Grace Life’s Message to Gospel Hope ....
Grace Life, as we gather here today, we are celebrating the birth of a new church, Gospel Hope. While this is a day to celebrate, this is also a time to remind ourselves what a true gospel church is called to be and do. To begin, let us consider what many churches are, yet should not be. Many churches today present a pristine image and have some excellent qualities. The worship is polished, the teaching is solid and the people are genuinely encountering God. Additionally, there are many new professions of faith, baptisms are regularly occurring and church attendance keeps increasing. By every measurable metric, these churches are thriving. However, when pulling back the curtain, many problems become visible. The small group leaders and ministry leaders are in a cold war over whose groups are growing faster and who should get the volunteers. The worship team subtly competes for platform time. When the pastor mentions someone's testimony, you can feel others bristling: "Why does she get highlighted?" One young couple is cohabiting and being whispered about by many church members while another church member’s infidelity is ignored because he generously tithes. In short, Sunday mornings appear unified, but it is only a shiny façade that masks a very fractured congregation. Furthermore, each member is convinced that the faction within the church they identify with is the faction that represents real Christianity.
Now, if you were to ask anyone at the churches described above if their church is spiritual, they would respond as follows: “Yes, Look at the gifts and the growth!” However, in truth, these churches have confused spiritual giftedness with spiritual maturity. Christian, spiritual giftedness and spiritual maturity are not the same and, if we at both Gospel Hope and Grace Life are to properly reflect God’s glory, we must have a clear understanding of both. Thankfully, the book of 1 Corinthians provides three pillars that New Testament churches must be and do to properly honor and glorify God. The first pillar is…
To Reflect the holiness of God
The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter written by Paul to the Corinthian Church - a church functioning in a similar way to the contemporary churches described above. As 1 Corinthians 1:5-7 states, this church had every spiritual gift, possessed great knowledge and demonstrated a good testimony about Christ. However, this church was also destroying itself from the inside out due to internal strife and division (1 Corinthians 1:10-17). The Scriptures are clear: the true church is not comprised of those who simply attend services and/or participate in activities; rather, the church is comprised of individuals who have been saved (Ephesians 2:8-9) and sanctified (Philippians 1:6) by Christ Jesus. These saved and sanctified people then comprise local gatherings (called the local church) and are called to be saints (holy ones) with all those at all times who have called upon the name of Christ. Friend, if you have truly accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9), you too, like the members of the Corinthian church, are a saint.
So, how does this identity as “saints” play out in real life? In verses 1 and 2 of chapter 5, Paul provides a shocking test case. In these verses, Paul confronted the Corinthian church and clearly stated that they were wrong for not disciplining a man who was having an affair with his stepmother. The church, by doing nothing to correct this man’s behavior, was allowing this man’s sin to compromise the church's witness and endanger other believers. Furthermore, Paul also revealed that the man himself had not grasped the seriousness of God's holiness. To correct this issue and for the church to properly reflect God’s holiness, Paul called upon this church to remove the unrepentant man from church membership, not because he sinned, but because he refused to repent. Christian, God has given the church two primary ways to live out our gospel identity: 1) formative discipline: sitting under Scripture, growing in community and submitting to leadership and 2) corrective discipline: inviting accountability and confronting unrepentant sin when necessary. Gospel Hope and Grace Life, your mind, heart and lives matter because you have been called to reflect the holiness of your God, not in a monastic lifestyle, but in showing how the gospel is a beautiful way to live. In a culture where Christians often look no different than their neighbors, we are called to reflect God's holiness in marital faithfulness, in countercultural generosity, in how we conduct business and every other aspect of our lives. Brothers and sisters, joyful holiness is one of the most beautiful ways to disciple people in the gospel. Gospel Hope, as you are commissioned to spread God's good news in Hockley, Texas, will you commit to living your life in a way that reflects God's holiness to those around you? To those of us remaining at Grace Life: will you continue doing the same so that God's glory will also shine brightly to those around us?...
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