What causes fights and quarrels among you?
James 4:1a
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great
cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that
so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for
us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author
and perfecter of our faith.
Hebrews 12:1-2a
Nehemiah, cupbearer to the king of Persia and loyal son of Judah, arrived in Jerusalem ca. 445 B.C. intent on his mission
to secure the city and its returning people by rebuilding the city walls. As the work proceeded, the neighboring
enemies of God’s people ridiculed their work and plotted to stir up trouble against them. (Neh 4, 6) Trusting in the favor of God, Nehemiah prayed that God would strengthen
him for the task and succeeded in bringing the project to completion in only
fifty-two days.
The work led by Nehemiah called the
people into unity of will and action and proved a powerful witness of God’s
power to Judah's enemies:“all the surrounding nations
were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this
work had been done with the help of our God.” (Neh 6:16)
Like the Hebrews who trusted the Lord and worked against the odds to restore Jersualem, the church
today has also been called as a covenantal people to testify to our neighbors
about the glory of God. The hope we have
in Christ should make us even bolder than they were in our obedience to God’s
purposes, but we have sometimes taken too literally Nehemiah’s example and have
sought to protect the Gospel by erecting walls around the church. Our self-seclusion from the world has had
harmful effects both in our culture and on the church itself.
The Apostle James tells us that
dissension in the church comes from the desires that battle within us, desires
that are often inspired by our double-minded relationship with the world. Those of us living in suburban America can
feel particularly caught between Christ’s call on our lives and the seduction of
our culture. We are tempted
At first, it’s not a bad
approach. We are sought out, welcomed, and
we even begin to feel some warmth in fellowship, but our participation in the
body often fails to deepen. We consider
“church” something we do rather than a fundamental reorientation of our
citizenship. When we “do church,” we try
on our spiritual faces among the people of God, but we continue to mask our
holiness before the world (and truthfully our spiritual faces are often the
real masks we wear to hide our worldly countenances). After a time, especially if we have actually
taken a role in ministry service, we begin to feel disillusioned. We discover that life even among God’s people
is marred by sin. If we have not allowed
the gospel to cut us deeply to the heart, and sometimes even when we have, we
begin to wonder why God puts up with so much foolishness from those who call
themselves Christians. Bound inside our
church walls—walls too often erected as barriers from the world and made with bricks of fear and the mortar of
pride—our hope in one another is strained and even our worship becomes anemic.
The dis-ease of so many Christians
today reflects our upside-down view of the church. Our only cure is to penetrate to a deeper
understanding of God’s plan for the church as his agent of cultural and
spiritual renewal. The church, proclaims
scripture, is God’s household, the pillar and foundation of truth. (1 Tim 3:15) It is to the church that Christ calls those
who would be equipped to spread the good news. It is through the church that the means of grace are administered to a
fallen creation that is being redeemed and restored. Though the church is a motley crew of fallen
and broken people, it is also a communion of saints chosen to be God’s vehicle
for transmitting the gospel.
As the Apostle Paul sat in a Roman
prison he wrote to the Philippian church of his joy and confidence in their
continuing testimony to the Gospel. “Conduct yourselves,” he wrote them, “in a manner worthy of the gospel
of Christ. Then . . . 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.” (Phil 1: 27-28) The cure Paul prescribes for those living in
“a crooked and depraved generation” is to “shine like stars in the universe as
you hold out the word of life.” (Phil 2:14-16)
The mission of our generation, like
those of Nehemiah and of Paul, is to testify to God’s glory. In Nehemiah’s day this mission required
building a wall of protection around the city. In Paul’s it meant not allowing the walls of prison to stop either his
proclamation of the gospel or his encouragement of God’s people. What does this mission mean for those of us
today trying to live a wholeheartedChristian life in the midst of suburban prosperity?
I believe that God is calling his
people today to tear down the walls that prevent the world from seeing the hope
of Christ within us. We must tear down
the walls around our hearts and remove the veils from our faces so that God’s
light might shine forth. We must begin
to tear down the walls around our suburban churches and together—as one
man—contend for the advance of the gospel in our communities and our culture.
As Christ’s body was sacrificed for
us, so we in the suburban church must discover the sacrificial work to which we
are being called in this generation. What mission is big enough to draw us out from behind the walls we have
erected? What tasks are big enough that we, like
Nehemiah and Paul, will be required to depend on God’s strength rather than our
own? How can we join Jesus “outside the
camp,” even in the affluent suburbs, confident that the gospel is needed to relieve
the hidden pain of others and that it is capable of redeeming the culture
around us? (Heb 13: 12-13) With such questions shared on our hearts and minds,
we may find that we have less cause for quarrels and more reason to move
forward with greater unity of will and action.
Let’s lift up our eyes and see the
vision toward which God’s purpose is moving through history. There is a coming Kingdom around which stands
the “great high wall” of God’s power and love, but because eternal light
emanates from within this city, “on no day will its gates ever be shut.” (Rev. 21:25) We who are honored to bear the sacramental cup
filled with the blood of the King should now be riding out in advance to tell
how he bore the cup of wrath for us and now invites us to banquet with him
where he serves the water of life. When
we return, we shall ride back into the City bearing for the King the glory and
honor of his nations, even of his suburbs.