A Society or a Community, the difference.
written by Michael McBane
It increasingly becomes apparent to me as I continue in this Christian life that God gives what He demands. What He gives is revealed by example it may be a reflection of scripture never the less it is revealed. In this subject I ask us to consider the Trinity and the interactive relationship and its eternally reaching implications in how we should interpret life. In order for us to participate in divine order we must allow the Lord to lift us out of this world and into the revelation, the reality of the the community found in the Godhead trinity. That is so vital to expanding our understanding of the depth of God’s purpose among us as His church. Notice I said His church. That is not a divisive statement it is a possessive one.
Our view of this is participatory, it is communal. There is a difference in what we call society and community. Society polarizes people by accentuating differences. It presents illusions that project freedoms that are determined by enforced structures, such as economic impoundments that are supposed to form community. History reveals that conformity to non relational uniformity weakens the ability to serve in community. Society is defined by laws, employment, contracts to meet and benefit by meeting needs. Intensions of good will that foster the opposite more then not. Where as community is a formation of a people that relate because of love and commitment. Differences are overlooked to enlarge the whole. Out of this can come the commerce of life. God is a creative involved force of community that recreates not by evolving but by involving. This difference in our blurred vision of life is neglected and therefore we loose the opportunity held in community. How does God present the community of the trinity to us? He reveals and offers to us through His love His Son Jesus Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. The Father gives us Christ who died for us, we are forgiven. We receive the gift of sonship and the cry Abba Father begins to sing within us. We are drawn by the Holy Spirit to the greater understanding of eternity, of heaven on earth through the participation of God within our life. Christ is active, ever interceding for us, taking us before the Father. We exclude people from grace if we do not equip them with the understanding of God’s present grace. Essentially we must give a corporate effort to how we speak and redirect the language of our conversation to ourselves, to each other and to God.
It is pointed out in the understanding of the belief of the ‘objectivity of God’ that our American culture of individualism grew from this non trinitarian perspective. Basically it is the Constitution with a Christian over lay. God who created the individual with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As an American it is difficult to find fault in such but if we allow our hearts to see this belief through the filter of God we will see how this can and has defaulted. Because the moral laws have receded, dominoing towards a culture of narcissism, a preoccupation with self indulgence that justifies the very thing that set its boundaries. We generate self esteem as doctrine. Christianity drifts towards a doctrine of self realization. We seek self fulfillment, self identity as we imagine the possibilities. Essentially we become our own God as we merge towards the relevance of the New Age movement within a pool of rediscovering our own spirituality. Sounds inviting quite a mixture though.
But within the relational Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a deliverance from the preoccupation of self to attain the greater good. God calls us out of “ME” and into Him. It is a constant formation of the reality of the full wisdom of God discovered in the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit revealed from the beginning until the end. When we enter into this door we begin to let go and we little by little do not love our own life as an end to itself. We begin to find nourishment in our consistent participation with the Lord in the communion of His table. The elements of the Eucharist merge us towards a life that restructures who we are as individuals, in marriage, in greater community. The Kingdom becomes clearer. Here we learn how to respond in responsibility towards one another Ephesians 4:15,16. “ speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
In Christianity we find ourselves in Christ, we are clothed in His righteousness. He constantly reforms us and takes us out of our ambitious self attaining mindsets.
Let me return to the example of community found in the Trinity of God. Within this fusion we have a mutual love, mutual self giving, testifying to the love of each other and the exchange of mutual glorifying to magnify the whole. They are not indifferent in mind or purpose. They are woven in service. How does this extend to us consider Hebrews 2:10,11, “ For it was fitting for HIm, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” and Galatians 4:5, “that we might receive the adoption as sons.”
The life of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit is extended to us through the Holy Spirit. Recall 1 John1:13, “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these words are reinforced in Ephesians 2:18, “through Christ, we both (Greek or Jew) have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Jesus repetitively told us that He came to reveal the Father to us, mankind. By seeing HIm we saw the Father. Therefore in Jesus coming to this earth and the miracle of the incarnation we have the unfolding of a life within the communion of the trinity. We therefore are called individually and collectively to an identity found in the community of the Triune God. But what must be known as significant is this that we live and worship God, Father in Christ Jesus as well as through Christ. Let us expand this to see that we cannot separate the person of Christ from the work of Jesus Christ. We are healed, delivered through Christ because He was obedient in the relational cohesion of life woven by love for us within the triune God, the work of Christ.
I pray this begins to illuminate the greater call that we have to community found in Jesus Christ.
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