ServantForLife

Charging of the Church

Once believers have been given this new identity, God commands them into action. Paul, Timothy, Luke, John, Peter, and many other writers of the New Testament spent a fair amount of time in their letters to the early church giving them marching orders. Some of these orders are for the individuals. They are suggestions or commands on how to live life as a believer. Other orders are given the church body as a whole. The early church, located through various regions, faced different struggles. The apostles wrote to these churches giving instructions on how to operate as a body of believers. Finally, these early church leaders wrote about how God will fulfill His promises to His bride.

The Response as a Person

God calls upon believers to respond in many ways. The first response is by accepting and believing in Christ. As this paper has discussed, without this step, everything else would be in vain. Once someone has become a believer they are called to take on their new identity in Christ. As a Christian assumes this identity, a natural overflow should be a bearing of spiritual fruit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23 ESV). A follower of Christ should began to display these characteristics in their every day life. He or she should be kind to their neighbor, display patience with those who need it, be gentle to those who are hurting. They should show self- control when experience temptations to sin. Most importantly of all, they should express love to all who they encounter. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 ESV). What though, does it mean to love? What are characteristics of this love? 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a tells us that:APPLIED LEARNING PAPER! 10

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (ESV). The message of God is love, and believers are meant to display that love to the World.

Finally, an individual’s response to God is to submit: “to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10b NIV). God has given each individual Christian a task to complete. It is their calling to submit to His will, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13 ESV).

The Response as the Church

What is the church? The church is a community of believers. It is no stretch then to imagine that the church has a responsibility to respond to God in much the same way that an individual believer does. The church should respond to God as He also calls it to make disciples by equipping and training believers.

“Paul offers character qualifications for church leaders in 1 Timothy 3” (Fee & Stuart, 2002, p.376). 1 Timothy 3 gives a set of standards that the Church should follow when choosing leaders among themselves. The reason for this is that these individuals will be looked up to and charged with the responsibility of raising up younger believers, much the way that Paul did with Timothy.

Second, God provides guidance to the church in handling problems within the church. These problems take on many forms, whether it is incestuos relationships, false teachings, or flagrant disobedience to God’s word. An example of church discipline can be seen in 1 Corinthians 5. Here we see that: “a man has his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1b ESV). Paul “rebukes the Corinthians for their arrogant pride in condoning such a flagrant sin within their number and commands discipline in the form of dismissal from the fellowship of the church” (Gundry, 2004, p.379). This is but one of many examples of discipline that church leaders are called to enforce.

Finally, the responsibility of the church is to be unified in Christ. “so we, though many, are one body in Christ” (Romans 12:5a ESV). The church is called to function as the body of Christ. How can a body function if the parts do not work together? The apostle Paul states it best: “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell” (1 Corinthians 12:17 ESV)? The purpose of the church is to work together, complementing each other’s strengths to display the full love of God to the world.

God’s Promise to Believers

While God charges the church to respond to Him, He also makes promises to the church that He will fulfill. He promises that He will complete His work in our lives (Philippians 1:6 ESV). He promises us victory over sin (Romans 6). The most important promise God makes to us though, is that He will return for His people. He has promised to remove His people from this world and bring them to the new heaven and earth that He has created for them that they might live and dwell with Him for all eternity. “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever” (Revelation 21:3–4 NLT-SE).