Did you know that the New Testament provides us with a negative example of Christian community—a picture of what genuine Christian community is not?
This negative example is known to us as Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. Near the end of this letter Paul writes:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. {5} It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. {6} Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. {7} It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. {8} Love never fails. . . . (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
This passage gets read so often at wedding ceremonies that you might be tempted to think that the Apostle Paul had marriage on his mind when he wrote it.
Actually, 1 Corinthians 13 as a whole was not written to stress the importance of love in marriages; it was written to stress the importance of love in the local church. In this famous passage we find Paul talking about the kind of love he believed could and should exist between members of the body of Christ (see 1 Cor. 12). In other words, this was the kind of love that manifests itself when genuine Christian community occurs among a group of fully devoted Christ-followers.
To properly understand 1 Corinthians 13, we have to know that when he originally wrote this passage Paul was trying to correct some problems that were keeping the Corinthian church from being a genuine Christian community.
What were these problems?
- First, there were divisions in the church—various factions of people each claiming loyalty to a different teacher/leader: Paul, Apollos, Peter, Jesus (1 Corinthians 1, 3).
- Second, there were people in the church who were trying to syncretize the Christian faith with Greek philosophy with the result that: some church had begun to lessen their devotion to the cross of Jesus as the foundation of their faith (1 Corinthians 1, 2); some church members had begun to feel superior to their less enlightened fellow church members (1 Corinthians 2, 3); some church members had even begin to feel superior to, and to criticize their founding pastor (1 Corinthians 4)!
- Third, there were church members who, because they were abusing and perverting Paul’s message of grace in such a way as to condone sin, were serving as terrible examples for other church members (1 Corinthians 5).
- Fourth, there were church members who had been taking other church members to court over minor money matters (1 Corinthians 6).
- Fifth, there were church members who were so insistent on exercising their “rights” as individuals that they had become guilty of tearing down the faith of fellow church members and/or actually causing them to fall into sin (1 Corinthians 8-11).
- Sixth, there were church members who were ignoring and humiliating fellow church members while in the very act of observing the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11).
- Seventh, there were church members who considered their spiritual gifts to be superior to those received by fellow church members, causing these fellow church members feel less important and valuable to the church family (1 Corinthians 12).
- Eighth, there were church members who had been dominating (and, as a result, sabotaging) church services by engaging in legitimate expressions of worship in way that made them look spiritual but did not edify anyone else at the gathering (1 Corinthians 14).
- Ninth, there were church members whose loss of confidence in the doctrine of the resurrection caused them to lose their spiritual zeal and their willingness to labor for the Lord (1 Corinthians 15).
It’s against this backdrop that we should seek to understand what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 13. It was as a corrective to the pseudo-community that was going on in the church at Corinth that Paul wrote:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. {2} If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. {3} If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. {4} Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. {5} It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. {6} Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. {7} It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. {8} Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. {9} For we know in part and we prophesy in part, {10} but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. {11} When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. {12} Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. {13} And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13)
For sure, there is a focus in this passage on the issue of spiritual gifts (tongues, prophecies, and words of knowledge); this was the specific problem Paul was dealing with in this section of his letter (chapters 12-14).
But . . . I want to suggest that when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, he also had in mind all the other problems that existed in the Corinthian church.
What this means is that . . . in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul was implicitly saying that the earmarks of genuine Christian community are antithetical to the problems that existed in the Corinthian congregation.
Thus . . .
- In genuine Christian community, church members are not divided into various factions, each one loyal to a different teacher/leader.
- In genuine Christian community, the church members are united in their common, unflagging devotion to the cross of Christ as the foundation of their faith.
- In genuine Christian community, better educated church members don’t feel superior to less educated ones, nor do church members engage in a chronic criticism of their leaders (especially their founding pastor)!
- In genuine Christian community, church members don’t condone sin and serve as terrible moral examples for other church members.
- In genuine Christian community, members don’t initiate civil lawsuits against fellow church members over minor matters.
- In genuine Christian community, church members would rather give up their “rights” rather than weaken the faith of fellow church members or actually cause them to fall into sin.
- In genuine Christian community, church members are careful to celebrate their unity at the Lord’s Supper (instead of ignoring or humiliating one another).
- In genuine Christian community, church members don’t compare their spiritual gifts, causing some to feel superior to others, and causing others to feel unneeded and unwanted in the body of Christ.
- In genuine Christian community, church members don’t dominate and sabotage church services by engaging in legitimate expressions of worship in a selfish, inconsiderate manner.
- In genuine Christian community, church members talk and sing so often about their hope of resurrection that they end up encouraging one another to maintain their spiritual zeal and their willingness to labor for the Lord.
Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born in Dresden, Germany, in a Pietist noble family in 1700. The Pietists were Lutherans who sought to know Jesus personally and to live a godly life.
At the age of six Zinzendorf committed his life to Jesus. In childlike simplicity he wrote love letters to Jesus and threw them out the windows of the castle. At ten he was sent to school in Halle, the center of German Pietism.
He completed his education at the University of Wittenberg, and in 1721 purchased his grandmother’s estate containing the village of Berthelsdorf. Soon thereafter a leader of the Moravians, the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus, came and asked him if oppressed Moravians could take refuge on his estate. Zinzendorf agreed, and in December 1722 the first ten Moravians arrived. They were given a plot of land that was named Herrnhut, meant “The Lord’s Watch.”
Because the Pietist pastor of the Lutheran church in Berthelsdorf shared the Moravian’s vision in his preaching, Lutheran Pietists soon became part of Herrnhut, as did Reformed and Anabaptists. By 1727 the population had reached three hundred, but divisions were arising.
There were language barriers as well as squabbles between the Moravians and the Lutherans over the church liturgy. Zinzendorf, determined not to let Herrnhut destroy itself, moved there himself, going house to house trying to bring unity to the community.
On July 19, 1727, Zinzendorf organized all the adults into spiritual “bands” of two or three. He grouped people with a natural affinity for one another and appointed one of them as leader. They began to meet together regularly to pray, exhort, and share one another’s burdens.
The people in Herrnhut saw their differences start to fade as they focused on one another. On Sunday, August 13, the pastor of the Lutheran church gave an early morning address at Herrnhut to prepare them for the Lord’s Supper. The people then walked to the church in Berthelsdorf. The service began with the singing of the hymn “Deliver Me, O God, from All My Bonds and Fetters.” Then everyone knelt and sang,
My soul before Thee prostrate falls
To thee, its source, my spirit flies
The congregation became gripped with such emotion that the sound of weeping nearly drowned out the singing. Several men prayed with great fervor. Zinzendorf led the congregation in a prayer of confession for their earlier fellowship. Then they partook of the Lord’s Supper together. After the service people who had previously been fighting embraced one another, pledging to love one another from that time on.
The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. Soon and around-the-clock prayer ministry began at Herrnhut and continued for one hundred years.
The Moravians became the first missionary-sending Protestant church. When Zinzendorf died thirty-three years later, 226 missionaries had been sent out from Herrnhut to St. Croix, Greenland, Lapland, Georgia, Suriname, Guinea, South Africa, Algeria, Ceylon, Romania, and Constantinople. One in every sixty of the early Moravians became a missionary.
Talk about maintaining spiritual zeal and a willingness to labor for the Lord! This is an impressive, inspiring story, don’t you think? It tells me that …
Genuine Christian community is a powerful thing. It not only enables the transformation of individual Christ-followers, it inspires and empowers a serious engagement in mission!
So, I’m thinking that two big questions we all need to be asking ourselves are: Are we part of a genuine Christian community of believers? What do we need to do right now to make sure we are?
Something to think about.
