We Live in Community

Why are we talking about we live in community this morning?

Sacred Mission Church is this.

Why do we exist?

We exist to multiply and establish gospel-centered, city-focused church communities.

That's why we exist as a church.

And part of that very essence of our DNA is that we live in community.

It's a reality of who we are as God's people.

And I think that what we're going to see in the text this morning is that community is the faithful response to the gospel.

We might think of the ways that we respond to the gospel, right?

But maybe some of you responded to the gospel as some super awkward Baptist summer camp, right?

And you raised your hand, and that was like your response.

Like, you know, I see that hand.

Okay, cool.

Or maybe like me, it was Pentecostal and there was this altar call, and you just run forward in tears and sobbing.

And it's like that was your response, right?

And all of us have this initial response where we say we believe that Christ has died for our sins and that faith in him acquires for us forgiveness of those sins, right?

There's this initial response, but so many of us, I think, fail, and that initial response becomes the only response.

And it doesn't mature, it doesn't develop, it doesn't grow into all that the gospel actually elicits from us in a faithful response of what the scriptures reveal is how we now live in accordance with the gospel both being heard and received.

Acts chapter 2 is really this beautiful portrait of the holistic reality of the gospel message being proclaimed.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

That's kind of the first section.

Second section is the gospel message being responded to because it's been received.

And then thirdly, it's the gospel message actually forming and developing and creating something new.

Because when we come into faith in Jesus, we come into a reality of a new life, right?

The old has passed away.

Behold, now we have a new life in Christ.

He has made all things new in us.

But it's not just us, it's the entire reality of our existence that becomes new.

And so we're going to dive in to see how the Bible communicates this to us and help us understand that the proper, faithful response to the gospel is a life in community with one another.

Let's dive into the text.

As we look at the very first section of this passage of scripture, we're going to look at verses 32 through 36, and here we see gospel proclamation, right?

To kind of set the scene.

There's these images or symbols of fiery tongues above them.

There's all these people coming around throughout Jerusalem and they're witnessing what's happening and they're asking these questions of what's going on.

Hey, are these people drunk, right?

And then Peter stands up.

You gotta love Peter.

He stands up and he's the one that's gonna now confront this congregation of people who have gathered around them to try and witness what in the world is going on.

And Peter's going to preach one of the best gospel messages ever recorded in history.

And so he stands up and he proclaims the gospel.

Peter's preaching here in verse 32, he's nearing the end of this historical sermon.

And throughout this sermon, he keeps using this language of this Jesus, right?

He keeps saying, this Jesus, this Jesus.

And some of the things that he actually puts into this sermon is this Jesus, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs.

This Jesus, according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, was delivered up for crucifixion and was raised from the dead on the third day.

And then finally in verse 32, where we start this passage, this Jesus, God raised up.

What Peter's talking about, God raised up this Jesus, he's already made testimony to the reality that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Here in 32, he's speaking to the ascension of Christ.

Post-resurrection, Christ had come and he had begun preaching and teaching the kingdom for about 40 days after his resurrection.

Many of us kind of don't realize this, but after Christ resurrected, he was he was hanging around for like another 40 days, teaching the kingdom of God, revealing himself to his followers, making sure that his apostles kind of understood their calling and what he was putting on them as a responsibility to see his kingdom continue to advance.

And even in the Bible, we see that there are witnesses to this because Peter actually says, of that, of what?

Of the ascension of Christ, we are witnesses.

And we see that Paul, in actually 1 Corinthians 15, he states that Christ showed himself to somewhere around 500 people.

500 people.

And then we see in Acts 1, in this upper room, there's actually 120 people who are in this upper room who are waiting for the promise of Christ, which is the Holy Spirit, to come.

And so Christ had made himself publicly known after his resurrection.

And then he ascended into heaven and glorified physical flesh to be seated at the right hand of his Father.

And Peter's saying, of this we are all witnesses.

And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

And so this congregation that's come around this upper room area that's hearing and seeing and experiencing this miraculous display, what Peter is saying, here's what this is.

This isn't a bunch of people drunk at noon, acting goofy.

This is the promise of Christ, whom you crucif who God uh uh uh affirmed through mighty works and signs and wonders, whom you crucified, whom he raised from the dead, whom he ascended on high.

This is the fulfillment of that promise of which he made to us.

That's what you're hearing.

Verse 34, for David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Throughout Peter's whole sermon, there's three times where he actually points back to the Old Testament.

And he's pointing back to the Old Testament to understand, to reveal, and to affirm Christ.

And he says here at the very end of his sermon that it wasn't David who was going to ascend, but it was Christ the Messiah who was going to ascend.

And so Peter states that because of this, we can know for certain that God the Father has made Jesus both Lord and Christ.

These two words are extremely important for us to understand who Peter was communicating Jesus truly was.

This language of Lord means this uh reality of power and authority, that Christ was Lord, that he had the ability to accomplish that which he set forth to do.

He held within himself the power and authority necessary to exercise his ruling reign.

And then when he says Christ, he's talking about the person who was anointed to be the Messiah of God's people.

So, what's Peter really saying here in this short brief uh statement?

That this Jesus, who is now ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father, has the power and authority to exercise his ruling reign in bringing salvation to his people.

That's what Peter's saying.

This Jesus is that King.

Peter's proclaiming the gospel of Jesus, that he alone is the Messiah who has the authority to bring salvation to his people.

Then we come into summary of verse 37 through 41.

And here, in this chunk of the text, we see gospel response.

So, first section, gospel proclamation.

Second section, we're gonna see gospel response.

Uh verse 37.

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

Right?

I love this.

Uh that the gospel demands a response from us, it elicits a response from us.

And the gospel always creates a response.

Uh Charles Spurgeon, uh, the late uh uh preacher from the 1800s and in metropolitan London, he said that the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.

Every time the gospel is preached, the heat of the gospel will come and it will demand or elicit a response from all of us.

We will our either our hearts will be hardened and we will turn in further rebellion and further uh uh rejection of who Christ is and what he's accomplished for us, or our hearts will be softened by the heat of the gospel and we will turn toward Christ, toward his cross, in faith and repentance.

But the gospel here, it lists us as promise.

What shall we do?

These hears were cut to the heart.

It really speaks to the Spirit's work of the circumcision of the heart, right?

We we see throughout the scriptures that the reality of God's people was not that they were circumcised of the flesh, but the reality of God's people was that they were circumcised of the heart, which created in them a faith in his promises.

All the way back from Abraham to today, it wasn't a circumcision of the flesh that marked someone as God's people.

God's marking on them was truly and always this cutting away of the heart that faith might be applied to the promises of God.

And so, right here in the text, they were cut to the heart.

What shall we do?

And in this work, in the cutting of the heart, they were pleading with Peter and the rest of the apostles.

What shall we do?

And their question does something beautiful for us.

The question sets us up to realize that there is a true and holy way to respond to the gospel message.

Have you ever thought about that?

Have you ever thought about there is a true and holy way to respond to the gospel?

That you don't have the liberty or freedom to respond to the gospel in any way that you'd like.

In fact, in certain ways, if we're honest and we really look at the whole picture of the scriptures, that if we respond to the gospel in certain ways, that we procure judgment on ourselves.

Right?

If we respond to the gospel in disbelief and further rebellion away from God, that actually procures judgment and condemnation on us.

And so these things actually help us understand that there is a true and holy way, then, that God demands for his people to respond to the gospel.

And Peter's gonna set up for us what that is.

He says in 38, Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

You see, the true and holy way to respond to the gospel is through repentance and baptism.

You see, this language of repent and be baptized are the uh two imperative commands in this section of the text.

These are things that are not able to be not done, right?

These are things that we must be compelled in joyful obedience to God and this revelation of what he's done for us through the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of his son.

This is the way that we respond faithfully to that gospel message being proclaimed to us, that we repent and we are baptized.

What is repentance?

Repentance is this turning away from our former life and its ways and turning toward the new life that we have in Jesus in his ways.

Right?

There's this reality that, yes, we trust Christ, we put our faith in Christ, and in that we receive the forgiveness of our sin, but it doesn't stop there.

In repentance, it's not just trusting Christ and putting our faith in his finished work, but it's actually this reality that you've been given a new life by the Spirit, and your whole being is now turning away from your former life in its ways to follow after this new rabbi, this one who gives us a yoke upon us that teaches us his ways, and we can form our reality, our existence, our very being to the way of which he calls us to live our lives.

We say it really simply at sacred mission that to repent is to actually think the way God thinks.

It's a transformation and a renewal of our minds that we begin to think the way that He does, that we begin to submit ourselves to what He calls wicked and evil and an abomination.

We submit ourselves to what He calls holy and good and beautiful and righteous, and we change every aspect of our existence toward Him.

The turn from sin is impossible without the turn toward God.

Baptism, then being identified with.

Right?

This reality of this language of baptism is rooted in the dying of garments.

I don't know if you've ever uh dyed garments, or maybe you just like you in some like weird pre-K class, you probably did some uh uh tie-dye or something, right?

Or maybe you're in Cub Scouts and your mom, who was your group leader, made you tie-dye shirts and you didn't want to.

That happened to me.

Um never went back to Cub Scouts again.

Uh but uh but nonetheless, what what is this?

There's this there's this being identified with this garment is being identified with this new color.

It's it's changing its very fabric, it's the understanding of what it is and who it is.

And so, this reality of baptism, it's no wonder that we are plunged into or dipped into the waters of Christ's judgment that we might be identified in his death, but then we're raised out of them that we might be identified in his resurrection also.

And so there's a reality in baptism, we're actually being identified with something.

But we're not just being identified with Christ in his death, build, and resurrection, we are being identified with his very body.

You see, we're being baptized into something.

What are we being baptized into?

Christ and his body.

There is no biblical option to be identified with Christ, but not to be identified with his people.

The repentance of sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit comprise salvation.

And both of these realities are publicly demonstrated in the act of baptism.

Verse 39, it says, For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

Here Peter's proclaiming the gospel is both for the Jew and for the Gentile, that the nations are being called to repent and be baptized to believe in the gospel that is being proclaimed.

Everyone whom the Lord calls to himself.

If you were here last week, uh we talked in We Preach Christ this reality of the effectual calling of God for his people, that we must be wooed by him, right?

It's almost like this siren song that carries us into his beloved presence that we might actually put our faith that is a gift to us in the finished work of Christ.

This effectual calling is efficacious in its very nature, meaning that it accomplishes all that it sets forth to do.

And so those whom the Lord calls will know his salvation through Christ.

Verse 40, and with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

Look at the language there.

Those who received this word, this gospel proclamation, were what?

Were baptized.

This is the biblical response to first hearing the gospel of Jesus by faith.

And through this gospel response, from hearing the gospel proclaimed, the Lord added about 3,000 souls that day.

And then here in this last section of the text, we see the natural, biblical, faithful, God-ordained outflow of the gospel being proclaimed, received, and responded to because these people were baptized into something.

And so in 42 through 47, we see gospel community.

Gospel community.

These people were baptized into Christ and his body.

And what was the natural reality of that?

Verse 42.

And they devoted themselves.

They devoted themselves.

This language is strong.

This isn't some type of like self-discipline that you put around yourself, right?

They they didn't read like uh uh that the the five healthy habits book, and they're like, I'm gonna put disciplines around how that's not what they did, right?

This literally means they began existing for that their new life created a new existence, and this is what it looked like.

They started existing for these things because they had experienced new life in Christ, they had responded faithfully through repentance and baptism, and now their whole existence was going to change and exist for what?

The apostles' teaching, the fellowship of the saints, the sharing of meals together, the prayers, their new identity in the gospel formed a new community of gospel people.

Brought into Christ, they were brought intimately into his body also.

That's critical for us to understand that this is the way that the Lord expects, demands, calls us to respond faithfully to the gospel is that we become gospel people and we find ourselves in intimate gospel community because of it.

Verse 43, and all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

These people were in awestruck wonder at what they were witnessing, what was taking place here.

Not simply the signs and wonders done by the apostles, but that those who believed were being formed in this new community where they had all things in common together, that they were existing for something different.

That was created and shaped and formed out of this gospel message of this Jesus.

46, and day by day attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.

You see, the gospel had radically transformed these people into a community of believers who were now existing to do life together for the glory of God and for the good of one another.

And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Daily, daily, the Lord was adding to their number those who were being saved.

What a beautiful portrait of mission, also.

These people could not help but to have the reality of their new life, not just known and experienced with inside this intimate gospel community, but being known and experienced by the very world around them.

That they were even so much rejoicing or singing or praising God because of this new life they had.

And it had an effect, it had some type of implication to this new reality.

That not only were they formed in gospel community, but they were bringing others into that gospel community daily because they were proclaiming the very gospel message of which they had received and which had now conformed them into this new identity of gospel people.

A people who have been transformed by the gospel and were bringing others into the new life that they had discovered by the Spirit.

So our thrust of the text this morning, our main idea is that the gospel makes a community of fully surrendered disciples.

The gospel makes a community of fully surrendered disciples.

It is the gospel proclaimed and faithfully responded to that creates and forms a gospel community.

A community of these fully surrendered disciples.

These disciples now had three critical aspects of their community in view in which they were living in, right?

These fully surrendered disciples.

Well, what did that look like?

How did that play itself out?

We see it in kind of three primary categories.

We see it in a category of worship, we see it in a category of community, of fellowship, and we see it in a category of mission, right?

So we have worship, fellowship, mission.

When we look at worship, it says that they were uh existed for, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teachings.

They were being taught the kingdom, they were being uh taught to understand and see Christ in the promises of God.

We have to realize there wasn't a New Testament yet, right?

There were there was no like uh uh uh New Testament they could turn to and say, oh, look at all these.

No, they were being taught who Christ was, what the kingdom was like, uh through the Old Testament scriptures and through the eyewitness testimony of the apostles also.

And so they were devoting themselves to these men who had followed after Jesus in his public ministry, who had who had spent this deep, intimate time with him, right?

Who had who had slept where he slept and ate where he ate and followed him around as their rabbi.

They were devoting themselves to what came out of their mouth and how it was shaping their new identity that they had found in Christ.

They were devoted or existed for the prayers.

They they prayed constantly for the church and for one another and to see the kingdom continue to advance.

They shared in communion.

Uh, this meal that they had together in these formal times was very much understood as the sacred communion meal, where they would come and eat of the body of Christ, they would drink of his blood poured out for them in the new promises that he made to his people.

And they would sing.

They would rejoice and be glad for what God had done for them.

But what about community?

What about this fellowship?

Well, they broke bread in their homes, they practiced deep hospitality, they invited people to the table of where they reclined, of where they built into one another in relational equity, right?

They they they shared these meals together.

I think there's there's almost nothing more intimate that we can do and that's portrayed through us throughout the scriptures than invite people to our very dinner table that we might share in this relational equity that we have with them.

They met each other's needs, right?

If anyone had a need, they would make sure that they would even go to the extent of selling their possessions to make sure that their brother or sister did not go without.

We have to realize the the cost of following Jesus for many of these people, that they would lose their very livelihood.

And so those who were in this community was gonna make sure that you were taken care of.

If I had to sell my own possessions to make sure that you had a roof over your head and water to drink and food to eat, I was gonna make sure that I did that for you.

They cared for one another.

Then they had a reality of mission, adding to the number who were being saved.

Church, we have to ask ourselves when we are sharing the gospel message with other people, what are we inviting them into?

When we tell them about Jesus and what he's done for them and how he has died for their sin and how he has resurrected from the dead to offer them new life, what are we inviting them into?

Is it simply just a decision that I might believe and be forgiven of my sin and raise my hand or go to the altar or say this prayer that you found in the back of this old book?

We're not just inviting them into a decision, we're inviting them into an existence.

An existence with Christ and with his people.

Faith in Jesus and community with Jesus' people.

This is a biblical portrait of a community of fully surrendered disciples, of people who heard the gospel proclaimed, responded to it in true and holy ways.

A community that can only and must exist because a people have faithfully heard and responded to the gospel.

John Stott, he was a theologian and author and pastor.

He wrote a commentary in the book of Acts, and in it he says this He says, He did not add them to the church without saving them, nor did he save them without adding them to the church.

This is a reality of the portrait of the fullness of our salvation.

That we're not saved just by making a decision, or we're not called to just simply make a decision for the salvation of our souls.

We are called to change our very existence.

Not only our relationship with God through Jesus, but a relationship with his people through Jesus also.

Yet many of us still have a very anemic or even absent view and understanding of biblical community.

We tend to forsake and neglect what the gospel alone is actually set forth to accomplish.

To not just save a people, but to bring them into community with one another.

Some of us, we see the gospel as reconciling us to Jesus, but not his people.

We see the gospel as reconciling us to Jesus, but not his people.

When we are saved, we say this all the time at Sacred Mission, when we are saved by faith in Christ, we are not just reconciled to God, but we are reconciled to his people and to his mission.

This is a holistic reality and understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ, that we are reconciled to all of these things through faith in Christ's finished work.

First Corinthians chapter 12, verse 13 says this for us for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

1 Corinthians 12:13

Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

So we were baptized, remember, I said into something.

Well, we were baptized into not just Christ in this isolated uh uh uh uh sense that is not biblical or any true preview of understanding of who he is, but we're uh baptized into his body.

Ephesians 2, 19 through 22 says this so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

There's a lot of times where we hyper-isolate our reconciliation to Jesus, the reality that we are individually temples of the Holy Spirit, that that that this that we kind of have this us in Jesus mentality when it comes to the Christian faith.

While that's true, it is for a bigger reason.

The Spirit indwells you, the Spirit makes you a temple of the Holy Spirit so that the bigger picture is he can knit all of us together into this holy temple dwelling place of God.

We are building, being built up together.

We're not just a scattered brickyard somewhere, that there's just all these stones kind of laying around and no one can understand what the structure is supposed to be.

There is no space within the reality of the gospel and faithfully responding to it that we remain as one dismembered.

The gospel message is that we were once cut off, but now we have been reconciled.

To remain dismembered from the body of Christ should be gory to us.

It should be gruesome to us, it should unsettle our stomachs.

Imagine if you were walking through the streets of downtown Mason and you saw these dismembered limbs just laying across the side, the horror of that scene.

If we could understand a 40,000-foot view of the spirit's vision of the church, there's a lot of us that are laying on the ground as these dismembered, cut-off limbs from the body of Christ because we refuse to fully understand that the gospel doesn't call us just to reconcile to Jesus, but to his very body, that we were once cut off.

But now, because of the gospel, we've been reconciled to Christ.

We've been membered with him that we might be whole.

You see, the body of Christ is spiritual and universal, but it's also personal and local.

Throughout the whole New Testament, there's approximately 59 one another commandments in the New Testament.

One another.

How are we supposed to live in fellowship and community with one another?

Do we realize that if we refuse or fail to live in the gospel community that the gospel calls us to as gospel people, we are deliberately at worst or unable to at best fulfill 59 prescribed commandments of how God's people should live in light of the gospel.

That's that's staggering.

For a people who are called to be obedient, for a people who are called to reflect the righteousness of Christ that's been given to us, for a people who are called to submit to the truth of God's word and how he desires our lives to be lived, that they might experience the fullness of their flourishing, to not live in a manner representing the truth that we've been reconciled to Jesus and to his people is to live a life of deliberate disobedience to the clear prescriptive commands of the Scripture.

Here's what I want us to really understand isolation, isolation is always a response to sin and disbelief.

Reconciliation community is always a response to faith and grace.

Always.

Your elders know.

As soon as any of us in this room start to pursue isolation, start to pull back from community, start to hide in the darkness, something's wrong.

Whether it's disbelief in the gospel of what Christ has done for us, or it's sin that we're trying to conceal and keep covered, we know that this isolation is not a response to holy things.

Because the true and faithful response to holy things is to be together, to be in the light, to be as we were in the garden, naked and unashamed before one another, not in a real sense.

We're not there yet.

We're not there yet.

And heaven may be.

I don't know what heaven's gonna look like, but but the nakedness of our souls, to be exposed to one another, that we're known.

That's a response to grace and faith.

Some of us, though, we see the church as an event and not as an existence.

We see the church as an event but not as an existence.

Many of us have a very poor view of the church.

We see it from an ultimately selfish perspective of what we can get out of it.

What is the church going to give to me?

How is its teaching and that it serves me or feeds me?

How is its worship and that it actually aligns itself with my musical preference?

What is its culture like and that it actually gives me the things that I want out of it?

We see the church as an event, a service that has been created to serve us.

We don't call these services at sacred mission, we call them gatherings.

That's intentional.

We're not creating a service that serves you.

We are creating a gathering of God's people to be able to be faithful to what He's called us to as we gather in this broader picture and understanding of the local church that we might be fueled up and energized and built up for the reality of us as the church scattered, continuing to live in community with one another.

Yet the church service or gathering is an event that takes place within the existence of our new life in Christ.

It's a natural part of the newly formed gospel community.

It dwelt inside a new reality of life, but it was part of a greater whole.

You see, we've made church the thing.

Okay, we get saved, we believe in Jesus, we go to church, and that's like the thing.

No, church was a part of a greater whole, of a greater new existence.

It wasn't the thing, it was a thing.

And what else was incorporated in that?

It was the fellowship, it was the sharing of meals in their homes, it was making sure that each other was cared for.

It was praying together and for one another, it was singing, and we're it was all of these things.

This was the new existence, and church was a part of that new existence.

It wasn't the new existence.

And what we've done is we've made church not even an existence, but an event.

When the people first heard the gospel and faithful responded to their whole existence, changed.

Not just a weekly event, but a daily reality.

When we look at the writings of the New Testament, we see so much of how we are to live within this new existence.

One where we continually are formed to love God and love others more truly and deeply than ever before.

You see, the gospel truly saves us and it truly reconciles us to Jesus and to his people.

It places us in a new existence where we are to live out the reality of the gospel with one another.

Our hope this morning, church, is that Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended to make a community of gospel people.

This is the end goal.

This is the portrait of Revelation.

That a new Jerusalem was descended out of heaven.

And what was there?

It was God and the community that his gospel created.

That's the end.

And we get to joyfully practice that now.

We get to joyfully participate in that now.

We were created to be in relationship with God and with one another.

And the fall severed that reality.

It marred and perverted that reality where not just our relationship with God was affected, but our relationship with one another was affected.

And so the gospel is bringing restoration to both of those things.

We are only able to fulfill the life that we were created for by the grace and reconciling power of the finished work of Jesus.

So my hope for us church is this that we would be a community of people formed and sent by the gospel.

I want community to be a critical reality of who we are as Sacred Mission Church.

That we are people who know one another and are known by one another.

That we see this new life we have in Christ not as an event, but as an existence.

That we demonstrate the full power of the gospel and its intended purposes in our life.

That we don't play church, that we are the church.

That it affects every aspect of our very being.

Are you living in community?

Have you actually responded faithfully to the gospel that you say you believe in?

Or are you allowing disbelief or sin to continue to isolate you and live contrary to the way that God desires for you?

I want to plea with you this morning.

Receive grace.

Receive Christ in every aspect.

Come out of the shadows.

Come into the light where I pray and believe you will meet a community of people who love you, who care for you, who screw up like a lot, but who have long-suffering impatience for all those stupid screw-ups, who are going to continue to do things wrong, but also are going to do some stuff really right as we stumble together toward what Christ has called us to.

Let's live in the gospel community because we have been saved and made gospel people.

Amen.