SHOW NOTES
What the Church Does, pt2
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 194
The Church operates in three dimensions:
Upward—worship
Inward—body life, fellowship
Outward—evangelism, the Great Commission
Our first responsibility, our first privilege as believers, is to worship God. If you take away our freedom, luxuries, and abilities, we still would be able to worship.
The second part is inward—what we are as the Church. When you read the New Testament and divide all the admonitions, there are more admonitions of how we are to act towards one another than any other kind of admonition.
What we ARE, we will DO. How we act toward the Lord, obviously, is important, but a lot of people will never see that. How we act towards one another, just about everyone sees.
John 13:33-34
“Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
The Old Testament taught that we should love people and love one another. But here’s a new commandment—love one another “even as I have loved you.” “Even as” is a very important New Testament phrase. It simply means “to the same degree.”
The new commandment is not that we would love people. The new commandment is that we would love people even as Jesus did—in the same manner and to the same degree. This commandment is talking about how we treat one another as believers. This needs to be the standard.
The greatest problem the Church has in preaching the gospel is the behavior of the Church—how the Church behaves with one another. 1 Corinthians 13 takes the time to say “this is what love is.” In our culture, love is presented in a very subjective way. How does the Bible define love?
One of the most repeated phrases in the New Testament is “one another.” There is a startling amount of verse with this phrase, specifically teaching us how to act towards one another. Our inward conduct has a lot to do with our outward influence. We have to have inward integrity if we are going to have a demonstrated outward expression.
“One Another” admonitions in the New Testament:
Affectionate towards one another
Honor one another
Prefer one another
Receive one another
Admonish one another
Greet one another
Serve one another
Provoke one another
Be kind to one another
Be forgiving to one another
Comfort one another
Edify one another
Exhort one another
Consider one another
Why are all those admonitions written? Because that is not our natural tendency even when we are trying to love God and walk in the Spirit. We tend to think about ourselves. This is the reminder of how we should act towards one another. This is what Jesus meant when He said to love one another in John 13.
You can see the depth of someone’s relationship with the Lord by their relationship with the Church, because Jesus is the head of the Church. How they treat the Church is the way they are treating the Lord. You can’t separate the head from the body. How they treat the Head is how they will treat the body.
We have a responsibility to love God and love the body of Christ the way Jesus told us to. The greatest outward problem we have today is that we have an inward problem. We have to work at getting the inward right. When God is pushing me to be more outward, He is also perfecting my inward attitudes, responses, and how I handle my brothers and sisters in Christ.
We are to love the body, the brothers, like Jesus loved. That is the inward standard. If we get our inward act together, there will be a radical change in the culture of our church–and the world will benefit.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
