. In fact, if we do not have the Spirit we do not even belong to Christ (Rom.8:9). The Spirit is the mediator of the presence of the risen and exalted Jesus within His community. The Spirit is the teacher, leader, and empowerer of the church; He indwells the community on the Lord’s behalf.

The Holy Spirit is God at work bringing history to its goal. The Spirit will one day transform us into the likeness of Christ. This transformation will involve not only our inner person, but each of us in our total being, including our body. This future event will likewise mark the liberation of creation from the bondage it now suffers. On that day the entire universe will participate in “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom. 821). In the meantime, the indwelling Spirit acts as the “down payment” guaranteeing our future salvation (2 Cor.1:22; 5:5, Eph. 1:13-14) and He has already begun His transforming work within us (Rom.8:10; 2 Cor. 3:18).

But as we look at the church today, with all her fleshly activities and squabbles, even as we look at the church in Galatia, and notice the wrong teachings and distortion of the gospel of God, we may be wondering whether God’s plan for the church will ever be realised.

We must first realise that we have a formidable foe; he seeks to destroy God’s people and His community full-time, for he knows that his time is limited. He has also planted false brethren, false teachers, and false teachings into the church. There is ‘weed’ as well as ‘wheat’ in the church.

Much of what God is doing is “hidden”; it is work within the hearts of men and women; it is work in the Spirit and may not be easily discerned by looking at the externals and the appearance of things. But most of all, we must trust in the promise of God – He has guaranteed the eternal future; Christ Himself has told His disciples that He has prepared a place for all true believers; the Spirit is the down payment and there is the guarantee of the full payment by and by; there would be a day of reckoning, a day of judgment and Christ has promised to return for His church.

But in the meantime, there are also ‘believers’ who are carnal and who “sow to the flesh instead of sowing to the Spirit”; these are the ones causing dissensions, quarrels, disorder, in the church of God, and Apostle Paul addressed these practical problems in the closing of the book of Galatians.

In the closing of chapter 5, Paul emphasised that we must worship Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit, adoring Him until our hearts find Him more beautiful and desirable than the various objects we felt we had to have. As we do that, we will put to death our old sinful nature (flesh), clearing room for the fruit of the Spirit to grow, and we will find the fruit growing, changing us more and more to be the people we truly long to be, and God desires us to be.

As God’s people, we have ‘crucified the flesh and its passions’; we must mortify (put to death) the sinful nature; we are to deal with this sinful nature ruthlessly and not ‘coddle’ it or ‘cuddle’ it. By God’s Spirit, we can put to death the wrongful desires and inclinations in our lives; by His Spirit, we can fulfil the requirements of the Law; for at the cross, the power of sin has been broken – we have a new Master in Christ – we are no longer under the old master, the devil, and we are not obligated to succumb to the manipulations of the sinful nature any longer. We are no longer enslaved, no longer slaves to sin; we are free in Christ and we must live according to our new nature in Him, putting to death the ‘old man’ and putting on the ‘new man’. This is a constant daily battle and struggle; but God has blessed us with ‘every spiritual blessing’ to be able to ‘stand’ and to withstand the onslaught of the evil one, the negative influence of the world, and our indwelling sin.

Let us not be discouraged when we fail again and again, not because of rebellion toward God, but because of our weakness in our fallen body in the fallen world; God has provided forgiveness in Christ provided we repent and confess our failures (1 John 1:9). But there are other practical areas we need to look at in the outworking in the church of God and God willing, we shall look into them.

(B)

We have looked at the church as a community of those redeemed; the church is not a club we join or a giant organisation in which we are members. We are a people in relationship with the God who saves us through Christ and a people in relationship to each other who together share in God’s salvation. Individuals are transformed not only when they hear and respond to the gospel but when they participate in the human relationship and fellowship in the church.

Although Christ institutes the church, the Holy Spirit constitutes it. He is the one who transforms us from a collection of individuals into a fellowshipping people. In so doing, He knits us together as one people. Indeed, there arises among us a oneness which is nothing less than the unity of the Spirit Himself (Eph. 4:3).
However, we know that the Spirit can be resisted and grieved; and in the church, this can be going on in the lives of so-called believers.

Hence in Galatians 5, Paul wrote:

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other” (verses 25-26).

The gospel creates a whole new self-image which is not based on comparisons with others. Only the gospel makes us neither self-confident nor self-disdaining, but both bold and humble. This works itself out in relationships with everyone, particularly in the church. Conceit is a deep insecurity, a personal absence of honour and glory, leading to a need to prove our worth to ourselves and others. This in turn makes us compare ourselves with others; when we seem better than somebody else, we feel puffed up; but when we seem inferior to someone else, we feel devastated. If we are conceited, we tend to provoke and envy each other. “Provoking” is the stance of someone who is sure of his or her superiority, looking down on someone perceived to be weaker. “Envying” is the stance of one who is conscious of inferiority , looking up at someone they feel is above them. Both superiority and inferiority are a form of conceit; both are self-absorbed and are focusing on how the other person makes you look and feel instead of how you make him or her look and feel.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself: it is thinking of yourself less. Self-flagellation and low self-esteem are not marks of gospel humility. They are just as much a rejection of the gospel as are pride and self-confidence.

The late John Stott was reported to have said: “The secret of unity is humility”. Ponder over this: many a time when we were angry or upset with someone in the church, is the problem really our problem – do we feel slighted and our self-esteem was deflated because of certain statements made by that someone which make us feel ‘small’, or we feel upset because that someone seems to be better off than us in their Scriptural knowledge or in other areas of service, and we point a finger at them for being proud??
Some practical questions may be helpful in our evaluation:

– Do we have a tendency to ‘blow up” or do I tend to ‘clam up’ and keep strangely quiet? Anger and rage are not Christian values; neither are silent-treatment and quiet ‘unfriendliness’

– Do I tend to pick arguments with people or do I avoid any form of confrontation? Either stance is not helpful for positive Christian fellowship.

– When criticised, do I get very upset and very judgemental – and simply ‘hit back’ or do I get very discouraged and defensive, and simply give up? No point trying, we say, nobody appreciates my effort….etc.

We have to use the gospel and preach it to ourselves right in the midst of those difficult and trying situations.

At conversion, the Spirit makes us the brothers and sisters of Christ. He brings us to share in the love the Son enjoys with the Father. Through the Spirit, we participate in the love that lies at the very heart of the Triune God. As we share together in the Holy Spirit, we participate in the relationship with the living God and with one another in the community of Christ our Lord. The community of love which the church is called to be is no ordinary reality. Our fellowship is nothing less than our common participation in the divine communion between the Father and the Son mediated by the Holy Spirit.

We are one people, therefore, because we are the company of those whom the Spirit has already brought to share in the love between the Father and the Son. We are truly the community of love, a people bound together by the love present among us through God’s Spirit. As His people, we are called to reflect in the present the eternal dynamic of the Triune God – that community which we will enjoy in the great fellowship on the renewed earth.

The church exists ultimately for the sake of the glory of the Triune God. God’s glory is in fact the fundamental purpose of all creation (Ps, 19:1). If we call ourselves ‘God’s people’, we must not grieve the Spirit of God in our behaviour towards one another in God’s community and thus ‘tarnish’ the glory of the Triune God. We are to love one another as Christ loves the church; we are to reflect to the world the ‘beauty’ and ‘wonder’ of God’s redeemed people – and this is one major aspect of evangelism and mission.
True spirituality is not indicated by possession of any particular spiritual gift, but rather by the love that is so beautifully portrayed in the communion of the Three Persons of the Godhead in the Trinity; the Christians and the church are given the invitation and privilege to participate in this holy and wondrous communion of love and harmony of the highest degree.

In Galatians 6, Paul reminded the believers that such a love calls us to help others in distress (carry each other’s burdens). But protecting others from the normal pain or responsibilities of life in not love. Paul, in 1 Thessalonians, exhorted the believers to warn those who refuse to work and are idle and disruptive and in 2 Thessalonians, he went as far as saying, “Anyone who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (3:10b – (each of you shall carry your own load). Although we are called to serve one another in love, each of us is to carry our individual load in a way that pleases God. We are humbly and gently to help others with their tasks and problems, with all their burdens, but we cannot carry the burden that is the responsibility of each believer to God on the day of judgment.