All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

Thus far, we’ve seen that the teachings and instructions of the New Testament call believers to a more intense, sacrificial, and intimate community life than most of us in western Christianity usually participate in. But if we want to enjoy the fullness of life, fruitfulness, and joy that the Lord has promised us, our wholehearted and diligent devotion to this calling will be the only way we can live. After all, the Lord gave His all for us, so we ought to give our all for Him, and thus for His body.

We’ve also given many specific ways in which we should carry out our responsibilities as members of the Assembly, and siblings in God’s family. But we’ve still yet to give a detailed and systematic picture of how the Lord’s body is to operate when the members are working at optimal levels. So that is our task in this section.

It’s time that we now come to the character and activities of the communities in the New Testament commonly known as “churches”. As you’ve probably noticed throughout these writings, I’ve been using the word “assembly” in place of “church”. In brief, the reason for this is because the term “church” does hardly anything to communicate the idea that the original word in the Bible conveyed. As many Christians know (or should know), the Greek term is ekklesia, and it literally means “called out ones”. However, in most Greek literature around the 1st century, it was used to designate a gathering of people. And so it’s usually used in the New Testament letters, since all of God’s people in a given location assembled together at usually one central location on a weekly basis.

In this chapter, we will examine the way that the apostles taught the early Christian assemblies to act toward each other in several of the main categories of community life that make a healthy and fruitful body of believers that is building itself up in love, and reaching out to the unbelievers in their community. Through this study, we’ll see that the apostles never once communicated any notion of churches being hierarchical organizations resembling businesses, with an executive board of directors consisting of the pastors, and those not hired by the organization mostly acting as spectators. On the contrary, we’ll see that the apostolic or New Testament model for Jesus’s body on earth is for a vibrant, affectionate, and laboring familial community of brothers and sisters who live to serve each other, and in so doing, promote the spiritual and moral growth of each other, leading to the more effective witnessing of the gospel to the unbelieving world around.

First, I’ll eliminate the misconception that the activity and work of local fellowships are mostly dependent on a paid group, or individual, serving in an officially recognized leadership role that provides the main means of the encouragement and strengthening of the congregation. One way to show this is to point out two facts about the New Testament letters’ material on church leaders, or as I prefer to call them, “elders”. The first fact that should be kept in mind is that there is no letter in the Bible that is written specifically to a group of elders, or an individual elder, who are overseeing a single congregation. In spite of the pastoral character of Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus, these men were not elders or pastors in the normal sense, but representatives of Paul who were tasked with serving their congregations on his behalf. Rather than being written to elders or pastors, most of the New Testament letters are written to all the believers who live in a given city or region. You merely have to read the first couple of verses of all the letters to see this.

The second fact that shows us how comparatively little emphasis and control was given to elders in the apostolic era is that most of the New Testament letters don’t specifically address them as a separate group at all. The few instances of this being done are in very small sections in such letters as 1 Thessalonians, 1 Peter, Hebrews, and the pastoral letters. However, by and large, most of the letters’ content is addressed to all the believers in their areas, regardless of their leadership role. They are mostly corporate and universal in their subject matter. And as we continue looking at the main areas of instruction given to the early assemblies, we’ll clearly recognize this.

Having established that most of the New Testament letters target whole communities of believers, rather than a select few of their leaders, how did the apostles (especially Paul) instruct the assemblies under their care to carry out the brotherly love and service that would enable them to build each other up, and grow in their Christlikeness?

As I’ve surveyed the explicitly practical and application-devoted sections of the major letters of the NT, I’ve noted at least four main areas of Christian living that the apostles spoke to in order to instruct the believers how to live out their identity as God’s children, and to promote the service, maturity, and unity of their respective communities. In general, the letters follow this order of disciplines in living:

  1. Humility (viewing yourself in light of your identity as a part of Jesus based on the gospel)
  2. Unity (striving to think the same way)
  3. Service (understanding and meeting each other’s roles and needs)
  4. Prayer (praying together)

We will now survey each of these areas of community life, and how the apostles taught the early assemblies to fulfill them.

Be Humble

In several of Paul’s letters, he begins the explicitly practical sections by reminding his brethren of what God has done for them in Jesus, and then basing their self-estimations on this wonderful condition that they’ve been given. We must always remember in our efforts to obey the apostles’ teachings that we never do so apart from the logical connection between our glorious redemption, renewal, and hope through Jesus, and what this identity means for our everyday character and behavior. In other words, all of our practical obedience is reasonable in light of who God is to us, and who we are to God. So, here are the major passages in which Paul urges believers’ humility based on their condition in Jesus:

To the Romans:

            “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God . . . For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God as allotted to each a measure of faith.” – Romans 12:1a, 3

To the Ephesians:

            “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness . . .” – Eph. 4:1-2a

To the Philippians:

            “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves . . .” – Phil. 2:3

From the first two passages, note Paul’s precedent given to the motivation of the believers’ humility. In Romans, it’s “the mercies of God,” and the “measure of faith” that God has given to each Christian. In Ephesians, they are called to display all humility because this is “worthy of the calling with which you have been called” (4:1).

Also, mark well what is contrary to humility, which is acting because of “selfishness or empty conceit” (Phil. 2:3). Avoiding thinking of oneself as the center of one’s life, and one’s own value, gifts, and activities as most important can only come through remembering one’s identity in Jesus as one of many blood-bought members of God’s family, and of Jesus’s body.

Once you have settled in your mind what your true value is in God’s sight, and in relation with your brethren in Jesus, then you will be able to maintain and improve the unity that you have with your local fellowship, which is the topic up next.