Nurture

Our scripture for today comes from Paul's epistle to the Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 through 16.

Ephesians 4:11–16

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, who from the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Um a couple of things to bring your attention to.

You can pick which one you'd like.

Uh also, uh, we have a photographer present today.

This is Dave.

He's taking pictures so that we can have pictures for the website that look, you know, like look like our church looks and stuff.

So when you're when if you check the back of your ticket, uh you'll notice that you're by sitting in your seat, you agree to be filmed this morning.

Um and uh uh yeah, it just it just try and act like you normally act.

Like I'm sitting up here thinking, like, how do I normally preach?

But we're just just act like just act normal.

Also, next week we're making one of the largest changes that we've made uh as a church in in a long time.

We are intending to start on time.

Yeah.

So we uh we had an elder meeting this week and we discussed we should start we should start on time.

So we're gonna we're going to ask you to to show up a little early, that way you can socialize uh and you know talk to one another and say things like how's your week and answer answered questions like the one previously alluded to.

And then uh we'll come in here and we'll start at 9 30.

We think that this will be a way to show hospitality, especially to folks that are coming to check out the church.

And then oftentimes what happens is you come to check out the church and then you walk in and it's like, okay, church, it says it starts at 9.30.

I'm gonna come and I'm gonna sit down in here, and then you sit down in here and you're like, okay.

And then uh you think that you were too early or something, you weren't, you were on time, it was the rest of the whole entire church that was late.

So we are starting at uh 9.30.

That that change is on the is on the horizon.

So uh mark your calendars.

Uh church will start when it says that church will start.

Likewise, uh, we are making an adjustment to our communion pattern.

So we currently uh take communion uh by a process called intinction, which is uh where you dip the bread into the wine.

Uh we are now separating the components of communion.

So we are all drinking from one cup.

We're not.

I really wanted to, but I was like the only one I talked to that wanted that.

And so I thought, so we're not gonna do that, but we are going to have, you know, like the little communion cups?

Well, they'll be up here in beautiful little communion cup things.

And you'll just do the same thing.

You'll walk up and you'll take the bread and you'll eat the bread, and then you'll take the cup and you'll drink the cup.

Uh it's it's more like a meal.

And it this is uh there's uh it Jesus talks about the covenant in the two parts where he breaks the bread and it's the poured out wine.

And so the symbol is a symbol in two parts, and so this is a way that we are further participating in that.

So that's something that's something to look forward to for uh communion next week.

So lots of stuff happening between the space heaters and the photography and drinking out of cups.

It's like an old viral video reference.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we thank you for gathering us together as your church this morning.

We thank you for your continued loving-kindness towards us.

Lord, I pray that this morning we would gain a deeper understanding of your nurture and care for us, and that we as a church might learn how to participate in your love towards us by our love for one another.

Lord, as you called us to yourself, you called us into your body, the church.

And you have intentions for our growth and our care and love for one another, that we might build one another up in love.

Lord, I pray that as we understand that more completely, we might participate in it, uh, even this morning.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Another thing that must must be shared.

Uh we we closed the the books on last year, and uh we finished the year in the black.

Yeah.

So that's very exciting.

This is our first, that's the first time that our church has has done that uh over the past five years.

So it's been this steady sort of uh progression and growth towards our church being self-sustaining.

So uh yeah, our our church just kind of is its own thing now, you know?

It can keep going.

I think I think this is gonna keep happening.

Uh so it's very exciting and it's just a testament to your generosity and your love that you've made tangible and shown to our church and to this community and seeing this thing happen.

So thank you.

Uh thank you for participating in in our church by your giving.

So this is the sixth year of Redemption Church Denver, and it's a particularly exciting year because if all goes according to plan, this is the year that we will become non-denominational.

We will join uh the Presbyterian Church in America, is the name of the denomination that we're looking to join, hopefully around April.

And with a big change in the church coming up like that, and uh this sort of uh transitional moment for our church, it's a good time here at the beginning of the year to take a step back and consider the church itself.

What is the church and how is the church described to us in the scriptures?

And so looking at the church is something that we don't often do directly because the church is something that is meant to, in a sense, be sort of invisible.

It's something that you participate with in a way to see something beyond the church.

And so the church in that way is like a pair of glasses.

It's when the church is really working, you're not thinking a lot about the church, you're thinking a lot about Jesus.

And you're thinking a lot about our love for one another.

And the church is drawing you to something beyond itself in your participation with it.

But occasionally, you need to take off your glasses and wipe off a smudge.

That way, by looking at the thing that you are normally looking through, you can put it back on and look through it more clearly.

And so here at the beginning of the year, that's what we're doing.

We're taking off our glasses, we're clearing off a smudge, we're looking at the thing that we typically look through so that we might participate more completely with the church.

We began the series by looking at the fundamental principle which the church aims at, which creates and holds the church together, and that is the gospel.

The gospel is the proclamation of Christ as Lord, of him becoming incarnate, of Christ taking on our sin, dying on a cross, and being resurrected, and then ascending into the heavens as our Lord.

That story is the story of our salvation.

And our trust in that story is what holds the church together.

It's what makes the church.

Then the thing that we looked at last week, which is uh was our response to that story.

And it's the highest calling of the church, is the proper response to that story.

And the highest calling of the church is our worship.

Worship is the right response to the gospel.

If you hear the gospel, it will make a people who are formed in worship.

And then what we're looking at these next two weeks are these functions of the church that are sort of nested within our worship, that from our worship will flow these two uh functions that the church participates in.

The first one is the church's nurture for the saints.

The church is the body which cares for itself.

It is a body in which the saints are brought in so that the saints experience the nurture of Christ.

It is the place where we are cared for.

And then that's what we're looking at this morning.

What we'll be looking at next week is the mission of the church.

So you could think of it as our we understand the gospel, and in our gospel flows our worship.

And from our worship flows this desire to participate in this very pattern that is causing our worship.

And what this pattern is, is a care for us, a care for God's people that Christ has shown.

And so we participate in that in the nurture of the church.

And Christ sought us while we were his enemies.

And so in the mission of the church, we share in Christ's love for those who are not yet a part of his body, because our Lord is the one who came and sought us, and when he brought us in, he nurtured us, and we are formed in a worship of him.

So you can see how these all are kind of nested together.

And then after that, we're going to look at the structure of the church.

How is it that the church is formed by God, and how do we participate in that structure so that we might share in the worship of God, the nurture of the saints, and the mission of the church?

So today we're going to talk about the nurture of the saints.

Without the nurture of the church, you cannot know Christ.

Now, I mean, that can't be entirely true, right?

That's what that's where I'm hoping your thoughts are going.

A good essay is a sentence that sounds absurd, and then you read the essay, and then it's like, okay, that sentence is not absurd.

So welcome to my good essay.

You cannot know Christ without the nurture of the church.

It is required.

Now that's not because God is limited.

God is not limited to make himself known, and it's not as though he requires the church in order to make himself known to you.

But it is because you are limited.

And the type of thing that you are requires relationship, real relationships with other people in order to know anything.

So when God redeems us, he does not redeem us out of our humanity, but he redeems us into the fullest picture of what he created us to be.

And he created us to be creatures that know relationally, that come to know one another, him, ourselves, through relationship, not just isolated self-reflection.

Now I learned this in this book called Loving to Know by this uh philosopher.

Her name is Esther Meek.

She's a Christian philosopher.

Esther Lightcap Meek.

Lightcap is like the that's a cool name.

And it her um, actually, that whole name is cool.

In her book Loving to Know, she describes knowing as interpersonal.

And she engages with uh a myriad of philosophers to prove this point over the course of her book.

And one who she engages with is this man named John McMurray in her chapter Knowing as Interpersonal.

And John McMurray makes this wonderful move in describing how human knowledge works by starting in a place that, after like studying philosophy, for somehow it had never occurred to myself or anyone that I was talking with to explore, which is the beginning of knowledge is the relationship between the mother and the child.

This is so obvious.

When we're describing the origins of things, how often we neglect our origins.

There's only one place any of you have come from, and that's from a mother.

And so this is the orientation by which we understand how it is that any human comes to know things.

And he he says it like this.

Excuse me.

He argues here's a sentence that's just kind of word salad.

The personal relationship of persons is constitutive of personal experience.

Now I love philosophers, uh, but that's almost impossible to decipher.

The personal relationship of persons, okay.

Persons, one person, other person, in relationship.

That relationship is what constitutes each individual person.

We think of it ordinarily as the opposite.

We ordinarily think of it as there are persons, individual persons, and when they come together, the relationship is formed.

He says it's precisely the opposite.

There are relationships.

There are relations.

And from relations, you become a person.

And he argues this from the mother-child relationship.

He says this of the of the what this means is that there are no autonomous persons.

There is no isolated person.

And this is not just theoretically true.

This is this is uh what's the what's the thing that's not theoretical?

This is practically true.

You can tell where I live.

This is practically true.

This is there is no person who lives outside of the context of a relationship.

That's because you were born a baby.

And babies are persons, and persons require knowledge to live.

Here's what he says: the baby cannot think for himself, yet he cannot do without thinking.

So someone else must think for him.

Perhaps his cry has no meaning for him.

When my child Bodhi cries at 11 p.m.

and then 2 a.m.

and then 4 a.m.

He's not think he's not thinking of this cry like it doesn't have like content for him yet.

You know, like this cry is like uh, you know, like he's saying, like, come on guys, wake up, wake up.

No, it doesn't have content for him yet.

But for the mother, it has.

For the mother, it has content.

You see, the the baby requires knowledge to live because it's a person.

Persons require knowledge, but the knowledge is relationally nested.

The only way any of you survive, the reason that any of you are here looking at me now is because you were loved by someone who held knowledge on your behalf.

And by them holding that knowledge on your behalf, you were able to be a person.

This is the origin of you.

It says the satisfaction of motives is governed by the mother's intention, which is a way of saying the hunger is satisfied by the mother knowing that cry means hunger.

Even if the baby doesn't know that the cry means hunger.

It needs the relationship for the knowledge to become meaningful.

It says he lives a common life as one term in a personal relation.

Thus, the child's first knowledge is the recognition of the other.

Freud was perfectly wrong in saying that as we're children, we're we're born into this sort of like utter narcissism where we think everything is ourselves.

No, the first knowledge is there's something other than me.

There's a relational dynamic.

Because what does the child do?

It cries out for the other in order that it might become a person.

Thus, the child's first knowledge is the recognition of the other, so to speak, as the person or agent in whom we live and move and have our being.

The structure of your personhood is a relational structure.

But what happens is, is we grow up and we forget that.

We think the dynamic of our knowledge has changed, and we think that we came from nowhere, and we require no one to know anything.

We think that it is all self-contained atomically within us as the individual.

And we think of ourselves as just individual beings, and true knowledge, the most true knowledge, is gained by self-reflection.

That's what our culture teaches.

That the true answer to who you are, the true answer to what real knowledge is, is found primarily in self-reflection.

This is this is the nature of our culture.

And we could tell a we could we could tell a cultural story about why it is that our culture thinks in those terms.

You could you could I'll tell one.

You know, the story of Descartes.

I revisited it probably uh six-monthly up here.

Wish we had a term for that.

And Descartes was trying to only know things which could be known certainly.

This was his project.

To only know things which could be known with absolute certainty.

And if it could not be known with absolute certainty, then he said he would doubt it and disbelieve it.

This was Descartes' project.

So, how did he pursue the knowledge of things which could be known with absolute certainty?

He performed his meditations.

And Descartes' meditations looked like this.

He he went into a room, there's a fire lit, he sit in a ch he sat in a chair alone in a room, he closed his eyes and he thought.

And of course, it he began doubting everything.

He doubted any input that he got from his senses because his senses could be deceiving him.

He could be just a brain in a vat that's having impulses fed into it that makes this experience happen, but this experience could be totally illusory.

And so he doubts the existence of everything, but as he's doubting, what's the one thing that he couldn't doubt?

That he was doubting.

If you're doubting, you're thinking, I think, therefore, I am.

And that's the that's called the cogito.

It's the I think, therefore, I am, and then that becomes the foundation of all knowledge for him.

Now we've internalized this as a culture where we've said that all true knowledge, the basis for all true knowledge, is us being isolated from any other input.

Isolated from any true relationship, and just searching our own minds.

That is the locus of knowledge.

That's where truth can be accessed, is just by self-reflection in our own minds.

That's all that can be known with certainty.

Now, here's a little insight to Descartes.

Descartes had a mother.

I didn't do any research to find that out.

It's by deduction.

And the reason that Descartes was able to sit in a room isolated alone was because that mother loved him.

She loved him into existence.

And in that love, he participated in her knowledge, and he learned to participate in the world relationally.

And by that relationship, which was primary, he grew up and he became a person that was always relating.

We are always relating.

To be a person means to be in some sort of relationship.

There's a lot of internal contradictions with Descartes.

One of them is that he's using language, and the purpose of language is not self-reflection, it's communication.

Language implies another.

So when we ask this question, who am I?

Who am I?

Our culture teaches us the answer to that question is in your own self-reflection.

That's a part of it.

But there's a relationship that is primary to your own self-reflection.

And that relationship is more determinative of who you are than your own self-reflection is.

Which means that we gain knowledge together.

We gain self-understanding in our active participation in relationship with one another.

That's where we gain knowledge of the things that are outside of us.

It's where we gain knowledge of who we are.

So just as your natural ordinary life is nested within loving relationship, so that you might become a person, so too is your life in Christ nested in relationship, so that you might be grown up into maturity in him.

So why is it that when Christ saves us, we are born again, and he makes us into a new creation in him?

Why is it that he doesn't just leave us autonomously separate from each other?

And he says, now that you have this principle of Christ, you need to go find some cave in the mountains and sit and meditate on this principle of Christ over and over again, and thus you will grow in holiness.

No, that is that is literally inhumane.

It's antithetical to true knowledge.

In fact, it's a recipe for deception.

No, God does not God works within the humanity that he created us in.

And so he calls us into a body.

He calls us into a dynamic, loving relationship of persons, so that we might together grow in him.

How you are the type of thing that knows who you are and what things are relationally.

And so Christ, when he saves you, he brings you into the church.

The church is what nurtures and cares for and cultivates our knowledge of Christ.

This is why the church is not replicable by just information.

The church is not reducible to what the church believes.

You can't even know in any real sense what the church believes without participation in the church, without being given some relational experience of what the church is.

We'll talk about that next week of how that dynamic works.

We go out to provide a sense of the relational dynamic of what the church is so that folks might participate in it.

So you can see, because of the type of thing that you are, and the way that Christ has saved us, it is necessary to know Him that we are brought into the church.

You know everything relationally.

All of your knowledge is dependent upon the love of others.

So let's look at how Christ has formed the church that we might share in the nurture that Christ shows to the church.

In Ephesians 4.11, he says, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers.

Okay, first of all, Christ is the giver.

Already the formation of the church is a relational dynamic from the Lord to us as recipients.

This is not just a human innovation, but this is something that we have received.

This is why as creatures, we are primarily receiving things.

Like a baby.

And when he ascended on high, he gives good gifts to men.

And the gifts that he gives to the church are the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers.

Now, the ascending and giving gifts is a kingly, excuse me, is a I got a sinus infection and I'm just like hopefully it doesn't photograph.

We can fix it in post.

Yeah.

So the um, I'm not going to that church.

That looks sickly and scroll.

The um it's a kingly image because what happens is a king conquers a land, and then when that king rises up, he distributes the goodness that he's received in conquering to his people.

And this is what Christ does.

He raises up where all authority in heaven and on earth is given to him, and then he distributes the goodness of what he's received to his people.

And he does that by pouring out his spirit on the church.

But he pours it out in such a way as to provide something like a parental structure.

He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers.

Now, this is not an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts.

It's not an exhaustive list of church offices.

This is more this type of thing that Paul does where he just overflows in thanksgiving in his teaching to the Lord.

And he says, What has Christ given us?

He's given us the apostles, these 12 witnesses.

Thanks, Krista.

Appreciate it.

That's a little water camp fix.

Can't wait until we finally get some drinkable wine up here.

Can't believe you guys don't want to share a cup with me.

I grew up and went to an Episcopal high school, and the whole high school would line up and drink from the same cup.

We're all still here.

Our microbiomes are like.

Apparently not that great.

The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, these are not, this is not an exhaustive list, but what he's what he's saying is he's given us the apostles.

These are those first witnesses that he's given to the church that speak authoritatively to lay the foundation for the church, the prophets, which were their contemporaries, which explained what had taken place in this transition into the new covenant, the evangelists, those who went out and sought those who were not in the church, those people who do the first bringing in of those who are not in the church, and the shepherds and teachers, which are those local caregivers at particular congregations, those local caretakers.

They're called shepherds over flocks.

And so he gives us this gift of church leaders, so that there is an initial structure, an initial relational structure that we get to participate in as the church.

Because when a child is born, it is not born neutrally.

It's not like, okay, like you the child is born and the nurse is there and it's sitting next to them, she's sitting next to the mother and is like, okay, so which one of you is gonna be the parent?

The child or you?

No, there it's like, no, we need some structure here.

Otherwise, this relationship is not gonna hold together.

If I mix those two things up, then there will be no experience of nurture.

And so the Lord first gives leaders to the church.

You see, those things must have an origin from the Lord.

And he still does this.

He still does this by giving the church, elders and deacons, and those who care for and lead local congregations, so that there is an experience of care that can be structurally participated in, even by the most newborn Christian, is able to come in and immediately be brought into a place of care.

So you see that it must have been the case that in order to create a structure which would care for and nurture the people of God, Christ Himself would need to give the leaders first.

These would have to be a gift from Him so that the church as a whole might be able to participate in the nurture.

But like a family, the intention of God giving these leaders to the church is not of just a one-way dynamic, but he's creating a living organism.

You know, the the the reason it may begin as a one-way dynamic, but that is not the place that it's meant to continue in.

That is uh that is a one-generation dying organism.

So Paul continues, the Lord has given us these offices of leaders in the church.

And in 12 through 13 says, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Why were these given?

It's to equip the saints, that's all of us, for the work of ministry.

So that means that the work of ministry is something that is not isolated to the leaders of the church.

But it is something where if the leaders of the church are effectively serving God in their calling, then they are equipping all of the saints to participate in the work of the ministry, so that we are all dynamically participating in it for the building up the body of Christ.

And there's an aim in verse 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So it becomes this structured organism that is building itself up in unity.

When we participate in the structure of the church, when we love our leaders, when the leaders love the church, when we all love one another and share in the work of the ministry, share in explaining to one another the knowledge of Christ, in demonstrating in ways that we can participate in in real life ways with real people with proper names, not theoretically.

Remember, the relational necessity of your knowledge of Christ is not theoretical.

It's not a nice to have.

You're not the type of thing that can know things alone.

You can't even know yourself alone.

So when we are brought into the real into the relational structure of the church, this is the place where we grow in the knowledge of Christ.

Us together, we share in the knowledge of Christ.

And you know this if you've ever had to confess a sin to a friend.

And in confessing the sin, you've thought, I've I can't believe I've fallen into this very pattern again.

I can't, I can't believe that I'm still wrestling with this particular thing and that I've hurt these people again in this same sort of way, and I'm I am just a swirling ball of chaos.

Put me there and I'll show you some bad things that are going to come out of this next.

And then your friend says to you about you, it is the Lord who pronounces you righteous.

It's just my sinuses.

You need knowledge to live.

And sometimes that knowledge is not stored in you.

Sometimes it's just stored in the body.

And then your friend gives it to you and it becomes yours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You feel really down about your sin.

I understand.

And what you feel really does mean a lot to me.

Let me check the Bible once again.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I'm gonna go with this one instead of the thing that you're feeling right now.

Do you want to go with this one with me?

And then you know the love of Christ.

Not in an I've read about it once, but in an it's happened to me.

It's happened to me.

I've experienced it.

I've looked into the eyes of someone who's shown it to me.

I know it.

And then we become built up in that.

We are built up into knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood.

Mature manhood is the type of thing which is able to replicate itself.

Mature manhood is what passes on the family name.

And we are all raised up into this stature in Christ to mature manhood, where we are able to pass on the family name of Christ.

We are able to replicate ourselves in the love of Christ by the sharing of the gospel.

Our lives become fruitful, and the name of our Father is passed on, placed on more and more.

Do you see the dynamic that's in this?

This is Christ, it's a, it's, you see that the church is like a recreation of, it's like a new humanity, which is not a static group of people, which we merely add to, but it is a dynamic organism that multiplies itself in the world.

This is not a mere one-generation project that Christ sets up for the church.

But in being brought into it, you are brought into the place where you can know him, and in knowing him together, you are built up in him and you mature in him to participate in the very things that he does.

And he spreads the glory of his name and increases the glory of his family.

And we are all called to participate in that beautiful, flourishing dynamic.

Likewise, we require the protection of the church.

In verse 14, it says, so that, why are we built up into this maturity?

So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Now you you may be thinking, okay, this guy is just calling us into like does this guy just like want us to be codependent with the church?

And we he's saying there is no self here and we just lose ourselves into into the church.

The knowledge of yourself by being independent from real relationships, then you are the one who will be tossed about, who will be thrown to and fro by the waves of every wind of doctrine.

You are ripe for manipulation.

You will have no sense of self.

And you will be able to be tossed into agreeing or thinking or doing anything with just the subtlest threat of abandonment, which is basically a description of how our culture operates.

And so our growth in Christ is not just a practice of enmeshment with one another where we are caught perpetually as children.

No, the purpose of the mother's sacrificial love in nurturing her infant child, even nursing her infant child, is so that one day the child will just be able to eat food.

It's so that one day the child will not be a child any longer.

But it will be by the love of the relationship, the fullness of the person that it was meant to be.

Now, outside of the church, outside of the commitment of real relationship with Christians within the church, we are ripe for just being taken advantage of.

For people coming along and telling you, I'll tell you who you are.

You can know who you are if you just do this, if you do these sorts of things.

We become like like teenagers that are gossed one week, preppy the next, skater boys, he was a boy, she was a girl.

Could I make this any more?

Obvious.

I gotta get some Gen Z references.

Because one of the great schemes of our culture is to teach you that you are self-created.

That you're a self-created thing.

And the most true thing about you is what it is that you think about yourself.

That's like the definition of being tossed to and fro.

The definition.

And so we are made utterly insecure, and by the simplest threat of abandonment, we lose ourselves, and then we learn to treat others by terms of just threats of abandonment.

The way that I keep you close is by a threat of abandonment.

Now, there's a reason for this.

I want you to understand a bit of the logic for this.

When the only when the thing that's most true about you is what you think about yourself, then that means you are fundamentally unknowable.

Because truth is self-contained within you, and you're talking to another person who has truth self-contained within them, and then you can't really be known by each other.

You're fundamentally unknowable.

But for some reason, you still want to have these relationships, a reason which our culture doesn't explain.

But since you are fundamentally unknowable to each other, these relationships become just patterns of enmeshment and manipulation.

Because there's nothing outside of any of you that can hold you together.

So you just have to work by force with one another.

But there's another way.

This is the way that the church is meant to operate.

Ephesians 4 15.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

We are meant to speak the truth in love to one another.

That means that the truth is not just something that's self-contained within you, but the truth is shared.

It is outside of us, but relationally connected to us in the person of Christ.

And so we speak the truth to each other in love.

Now, there are ways that people try and defend truth.

And the ways that we do this is we speak truth without love.

But speaking truth without love is another way of maintaining your own autonomy.

Because speaking truth without love says there is a truth outside of us, but it's utterly indifferent and impersonal.

Therefore, I can treat you in an utterly indifferent and impersonal way when I relay the truth to you.

I have no skin in the game.

There's nothing relationally at stake when I relay the truth to you.

That's the truth without love.

But the world is not structured where truth is impersonal.

We are Christians.

Our Lord says, I am the way.

I am the truth.

I am the life.

The truth is utterly personal.

It cannot be spoken without love.

Or we speak love without the truth.

Which is basically a way of agreeing to mutual deception.

It's sort of like the I call it the Bill Withers approach to life.

Because he has that song, if it feels this good getting used, then use me up.

Which is a great song.

But that becomes the structure of our relationships.

You know, this isn't an this there's no real skin in the game in this relationship.

So let's just we think the way out of this is to make the center of our relational dynamic consent.

Do you see how that's that's what that's trying to do is operate in a world of where you're separating truth and love.

You're trying to navigate a relational dynamic with no skin in the game.

Because what that means is we could at least we're not accountable for each other when we enter this relationship.

We can have relationships and not be our brothers' keepers.

We can break apart our humanity.

It's a disintegration of what it means to be a person.

Rather, speaking the truth in love.

There is something outside of us which is true, which orients us both.

It is our aim because we are both seeking to grow up in every way into Christ.

We have a mutual aim for one another.

We are both seeking each other's highest good in this relationship.

But we are speaking the truth to one another outside of ourselves, but it is in love, which means we are mutually invested in one another.

We have skin in the game.

If I don't see you attain to this, I will feel sadness.

Because I desire this for you.

Our culture thinks of these as literally opposites.

Truth and love are literally incommiserable.

Because if we are utterly autonomous, if the truth about if the most true thing about you is your own personal self-reflection, then you are perfectly autonomous.

And any speaking of truth that is counter to your own personal self-reflection is hate.

Because there is no truth that can be shared.

There's no marriage of love and truth.

We're not autonomous.

We come from someone.

That's why I think Paul ends this by explaining that the whole church is from Christ, born into this relationship with Christ.

In Ephesians 4, 16, he says, from whom, referring to Christ, the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

This is the organic dimension of the church.

That in our participation in love with one another, we grow in the knowledge of Christ.

We become more like Christ, more knit to Him, in a greater relationship with Him.

And the way that we participate in that relationship with Christ is our relationship with one another.

So we build ourselves up in love.

So what does that look like?

It looks like confession, confession, repentance.

It looks like checking in.

How are you?

We were invested in one another.

We couldn't answer of the people in our church.

Am I my brother's keeper?

No, if I if I see them going astray, I'll seek them.

Because I've got skin in the game here.

I love them.

And there is a truth that is over both of us, and it will come to bear.

God has really gifted you at this.

It really blesses me when you've reached out and shown your care in this way.

You know, church stuff.

Ordinary run-of-the-mill church stuff.

We become knit together in love.

This is the place, the nurture of the church, is where we grow in the knowledge of Christ.

Jesus does not say over and over again, love one another, love one another, love one another.

Because it's just like nice to say the one who formed the church is the one who formed the patterns of reality.

This is where all the deforming of sin, which calls us into these autonomous cells, which just get like mined for our attention.

And it replants us into the true relational soil we're meant to grow in.

So the church nurtures our hearts.

Are there any questions?

Okay.

I'm running a little late, but this is the last time we'll do that because next week we'll start on time.

Culturally, it's all the rage to invert power structures.

I was actually planning on doing that later today, if any of you guys want to.

Is a biblical church structure subversive to culture then?

And are we really the ones inverting power structures?

And does this also mean a culture of inverted power structures is fundamentally unnurturing to its participants?

Right?

Agreed?

Our culture thinks that the problem is, like what I was taught in school, is that the problem is hierarchical structure.

That all power structures are fundamentally harmful.

Now we don't precisely know the way forward from that.

But if we invert the power structures that we've received, we could create some wonderful new space that we could all adventure into.

That's what I was taught in Cultural Deconstruction and Discourse Analysis with Kathy Comstock, this wonderful teacher.

That's an absurd thing she taught, but she was great.

I took all her classes.

She was lovely.

If we think that all hierarchy is inherently harmful, and that the way to freedom is the deconstruction of all hierarchical relationships, then we are tearing down all of the structures which produce unity in the world.

So what you would expect to see if a culture made its fundamental project, the tearing down of all hierarchies, you would expect to see a lot of disunity, a lot of factions forming, until ultimately everyone is reduced to being something that is their own absolutely autonomous individual that is only able to safely relate in patterns of tyranny by saying, I demand you relate to me this way.

And that's what our culture is doing.

Hierarchy, good, here's the thing.

Good hierarchy is the pattern of the world.

But that pattern of the world has been utterly corrupted.

Because Christ is the only one who can fill this hierarchy.

When Satan is the ruler of the world, as took place at the fall, then yeah, that's a bad power system to be a part of.

But it's not bad because of the power, it's bad because of the one who is Lord.

There's good news.

The world is being remade.

Christ is Lord.

Satan was defeated.

These relational structures which you depend on to live, you were loved into being by them at first.

They can be restored.

And so we will participate in them imperfectly.

The church participates in the hierarchical structure that God created imperfectly, but in hope that by the power of Christ it will work towards restoration, not towards disintegration.

End of sermon.

Who is at the top of our hierarchy?

Who do we call Lord that binds the church together, that gives the church her structure?

We call the one Lord who gathered his disciples together on the night before he was betrayed.

Paul relays what he said.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

No one was at the top of a more grand hierarchy than Christ.

But you did not see him as Lord.

And because of that, you deserved death.

But Christ went to the very bottom, so that his own body would be broken in our place, his own blood would be poured out in our behalf, that way we might be brought in, to see him as Lord, that our hearts might be reoriented, that us children that forgot we were ever children might be adopted.

That is the top of our hierarchy.

That's a different world.

Nobody is telling the story of that world.

That story happens in church.

So remind each other of it.

Build each other up in love as we remember that story.

Let's come and participate in that this morning.

Holy Father, we praise you for your loving kindness.

We praise you for your grace towards us, for establishing your body, the church, that we might know you and be loved by one another.

Lord, what fullness of life you offer us.

Let us participate in it.

In the nurture of one another in the church, as you nurture us.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.