“The Household of God, Doing Christ’s Will in Unity and Love”
Greetings — On behalf of the Silliman church council chairperson, Dr. Angel Alcala we extend our warmest greetings of peace in Jesus Christ on your 85th anniversary. As your church history was being read, familiar names of your pioneer pastors and lay leaders were mentioned e.g. Campos, Malahay, Madrazo, Tabuena, Antonio, Villavito, Antone, Ursos, Lezama. Names which have their counterpart in Silliman which suggests that our histories and our ministries are perhaps intertwined. I thank you for inviting me to share God’s word on this important day.
1) Household of God.
Let me first dwell on my understanding of the phrase “household of God.” in your anniversary theme.
In the Creation Story in Genesis, the household of God represents Adam and Eve and all their descendants. Gen 1: 26 says, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish, birds, cattle and wild animals and all creatures that crawl on the ground.” In the broadest sense, the family or household of God is humanity in general (who are created in God’s image) who are to be stewards of the whole Creation, all the descendants of Adam and Eve whom God wished to bless. For God created Adam and Eve for a purpose, and God blessed them and commanded them, “be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth. (Gen. 1:28ff)
God blessed the whole household, all races, all nations, for they all sprung from Adam and Eve.
In the NT sense, however, the household of God refers to the new creation. When Jesus came, every discussion of God, His Creation and his fellowship changed. 2 Cor. 5: 17-18 – “Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
Therefore, in the narrower sense, the household of God refers not to humanity as a whole, but to the fellowship of believers, the church of Jesus Christ. And there is a distinct purpose for this. All those renewed creation, reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ who have been forgiven their sins and who possess eternal life are especially called to do God’s work. They have been elected to do God’s mission; and the church exists only for mission. Without mission, we are not the church.
To the extent that the witness of the church, has “blessed” the non Christian world, to that extent the household of God encompasses more than the Christian church. In the same way that Abraham was called by God to be the father of nations and through whose faith God’s blessings was to flow to all nations (Gen 11:1-3), so the church is called to be united in the spirit, one body, one spirit, called to one hope of your calling, one Lord one faith one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph 4: 4-6) so that the whole world may be renewed.
The household of God then is the fellowship of believers who reach out to proclaim Christ (kerygma) and to witness to Christ through service (diakonia). It is a Biblical injunction that defines the church and helps the church organize itself to do God’s mission.
2) Doing Christ’s Will in context
Having clarified what the household of God means, we come to the main point of your theme – Doing Christ’s Will in Unity and love. How do we do our kerygma, and our diakonia? Or in everyday language, how do we do Christ’s mission?
Acts 4: 29-32 – “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Thy servants to speak Thy word with all boldness (kerygma); while Thou stretchest out Thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed, through the name of Thy Holy Servant Jesus…(diakonia) and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of Jesus with boldness. Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.”
Notice that Christ’s will or purpose is that his servants act directly on their surroundings. He wants them to speak like a servant the Lordship of Christ with boldness. He wants them to heal and give signs of God’s power. He asks them to be one in heart and soul. He asks them to love and share what they have.
As a church, we are called to transform not the world but each other. Sometimes we are too macro oriented. We do not have millennium development goals, what we have is faith, and a church willing to live out that faith in the particular area we are assigned. How boldly do we speak of Christ in San Carlos City? What problems of disunity have we solved through reconciliation of different sides? How have we expressed our united witness with the Roman Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostal?
There was a time when doing Christ’s will was simple but difficult. It meant standing against the Roman world which was a slave empire that demanded loyalty to the emperor. The problem with Caesar, some times was that he claimed to be the Son of God.
In the times of emperor Nero and Diocletian, the emperors compelled everyone on pain of death, to proclaim Ceasar as Lord. The early Christians were taught to recognize only one Lord, Jesus is Lord, and so they suffered the consequences of their faith. So we had martyrs.
Our mission then and now is the same, proclamation of God’s word in Jesus Christ (John 14:6); salvation through the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and “serving in Christ” expressed in thanksgiving through good works. The good news we preach is holistic, involving salvation from sins that lead Christians to live new, ethical and moral lives; to become partners in economic, political and social well being of individuals and society. “They will know we are Christians by our love” is a song that captures this spirit.
Mission must stand on two feet. First it must stand on Kerygma proclaiming the Good News, i.e., bringing people to Christ and strengthening their faith. Second, it must stand on diakonia – proclaiming Christ’s love, serving the poor, healing the sick, teaching, rebuilding individual and corporate lives.
Our diakonia is well established. Institutionally, this is reflected in the work and mission of Silliman University and the teaching ministry, Silliman Medical Center and the healing ministry; our prophetic ministry our advocacy of human rights, socio economic programs to help the poor, exhortation for moral and ethical living in community. But there is one more thing we need.
3) We need to serve in unity and love
Diakonia means to serve. But we are no ordinary servants. We are called to serve Christ, to serve in unity and love for his glory and honor. Paul expresses it this way:
Phil 2: 1-7 – “fulfill my joy by being like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind; let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself; let each one of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interest of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond servant, and coming in the likeness of men.
We conduct our servant ministry in humility aware that our ministry is our offering to God and our way of praising Him and giving our thanks. We commend to God all our efforts knowing that God is pleased by our offering of ourselves and our efforts. We do not rest in our service because we await the day of hope when the Lord shall consummate His plan for the whole creation, “when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 11: 15-16)
As Ignatius Loyola once prayed, “a servant gives, and does not count the cost. Fights and not heed the wounds. Toils and not seek rest. labors and not ask for reward. We seek only to know that we do God’s will.
While we are united in and for Christ, we confess that we are still a community in need of salvation. We continue to be broken up by our own sins and idolatries. As we strive to unite with others, more churches come to proclaim the Gospel as if other churches are not already doing so. The same problem of overzealous proclamation of Jesus Christ regardless of the presence of evangelizers in the area, is causing much recrimination, “sheep stealing,” self-righteousness and disunity among churches and within churches. Indeed the Gospel can be a cause of disunity!
Related to this is a narrow emphasis on the sufficiency of “salvation” or justification. According to Dr. Everett Mendoza, UCCP resident theologian, the doctrine of salvation has two aspects. “First, salvation means justification, meaning the remission of sins through God’s unconditional forgiveness, which is received through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The sinner is reconciled to God and so regarded righteous by God even if actually the person continues to be subject to sin….Salvation refers to a new relationship that God has established with sinners. It is a relationship of a forgiving God and a sinner that sincerely asks for God’s forgiveness.” “Since it is a relationship, both parties are bound in a mutual obligation to be faithful to one another. God offers to be faithful to forgive; on the other hand, the forgiven sinner pledges to turn away from sin and to live righteously.”
“The second aspect of salvation is known as sanctification. God’s forgiveness carries with it the seed of a new life that gradually matures but never reaches perfection in earthly existence. The new life grows in holiness in obedience to the Lord. As Eph 1:10. says “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Mere acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior is no guarantee of salvation. Beyond the verbalization of faith in Christ, is the necessary inner change that is instilled by the Spirit. For we have been forewarned that “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven…I will declare to them, I never knew you; go away from me…” (Matt. 7:21-23)
There are many other manifestations of sin in our midst, which also divide the church: pride, intolerance, prejudice, loose living, comfort seeking, self-righteousness, bigotry, hatred, hypocrisy, legalism and others.
Did you notice that when the church achieves something good, someone will find something bad to say about the achievement? When we discredit one another, our witness suffers. It reveals that we lack Christian charity. God’s mission suffers when we claim credit for God’s achievements. When we serve the church we should do so in great love of God, not in great love for our ancestors of faith. They loved God, not themselves.
This reminds me how we need God’s Spirit to keep us persevering even when we are attacked by our own brothers and sisters. Let me illustrate this with a story. “A child said to his mother, you never say anything bad about anybody. I think you would have something good to say even about the devil. Well, the mother said, imitate his perseverance.”
We fail in our kerygma and diakonia because the inner change in our lives brought by the Holy Spirit has often not happened. We do things for the church, still for our own purposes, not for God’s purposes. We fail to worship God because we love ourselves more. As Paul warned in 1 Cor. 13, “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have no love, I am a clanging cymbal. If I have faith that can move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. Etc.
Let me then end with this summary point. In summary, it is all a matter of commitment to Christ. How committed is the church to its mission? The early martyrs gave their lives to preach Christ. What are we willing to give up, for our Lord?
A notorious disgraced politician who became a born again Christian spoke to a large university audience. He was talking about his commitment to Christ. “I am willing if necessary,” he said “to die on behalf of the Savior.” And a young student said, “Nothing is worth dying for.
To which he replied, if there is nothing you are willing to die for, then I submit you have nothing to live for.
Is your commitment to Jesus Christ worth giving your life for? If not then, what are you living for?
Happy Anniversary to UCCP SAN CARLOS CITY May your commitment to Christ increase in the years ahead.
(Sermon delivered UCCP San Carlos City, May 31, 2009)
